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So PAX has come and gone. And now I’m back to Monday to Friday, in Montreal, unsure of what to blog about in the future. But there’s still this entry. Which is going to be a rapid fire rundown of my personal and first PAX experience… starting NOW!Zoom!
Thursday: With the MP3 players loaded up with Anamanaguchi, Metroid Metal, Frontalot, Freezepop and a some old timey radio plays, we hit the road around 1:00 pm.
PROTIP FOR ROADTRIP: Old time radio shows are free to download from sites like this one and are some of the best entertainment for a long roadtrip. We listened to the first few chapters of Doc Savage and the Thousand Headed Man, and we learnt several important things. For instance:
1) Doc Savage makes a weird whistling nose when he’s discovered something.
2) Johnny Littlejohn’s (one of Doc’s assistants) catchphrase is “I’ll be super amalgamated!”
As you can imagine… we were super amalgamated for lots of things. The roadtrip also brought some cheap booze into the car, and later that night I would teach my companions that Hendricks is the best gin in the world. Moving along…
Friday: Neither JonJon nor I wanted to risk not having a spot in the Omegathon, so we rolled into Hynes around 10:30 am… and set up in line… we were seated precisely in an area where both Get In Line Game screens were blocked… awesome… I ducked out of line to pick up some T-Mobile sim cards for our Canadian phones and to do a quick supply run because we needed more coffee, then of course back in line (didn’t wanna be gone too long, had to maintain Wheaton’s Law in the lineup.)
JonJon exhibited his remarkable Metroid prowess by speedrunning through the entire NES Metroid in a single sitting with no deaths… I even took a blurry camera phone picture of Samus in her bathing suit… but it didn’t look so good, so whatever. We made it to the keynote and the good Wil Wheaton once again knocked it out of the park. We were not named as Omeganauts, but you can’t be too bummed about that now can you? Moving right along in the first Penny Arcade Panel, it was fun, but I have to say… PA fans need to step up the quality of their questions… ask them something interesting! Seriously! It’s not hard! We get it! They’re awesome! Stop it. Seriously. Oh yeah, there was this terrifying display as well.
We then strolled around the center, had some drinks at some bar near Hynes that was playing video game tunes, played a round of Chez Geek and then foolishly got in line for Friday Night Concert… I say foolishly because it turns out we totally could’ve just walked right in without the hour or so of waiting around… oh well… we learnt that lesson for the Saturday night and Kid E just strolled in about 2 minutes after the Saturday show started… which was a good call. Friday night concert started late, but all the bands killed it… Protomen lived up to my expectations of putting on an over-the-top theatrical live show, Anamanaguchi was just tons of fun and holy crap they’re doing the Scott Pilgrim video game music!? Alllright. Metroid Metal was both of those things in awesome amounts, and even though we were exhausted and didn’t listen to the whole set, Frontalot looked like he was having a lot of fun putting on a great show… off to sleep.
Saturday: JonJon and Kid E woke up early to try and register for a D&D DarkSun adventure, they failed at this or something… meanwhile, I discovered that in Boston it’s ok to drink at breakfast. Guiness? Why yes, thank you I will. After bagel, bacon, eggs and beer with my friend Andrew, it was time to make my way to the convention center to catch about 2/3 of the make a strip panel… ducked out for a few minutes to go find the Mad Catz guy who was giving away sweet little tournament stick keychains. After the panel we played a round of Nanuk which was pretty sweet, I thought about picking it up… but then realized I can make my own deck with two regular sets of playing cards, and then opted to be cheap about the whole thing. After that it was off to Freezepop across the street, who, as I tweeted, killed it. We all went separate ways again, I met up with Andrew and his former WoW guild, bonded with one of the guys inappropriately about Cyanide and Happiness (“Go back to Africa!”) to the chagrin of almost anyone within earshot, had a lambwich for dinner and then opted to fool around at PAX instead of going to see a movie with the guild. We walked into the Classic Arcade freeplay just in time to see some kid beat Dragon’s Lair while Rush’ Tom Sawyer blared in the background… kick ass.
We also played some PowerStone in the Classic Console Freeplay and took on some random challengers… we naturally ripped them up. Andrew and I have both put unheard of amounts of time into PowerStone, so it wasn’t really fair. JonJon explained why us playing against strangers at this game was funny to his non gamer girlfriend: “Trash playing against some guy at PowerStone is like Kasparov playing against your mom at chess.” I’m flattered. We then headed over to the normal Console Freeplay to try some games we didn’t own. I was pulling for Tony Hawk’s ride, since I don’t own it, have no intention of buying it, and know nobody who does, but Andrew had zero interest in it, so I still don’t know the agony of a little plastic skateboard beneath my feet. We settled on Bayonetta, and were actually pleasantly surprised. It’s like a cross between God of War and Devil May Cry, and that’s a good place to be when you’re making a game. Not the most creative place to be, but still a pretty fun place to be. We poked our heads into the Paul and Storm concert and it wasn’t really doing it for us, so we bounced for the day.
Sunday: All the panels that we had interest in had lineups beyond belief… so we swung down to the expo hall floor, played some BlazBlue: Continuum Shift and then decided to head home out of exhaustion, the thought of our own beds was a powerful lure.
All in all, I could have had a better time I think, particularly if the lineups to panels were not broken, but still had an overall good to great time most of the time. Is that vague enough for you?
PAX’d!
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