Where else could you find an entire community of gamers in one spot having a great time while enjoying an array of festivities in Phoenix? Nowhere except Devastation. As proud supporters of one of the largest video game events, we were more than happy to set up our famous Bookmans Retro Game Zone at the tournament/expo event at the Phoenix Convention Center. This was the largest and best attended Devastation event yet.

The Devastation crew put together enough video game tournaments, cosplay contest, giveaways and casual gaming areas to bring in floods of people from all over the world to participate in one epic weekend. You could find us giving away T-shirts, yo yos, candy, gift cards and exclusive Retro Game Zone water bottles. We brought along TVs and gaming consoles like the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Nintendo to hook up and allow attendees to sit down for a round of Super Mario, Sonic, Rampage, Punch Out and much more. Every day we hosted a mini Tetris tournament where the highest score of the day went home with a $50 Bookmans Gift Card. We had tons of skillful hands compete for the prize and three lucky winners went home with the gold. You can check out photos from the event on our Flikr.

We saw many of our friends at the event like Castles n' Coasters who brought out the arcade systems from their amusement park to allow freeplay and Gotham City Comics had an array of their merchandise for sale along with many other great vendors and artists. Since this is a huge event nationwide, other big name vendors like Microsoft, Mad Catz and Best Buy also showed off and sold some of their new and exciting products. Thousands of gamers at Devastation competed for huge cash prizes for games like Marvel vs. Capcom, Super Street Fighter, Soul Caliber, Halo and so many other popular titles.

The entire event was streamed online in a couple different places and has made such a name for itself, that it saw close to 200,000 viewers during the three days it aired! Everyone who attended was pumped with excitement, anticipation and hope. Being around so many passionate gamers and family and friends who support those gamers was inspiring. Video gaming has come a long way and so has it’s players and we at Bookmans are honored to be able to be part of it.

Thank you to the crew of Devastation for working all year long to ensure that everyone had a quality event to have such a blast at. The crew has been good to Bookmans hosting our annual video game tournaments every year for our Mesa and Phoenix locations as well as tournaments all over Phoenix. They are leaders in bringing gaming to the next level and we can’t wait to see the next level they take it to.