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Home from PAX
15 years ago
General
holy crap, I got too much stuff. I went there with a pretty full backpack, I came back with an even more full backpack, a cloth bag of DVDs and books, and a plastic bag with an N64.
About the N64... A bunch of my friends were working at the Fangamer booth, and across from them was a retro game store booth, with lots of old games. They had my favorite game ever, Pilotwings 64, for $25. I wouldn't have been able to play it, though, since I didn't have a N64, nor were they selling any. Skip to a couple days later when I find the Pink Gorilla booth. They have Pilotwings 64 for $10, which is even better, and they had N64 systems for sale. So, I managed to get Pilotwings 64 and a system to play it on for less than the cost of the game itself when it first came out. Pretty sweet deal, I think.
...of course, now that I've gone and bought that, Pilotwings 64 is going to come out on Virtual Console in the next couple of weeks. All this waiting for it to come out on VC, and now that I've bought the actual game, they're going to release it. That already happened to me with Secret of Mana.
I also picked up Scott Pilgrim books 2 and 3 (quite different from the movie, but they had to cut lots of stuff out to make it all fit, and seeing how poorly the movie's doing in theaters, it's probably best that they condensed it all into one movie instead of planning to make sequels) from Oni Press; Reformat the Planet (a documentary on chiptunes) from Fangamer; 8-Bit Glory, Too Hot for the Internet, AVGN Vol. 1, and Metal Gear Ben from ScrewAttack (the latter of which has my name on the DVD case!); the soundtrack and exclusive convention DVD from Mega64; the Expansion Pack album from Metroid Metal; and various assorted t-shirts and fliers and pamphlets and shit from wherever.
Day one was pretty much filled with attending panels. I started with the chiptune panel, 8-bit Soundwaves, which was pretty cool, but seemed to be geared toward those who were new to chiptunes rather than those that have made them before.
Next was the OverClocked Remix panel, which was pretty awesome. It started with a brief history of the site, then went into details about their recent Donkey Kong Country 2 compilation album, and announced numerous upcoming compilations, including part 1 of a 5-part Final Fantasy 5 album (coming out next week), Sonic the Hedgehog (the Genesis one, not the shitty PS3/360 one), DKC3, NiGHTS, and Mega Man X1-8. They also had some contests during the show. The first one was Name That Videogame Tune, in which one of the panelists would play the melody to a game song on a flute and the contestants would have to guess what it was. The songs were from Metal Gear Solid, Sonic 3, New Super Mario Bros.... and I can't remember the other two, but I recognized them at the time. The other game was a hacked Street Fighter 2 game, the Xiang Long bootleg. It was ridiculous. Characters would float, projectiles would home in on their opponents, projectiles would move super fast or super slow, characters would randomly change to other characters for no apparent reason... Awesome stuff.
Next was the Mega64 panel, which was hilarious as always. Their biggest announcement there was that they're going to be in Super Scribblenauts. Seriously, if you put the actors' names in, they'll pop up in the game, and each one has their own distinct likes and dislikes. You can also summon forth the Mega64 logo. They also showed their new Castlevania 2 skit, which is just as hilarious and awkward as most of their stuff.
Next was the GameTraliers panel, which was pretty fun. They had the brother+sister+dad team that made Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?, Stuttering Craig, and a repeat visit from Rocco from Mega64, although I don't think he really counts since he was in character and frequently went off-topic. The panel ended with a bonus video from the Angry Video Game Nerd talking about his next video, which revisits the Back to the Future series.
I got to hang out with the ScrewAttack guys (Craig, Chad, Jose) after that, and we all went to dinner with some other guys who showed up. Unfortunately, dinner went so long that it cut into the concerts' timeslot. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but they relocated where the concerts were being held, and the rules were different. They let people into the concert hall until it was full, and after that, nobody could go in. Even if people left, nobody could go in. That really sucked, because I was mainly interested in the last two bands that were playing, and since I didn't show up to watch the first two, I didn't get to see any of them.
Day two was mainly hanging out with friends. We went to check out the musicians' panel which was mainly just a Q&A session with all of the concert performers. Fun stuff. I also got to play Left 4 Dead 2 for the first time. Unfortunately, it was on Xbox 360, and I do not like playing FPS games with a dual-stick control scheme. It might be worth getting through Steam once I get a better computer, though.
