Charlie Fisher loved games. At least once a month, he would come all the way from Fort Dodge to Ames and visit the Old Curmudgeon Comics store in West Ames.

“Everybody knew him by face and by sight,” said Chris Pellack, co-owner of Old Curmudgeon Comics, now re-named The Shield Comics & Games. “He was a fixture in the Ames gaming community.”

In December, Fisher passed away at the age of 42. The autopsy revealed that he had blood clots in his lungs.

“I actually broke down and started crying when I heard the news about his death. He was such a nice guy. Quiet, but always a very fun guy to be around and he would always have a good word for you,” Pellack said.

Fisher left behind a large collection of gaming miniatures. Instead of just auctioning them off like his sister had suggested, Pellack said he wanted to do something bigger.

“We basically decided to throw a weekend-long party to honor Charlie and his passion for games,” Pellack said. “So this weekend, we played all sorts of games all Saturday and Sunday long.”

The Charlie Fisher Memorial Gaming Weekend is going to be an annual event from now on, Pellack said. “Charlie would have loved this, I’m sure of that.”

Charlie’s sister, Hope Hartig said she was absolutely stunned when she found out about the weekend.

“It makes me so happy that he’s honored in that way. He was all about games, that’s what he loved,” Hartig said.  She described Charlie as an introverted and socially reserved character.

“It was very hard for him to break out of his shell,” she said. “He never dated, never got married and never had children.”

What really made him open up were games, Hartig said. He was passionate about all different kinds of games, his favorite being Warhammer 40k.

“I remember when I first met him, I had bought a big Warhammer starter box and didn’t know what to do with it,” said Jed DeHoet, one of the visitors of the Memorial Gaming Weekend.

Dehoet said that Charlie immediately came up to him, sat down for more than five hours and taught him how to play it.

“Charlie was always out there trying to find someone new to play with. His excitement about the games he played was extremely infectious,” Dehoet said.

Hartig said there was no store in the town where Charlie lived, so he would always travel to Ames and participate in tournaments.

“He was really like a big kid, he knew everything about games and was insanely good at them, but in public he’d sometimes wear shirts with holes in them, because he was completely oblivious about things like that,” Hartig said.

For Christmas, he would buy a Nintendo Wii for his nephews, Hartig said. “He believed in games bringing people together and it was true. We’d always have a great time playing with him.”

John Piegors, junior in biochemistry, said he came to the Memorial Gaming Weekend because he loves to play the card game Yu-Gi-Oh and took part in the tournament at The Shield.

“I didn’t know Charlie Fisher, but I think it’s cool that the community sticks together like that,” Piegors said.

He said often people tend to associate the gaming community with negative stereotypes.

“They say we’re fat, overweight and have no lives, but an event like this clearly proves them wrong,” Piegors said.

For a town this size, the gaming scene in Ames is ridiculously strong, Dehoet said.

“That can be attributed to the fact that we have a lot of really passionate students around here, who, even after they graduate will just keep coming in and playing games, just like Charlie did,” Dehoet said.

Hartig said that for people like Charlie, it can be really hard to connect socially.

“Having a game in front of you can have a huge impact on your self-consciousness and it makes you grow as a person,” Hartig said.

The tradition will live on, Chris Pellack said. Next year, The Shield will continue hosting the Memorial Gaming Weekend.

“We will keep the store open and play games until the last person leaves the store, then on the next day, we will open up and start all over again,” Pellack said. “That way, the legacy of Charlie Fisher lives on.”