So, yeah. MAGFest 9 was pretty much just as awesome as MAGFest 8. A bit more awesome in some ways, a bit less awesome in others. But overall, totally awesome.
So, I got in on Tuesday (two days before the con), hung out with some other Internets friends, then on Wednesday I went to the con hotel, as my roommate, Andre, was getting in that day and we could check into our room. We settle in, scope out the hotel, grab some groceries, and chill for the night, knowing that the next day MAG would be starting and would overwhelm us with awesome.
We woke up the next morning and journeyed to the registration desk... to find a 2 hour long line. o_o. Yep. MAG9 sold the hell out. Crazy. The entire con would be more crowded than last year, which was one of the downsides. But, ah well. Shortly after we got our badge, we wandered a bit until I got a text from Ashe saying she was in the line to pick up her bag. So, Andre and I... waited through the entire line again. Heh. After Ashe got her badge, we watched the Gamer Iron Chef event, which was pretty awesome, all told. The basic idea is the same as Iron Chef. Make dishes in an hour, get judged, best team wins. It was 3 teams, though. The best part about that was Hiroki Kikuta was one of the judges. His reactions to the dishes were priceless... Though it seemed like he mostly didn't like them. Whoops.
After that, I went to dinner with a friend and got back just in time to catch the Rare Candy concert (which I'll go into more later), which was awesome. I then spent the rest of the night after that (until about... 5 AM) hanging out with Ash in the Challenges booth, keeping her company and honing my gaming skillz. Lyndis arrived at the hotel at this point (the reg line was almost nil at that point) and hung out in the challenges booth area, as well, until she went to bed.
The next day promised much more. More panels, more concerts, more challenges, MORE AWESOME. Kasumi arrived shortly after noon, and we went over to Name That Tune. We both signed up and both ended up as challengers this year. I was originally planning on going to see Brentalfloss's set in the Jamspace that was at the same time as this, but... Name That Tune was pretty awesome, so I went with that. Unfortunately, neither Kasumi nor I went past the first round we were in. I should have made it, but I ended up not taking a semi-random guess at a song that would have been right. My brain also superblanked on getting a Katamari Damacy song in the tiebreaker that ended the round I was in. Alas.
Later that day, I tried to go a-concertin', but, well, I sorta describe that later. So, beyond that, the backloggery group hung out, played some TWEWY, wandered the con and bought stuff, etc. A very fun, if not terribly eventful time. Ashe had another graveyard shift that night, and Kasumi and I hung out with her for awhile (Lyn ended up heading to bed fairly early that night, as she worked in the LAN room in the morning). More challenges were played. Kasumi ended up doing the MMX2 boss rush with no upgrades/no weapons challenge *right* before we went to the Late Night Trivia show. Totally awesome.
The Late Night Trivia show was totally awesome. It was hosted by Jon St. John and was done Jeopardy style, but with 4 teams of two. Now, there's been a team that's won the two previous years straight that we saw win last year. They kinda destroyed last year. Kasumi and I represented the Backloggery as TEAM BAK'LAAG. We were a few minutes late to sign up last year, but we knew a good majority of the questions. This year, however, we were on time... and got picked. We... ended up in second, behind Team Spreadgun, who got their third year winning in a row. Did we not know our trivia well enough? Well, that was a little bit of it. But mostly it was that Team Spreadgun is confident enough and fast enough to raise their hand faster than any other team. We could have done a much better job, though, had we remembered how supereasy the mid-round short answer questions were, though. The first one was Sonic 3 and Knuckles, which Kasumi had barely played, so we decided to not wager all our points. We should have, though, as it was "Name the 3 types of shields and one of their powers". Deeeerp. And if the second mid-round question would have been from a category that wasn't MGS3 [List the powers of all the "The X" bosses] (FF1 [Give NES names of all the classes and upgrades] and Mega Man 1 [List all the Robot Masters] were the other options) we would have wagered it all and been fairly close to Team Spreadgun. Ah well. Still, we did much better than last year and did come in second. We were happy with the result.
Saturday! The last full day of MAG. The thing that got Kasumi and I out of bed after a few hours of sleep was the Hiroki Kikuta Q&A panel, which was an awesome panel to watch. I haven't played anything he's composed for besides Secret of Mana and a tad of Seiken Densetsu 3, but he still gave a cool look into how he develops OSTs. We had met up with Ash there and ran into Lyn on the way out and went to the Composers Tell All panel, which was Western composers doing... well, pretty much the same thing. So, kinda awesome. We then did some hanging out for the rest of the day, went out to a large group dinner (My roommate, the backloggery crew, and two other friends of mine in total), went in and out of the concert hall, etc. Lyn had a shift in the Challenges Booth and then the LAN room that night. I tried to hang out with her some, then, to help out and keep her less bored, but by that point, I was too tired to stay much past 1AM.
Sunday is a short day, so it was mostly packing up, checking out, then heading out. Kasumi headed out for public transit, Ashe drove Lyn and I to the airport and then headed off herself.
