The time has come for me to level my Final Judgment on VGXpo 2009!  Another day of Philly kicking us in the nuts equaled us not being able to make is downtown for Day 3.  The story is quite a long, complicated one that intertwines many smaller storied, but you’ll need to listen to the podcast this week to hear the true hilarity.  Text cannot do our weird night and morning justice.  For the purposes of this write-up, long story short style, after a four mile walk to find a car battery and some nipple clamps… Just kidding, no nipple clamps.  But we did get a car battery.  And some live crabs.  We didn’t make it to the Expo today, though I do feel I garnered enough from Days 1 and 2 to render a verdict on this con.

Mediocre.  Unimpressive.  Sparse.  Lacking.  All of these words come to mind when I am asked to describe VGXpo 2009.  Let me clarify.  None of those words mean the con was outright BAD.  It just wasn’t in any way good.  A quick rundown of my reasoning is in order.  I’ll start with the positives.  Or should I say positive?  The Retro Gaming area was the shit.  Truely, I enjoyed the hell out of browsing a massive well priced selection of classic games and game systems.  Even bought a few.  Played a ton of arcade games.  It was great.

But the negatives are indeed plural.  They even get their own paragraph!  As I said, the con was very sparse.  At any given point in the exhibit hall, I felt I could have swung a guitar hero controller by the cord and not hit anyone or anything.  The booths were far apart, and really lent to the feeling of empty that overwhelmed VGXpo.  As far as apparel content, there was one excellent t-shirt booth, but that was it.  No hats, no patches, no bags or totes.  Where has that shit gone?  I remember loving to buy that stuff at comicons and anime cons  as a young kid.  The cosplay contest, while fun and overall pleasing, was more than a little disorganized.  Snapping a decent photo due to the setup was damn near impossible and the whole event just felt unpolished.

And VGXpo, you might want to take note of this.  The press passes that we got?  Fucking USELESS.  We had NO abilities or access that the average con-goer didn’t have as well.  Hell, I think I saw more press pass armbands than non this weekend.  It seemed, overall, like a very disorganized con.  Even though the staff was very friendly, I have to give their knowledge of what the fuck was going on a 1/10.  Sorry guys.  Very unimpressed.  I’m not much of an anime fan these days due to the teenage fuckwits who have infiltrated the fan base, but I still attend Otakon each year due to it being a well run, smooth, fun, huge con.

I’d like to take a quick moment to highlight a few products, vendors and developers I thought were either excellent or at least interesting.  I’ll simply be proving links to THEIR content, because I’m trying to be a sign to point our good readers to these people, rather than some kind of herald.  Also, they tend to explain their products much better than a giant wall of text can.

• Storm City Games
• Island Officials
• The Wiz from GPH, a portable gaming system, emulator manager and media center.
• Collectors Cards and Games, probably the best retro vendor I experienced at VGXpo 2009.  Fairly priced, great selection.

• The best for last. Garrison Carida.  A troop of Star Wars types, not sure whether to call them cosplayers, or professionals.  These guys are top notch in all ways.  Costume Quality, niceness, professionalism and just fun to be around.  Check out their site.  They’re good people.

Now, a quick list of things to avoid!

• The Philadelphia Airport Econolodge.  Again, please listen to the podcast to hear funny and exact reasons why.
• Philadelphia Starbucks’ WiFi.
• Flyers fans while wearing a Penguins jersey <~~~ Me
• VGXpo 2010 unless you’re already in Philly.  Judging from this year alone, I cannot recommend anyone travel to or spend major funds on this thing.  Sorry guys.  Maybe next year I can change my tune, but the ball is in your court.

Thanks for sticking with us through the VGXpo 2009 coverage readers!  Be sure to check out Dave’s photo albums from the con.  This was our first convention for pixelatedgeek.com, and it will only get better with time.  We’re hoping to be at Game X Games & Media Expo on October 23-25 at the Philadelphia Expo Center. If you’d like to hook up with us there or have any feedback in general, hit up the comments section or my inbox, or as always you can find me on Twitter as @tzeriel .