Conventions: GBPL Goes To PAX East

This year was my first visit to PAX East. Unfortunately I didn't make it up there until Sunday. But my wife and I had a blast. Here's a few brief glimpses of some of the stuff we saw. (Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures, and the ones I took were on my cellphone. Sorry guys.)

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Here's some shots of the action on the floor. It's amazing to see so much going on at once.

The Nintendo area was a bit of a letdown. I spent some time looking at the 3DS (note: I did not play one, as the lines were way too long. Instead I just leaned over someone's shoulder. So if that was you, sorry about breathing down your neck, but it was for the blog.) I really wasn't impressed. I kind of don't see what all the fuss is really about. But that could be just me.

My wife and I tried out the new Mario Sports Mix for Wii, and it really didn't blow our minds. Rather it took us about ten minutes to actually start the game. Since when are long tutorials necessary in a sports game? Especially a Mario sports game -- a series long known for oversimplifying controls. And really the whole tutorial could have been three words: SHAKE THE WIIMOTE.

On the upside, the new Dragon Quest DS title looked nice, but really I was there to demo some new things not get wrapped up in a retro RPG for hours on end.

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Of the new games I gave try, the real stand-out to me was a PSN title in the works called Skullgirls. Basically a very cutesy 2D fighter in the spirit of Guilty Gear or Darkstalkers. I look forward to seeing it get completed. Hopefully the developer, Autumn Games can port it to the PSP as well.

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Another major highlight was catching Keith Apicary's ~~panel~~ party. He came out wearing a Virtual Boy suit which was made by the designer responsible for Daft Punk's costumes. He then premiered his new Virtual Boy music video, which was probably his best yet. He took some questions, did some skits (one that included my wife) and then proceeded to get kicked out by security. Dude party's like a rockstar.

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Later we spent some serious time playing classic games.

The arcade they had set up featured an amazing collection of classic cabinets on loan from Fun Spot. It was really great to get to play on these cabs and the ambiance was accentuated by projections of Don Bluth games on the walls, and 1980's electro-pop. Oh and by the way, Frogger is way more unforgiving in its original form than on any Atari compilation I've played. Seriously. But hey, the cabs were on Free-Play so who can complain?

Down the hall there was a classic console room filled with NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Dreamcast, Saturn, Vectrex, PlayStation and other consoles and handhelds. All of them could be rented for free, and the library of games were decent enough. My wife relived her youth on the Colecovision while I got my ass handed to me in NBA Jam by RFGeneration's very own dsheinem, who you may know best from his Transitions blog.

All in all, the day went by in a blur. I wish I had taken more pictures. But more importantly, wish I had had more time. Hopefully next year we'll spend more than just a day there.