So, yeah. I did a lot less gamery, competed in more panels, did more challenges, and hung out with great people more, compared to last year. Which is to say, it was a great time. I do wish that I could hang out with/lived closer to any/all of Ash, Lyn, or Kasumi. They're all fun to spend time with. Lyn needs to get to work on that Backloggery Island idea quicker. (In the pic, from left to right: Kasumi, Lyndis, Ashe, me)Also on the note of hanging out with people: I met a handful of people from the MAG IRC channel, mostly via that I wrote 'rekenner' on the back of my badge, heh. RadRac/Bunny is an awesome person, and I wish she wasn't busy the entire time. Ah well. Meeting people and hanging out is, as fitting for a con that feels more like a party, the best part.
Challenges Booth:
Between Ashe and Lyn, I knew someone working a night shift in the booth every night of the con, so I had a bunch of time to hang out there. I tried to be there for morale support as much as I could, but sleep set in some nights. The challenges I actually pulled off were fun. I did the following:
Mega Man X - Beat Vile with no health upgrades and no dash
Mega Man - Beat Elecman without taking a hit
Mega Man 2 - Beat Heatman's stage with no upgrades, starting with one life
Mega Man 2 - Beat Gutsdozer with only the Bubble Lead
Mega Man 4 - Beat the Giant Metool without taking a hit
Super Mario World - Beat Bowser through the front door, starting as small Mario
SMB2 - Beat the boss of 5-3 (Clawgrip) as Luigi without taking a hit
SMB3 - Beat the boss stage of World 6 (Lemmy Koopa) without taking a hit
Donkey Kong Country 2 - Finish Screech's race in first
Ducktales - Beat Amazon stage with 0 money
Chrono Trigger - Hold B and press A for a few seconds. I mean. Beat the minigame that gets you a cat.
Sonic 3 - Finish Death Egg stage as Sonic
Sonic and Knuckles - Defeat Metal Sonic with Knuckles
The Giant Metool fight was ... pretty awesome. It was about 30 minutes worth of me figuring out his AI pattern and the correct spacing to make him always high jump so I could slide under him and jump afterwards. Which was pretty sweet. MMX was pretty fun, too, though easier than I thought it would be. Elecman... has an easy to abuse AI pattern that Challenges Andy showed me, heh. And I feel damn accomplished for being able to do the Heatman phasing blocks without the precursor to Rushjet. The rest of the challenges were fairly easy fare after a try or two.
Concerts
So... I only ended up going to Rare Candy and The Megas. Why, despite my love of The Protomen? Well. Partially because small concert room is small. Partially because I didn't want to wait through the previous bands to have a decent spot in the room. Partially because... well, hanging out with people is fine, too. A lot of the bands there are just too much guitar for me to listen to, live. I like them in CD form, but when your band is 4x Guitar (type instrument, so, bass included) + Drums... it gets old to listen to. *shrug*. Rare Candy has some awesome synth and piano, so, fuck yeah. The Megas have vocals, which help. And they played 2 new songs. So, hell yeah.
Gaming
I ... didn't do a huge amount of it. o_o
I did a lot of challenges booth stuff, but I didn't do much in the consoles room. I played some Taiko and some IIdx, but not that much in the way of other games in consoles or the arcade. It was a lot busier than last year, so there wasn't as much free time to just peruse and sit at any of the dozens of open games. Alas.
Swag
So, Eli (One of the guys responsible for registraton)'s wife, Julie, is the most awesome person. I noticed and decided to buy a MAG8 shirt at the registration desk, as I didn't get one last year (I thought they were out by the time I was like BEST CON EVER). When I asked, the person there told me to ask Julie. She said she couldn't remember how much they sold them for. I thought she meant in the sense of that they would be *more* expensive than a current shirt ($15), but it turns out that they were less. I said I was fine paying $10, even though it might normally go for $5. I asked for a large... but after digging through the boxes, neither of us could find a large. Well, whatever. I went for an XL and it was all good. The next day, I went to the registration desk to use both of my one day passes that you get for being a Super Supporter. Julie was there and told me that there might be a large in one of the boxes that was elsewhere and was going to look for one. I was shocked that she remembered me, thanked her for looking for a large, and told her I'd be back later. Upon getting back later, she ... had a large for me, and told me they normally went for $5, so I could just have it. Which. Wow. Which was so far above and beyond the call of duty for her. I thanked her profusely. Why am I bringing this up? As yet another example of just how awesome the MAGFest staff are. Best con.
Other swag includes: 6 TWEWY pins, 5 Challenge booth patches, 4 T-shirts (2xMAG, a vendor shirt, and a Challenges booth given away shirt), 4 Megas posters, 3 slime magnets, and the Super Supporter MAGFest bag. Which had a bottle of PEELZ, a bottle of bacon hot sauce, and a few other cool things. No games, this year.
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