That night, we all left early to catch the concerts. It sounded like they had changed the rules for that night, so if people had left the theater, other people could go in. Whatever, it was still fun. It started with MC Frontalot, who I had never really listened to before, but rather enjoyed despite being mostly unable to understand a thing he said. Next were Paul and Storm, who were hilarious as always. Lastly was Jonathan Coulton, who was playing as a part of a band ensemble rather than just him on acoustic guitar. It really worked well for him, and I really hope he continues to do more concerts that way. He also played a bunch of new songs, which I quite enjoyed. I don't think they're quite as good as his hits, but he's definitely done tracks that I like considerably less.
Day three was when I hit the expo floor. I got some good hands-on time with Sonic 4 and got to check out the level with the Vines of Frustration (there's a video on YouTube of someone playing that stage, and the player is stuck in an area with a ton of vines for at least 5 minutes, if not more). I don't know if it was an improved build or if that player was just unable to get the mechanics of the vines down, but they didn't give me any trouble at all. I also found the game to be quite fun to play and very reminiscent of the old-school Sonic games with a bit of new-school flair, like the mid-air homing attack.
Next, I checked out Sonic Colors. It plays a lot like the Sonic stages in Unleashed with these colored wisps that give Sonic special abilities. There seemed to be three main modes of play - side-scrolling, on-rails with lanes, and free-roaming on-rails. Side-scrolling was the most fun, where you ran around and worked your way through obstacles. On-rails with lanes was also pretty fun, where you were running away from the camera along a track, and had to make quick decisions which lane to run in to avoid obstacles or collect items. Free-roaming on-rails was not so great. The controls felt really loose, I could never seem to get the grinding to work, and when I did, it didn't seem to do what I wanted.
Lastly, I went to the Portal 2 demo. Lots of the trailers I've seen show single player, but they showed us some multiplayer co-op in the demo. You now have two characters, each with their own portal gun, allowing for four portals at a time in a chamber. Not only do you have more portals to work with, you also have new strategies, like getting one player to engage in an infinite fall between two portals, then once that player is at terminal velocity, relocate the ceiling portal to a new location to launch the player.
After that, things got kinda crappy, so I'm not going to go into much detail there.
And that was PAX. Overall, lots of fun, and I picked up some cool stuff along the way.
About the N64... A bunch of my friends were working at the Fangamer booth, and across from them was a retro game store booth, with lots of old games. They had my favorite game ever, Pilotwings 64, for $25. I wouldn't have been able to play it, though, since I didn't have a N64, nor were they selling any. Skip to a couple days later when I find the Pink Gorilla booth. They have Pilotwings 64 for $10, which is even better, and they had N64 systems for sale. So, I managed to get Pilotwings 64 and a system to play it on for less than the cost of the game itself when it first came out. Pretty sweet deal, I think.
...of course, now that I've gone and bought that, Pilotwings 64 is going to come out on Virtual Console in the next couple of weeks. All this waiting for it to come out on VC, and now that I've bought the actual game, they're going to release it. That already happened to me with Secret of Mana.
I also picked up Scott Pilgrim books 2 and 3 (quite different from the movie, but they had to cut lots of stuff out to make it all fit, and seeing how poorly the movie's doing in theaters, it's probably best that they condensed it all into one movie instead of planning to make sequels) from Oni Press; Reformat the Planet (a documentary on chiptunes) from Fangamer; 8-Bit Glory, Too Hot for the Internet, AVGN Vol. 1, and Metal Gear Ben from ScrewAttack (the latter of which has my name on the DVD case!); the soundtrack and exclusive convention DVD from Mega64; the Expansion Pack album from Metroid Metal; and various assorted t-shirts and fliers and pamphlets and shit from wherever.
Day one was pretty much filled with attending panels. I started with the chiptune panel, 8-bit Soundwaves, which was pretty cool, but seemed to be geared toward those who were new to chiptunes rather than those that have made them before.
Next was the OverClocked Remix panel, which was pretty awesome. It started with a brief history of the site, then went into details about their recent Donkey Kong Country 2 compilation album, and announced numerous upcoming compilations, including part 1 of a 5-part Final Fantasy 5 album (coming out next week), Sonic the Hedgehog (the Genesis one, not the shitty PS3/360 one), DKC3, NiGHTS, and Mega Man X1-8. They also had some contests during the show. The first one was Name That Videogame Tune, in which one of the panelists would play the melody to a game song on a flute and the contestants would have to guess what it was. The songs were from Metal Gear Solid, Sonic 3, New Super Mario Bros.... and I can't remember the other two, but I recognized them at the time. The other game was a hacked Street Fighter 2 game, the Xiang Long bootleg. It was ridiculous. Characters would float, projectiles would home in on their opponents, projectiles would move super fast or super slow, characters would randomly change to other characters for no apparent reason... Awesome stuff.
Next was the Mega64 panel, which was hilarious as always. Their biggest announcement there was that they're going to be in Super Scribblenauts. Seriously, if you put the actors' names in, they'll pop up in the game, and each one has their own distinct likes and dislikes. You can also summon forth the Mega64 logo. They also showed their new Castlevania 2 skit, which is just as hilarious and awkward as most of their stuff.
Next was the GameTraliers panel, which was pretty fun. They had the brother+sister+dad team that made Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?, Stuttering Craig, and a repeat visit from Rocco from Mega64, although I don't think he really counts since he was in character and frequently went off-topic. The panel ended with a bonus video from the Angry Video Game Nerd talking about his next video, which revisits the Back to the Future series.
I got to hang out with the ScrewAttack guys (Craig, Chad, Jose) after that, and we all went to dinner with some other guys who showed up. Unfortunately, dinner went so long that it cut into the concerts' timeslot. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but they relocated where the concerts were being held, and the rules were different. They let people into the concert hall until it was full, and after that, nobody could go in. Even if people left, nobody could go in. That really sucked, because I was mainly interested in the last two bands that were playing, and since I didn't show up to watch the first two, I didn't get to see any of them.
Day two was mainly hanging out with friends. We went to check out the musicians' panel which was mainly just a Q&A session with all of the concert performers. Fun stuff. I also got to play Left 4 Dead 2 for the first time. Unfortunately, it was on Xbox 360, and I do not like playing FPS games with a dual-stick control scheme. It might be worth getting through Steam once I get a better computer, though.
That night, we all left early to catch the concerts. It sounded like they had changed the rules for that night, so if people had left the theater, other people could go in. Whatever, it was still fun. It started with MC Frontalot, who I had never really listened to before, but rather enjoyed despite being mostly unable to understand a thing he said. Next were Paul and Storm, who were hilarious as always. Lastly was Jonathan Coulton, who was playing as a part of a band ensemble rather than just him on acoustic guitar. It really worked well for him, and I really hope he continues to do more concerts that way. He also played a bunch of new songs, which I quite enjoyed. I don't think they're quite as good as his hits, but he's definitely done tracks that I like considerably less.
Day three was when I hit the expo floor. I got some good hands-on time with Sonic 4 and got to check out the level with the Vines of Frustration (there's a video on YouTube of someone playing that stage, and the player is stuck in an area with a ton of vines for at least 5 minutes, if not more). I don't know if it was an improved build or if that player was just unable to get the mechanics of the vines down, but they didn't give me any trouble at all. I also found the game to be quite fun to play and very reminiscent of the old-school Sonic games with a bit of new-school flair, like the mid-air homing attack.
Next, I checked out Sonic Colors. It plays a lot like the Sonic stages in Unleashed with these colored wisps that give Sonic special abilities. There seemed to be three main modes of play - side-scrolling, on-rails with lanes, and free-roaming on-rails. Side-scrolling was the most fun, where you ran around and worked your way through obstacles. On-rails with lanes was also pretty fun, where you were running away from the camera along a track, and had to make quick decisions which lane to run in to avoid obstacles or collect items. Free-roaming on-rails was not so great. The controls felt really loose, I could never seem to get the grinding to work, and when I did, it didn't seem to do what I wanted.
Lastly, I went to the Portal 2 demo. Lots of the trailers I've seen show single player, but they showed us some multiplayer co-op in the demo. You now have two characters, each with their own portal gun, allowing for four portals at a time in a chamber. Not only do you have more portals to work with, you also have new strategies, like getting one player to engage in an infinite fall between two portals, then once that player is at terminal velocity, relocate the ceiling portal to a new location to launch the player.
After that, things got kinda crappy, so I'm not going to go into much detail there.
And that was PAX. Overall, lots of fun, and I picked up some cool stuff along the way.
