This week on the podcast, I let Bill and Dave take over the mic so they could tell us their misadventures of Video Games Expo.  Learn about what it takes to cover an event, how to prepare for an event, and what kind of parties you can expect at a Video Games Expo.

Download the Episode Here

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 .

Saturday, October 10th.  VGXpo, Day 2.  My review of Day 1 was lukewarm, at best.  Much has changed for Day 2.  Some parts for much betters, others for worse.  I’ll touch on a few key products and services I saw that actually caught my eye, though they were few and far between, as well as some misadventures and terribadness that kept things from running as smoothly as possible.  More after the break!

My apologies on this write-up being late.  You see, the Econolodge at the airport here in Philly says “Free Wifi included with each room” but what they mean is “Blazing fast .0001KB/s speeds!”.  This is after, mind you, they and Hotels.com fucked up my reservations and got me charged double for the room.  I’ll never stay in this shitpit again.  Late posting, no League of Legends or WoW… I’m living on energy drinks and Rage at this point!

But, on to the Expo!  Day 2 started late for us, due to having to search downtown Philly for reliable WiFi to get our photos uploaded, due to aforementioned hotel interwebz problems.  About four hours late.  By the time we got there and took five steps into the door, it was evident to us that Day 2 seems to be the big draw for people attending this con.  The population was visibly swollen, I’d estimate at least three times the con goers as Friday.  There seemed to be just a few more exhibitors as well, and dozens of cosplayers, as opposed to a small handful.

My major complaint still stands, though.  Nothing big at VGXpo.  No major developers besides Nintendo, who was only demoing 2 year old products.  No special offers or beta keys to any up and coming games.  No revelations, previews, breaking news or even rumors of any kind.  The con was just devoid of juicy info and the type of things one usually attends cons for.  All in all, VGXpo was still much smaller than I was led to believe from their website.  Not bad.  Just small and podunk-y.  If this con had been in rural Kentucky, people there would have seen it the way most of us see E3 or PAX.

That said, what this con did well, it did very well.  The cosplay was excellent today, both in general cosplay walking around and the cosplay contest which was MC’d by the delightful Katy Boyd (@bunnyxablaze on Twitter, will have more info edited in later.) Quite a few great old school costumes such as Rebecca Chambers, Locke and Gau from FF6 and Reno from FF7, as well as, to me and to the con it seems, new-school in a Halo ODST cosplay that won the show and was damn well put together.  The cosplay contest was enjoyable and very fun… Until they started doing the fucking idiotic “Caramelldansen” shit.  I swear to god, every time I see a group of asshats do this stupid dance, which I like to refer to as the “I need attention but I’m too ugly to get it any other way dance”, I wish I had a barrel full of napalm handy.

And the highlight of VGXpo… Drumroll please… Retrocon!  The section of VGXpo that contained the used games, game systems, imports and classic arcade machines was stunningly good.  The vendors were all friendly, well priced and had selections that were varied, containing everything from the semi-rare to extremely common but good used games from every system you could imagine.  About the only game I was looking for that I didn’t find was the usual super rare Suikoden 2.  That game does not exist in any form, I am convinced.  If old SNES, NES, Genesis, Sega CD, PSX, PS2 – to name a FEW of the game systems represented – are your bag, then VGXpo is a con you need to attend if you’re in the area next year.  I picked up a used N64 for $30 and a copy of GoldenEye for $12.  $42 for what will become weeks of enjoyment that ODST and Call of Duty couldn’t live up to in their wildest dreams.

All told, I enjoyed VGXpo.  I’d be on the fence as far as going next year.  And what could tip me over?  (I’m writing this to the VGXpo planners and staff) GET SOME BIG NAME STUDIOS!  Drop some money, get Blizzard in there to demo SC2 and Cataclysm.  Drop some money and get Bungie to send out a booth.  Get a mid-level studio with a big announcement to deliver it at your con first.  Spend money on these things, and it will be returned to you ten fold.  People would flock from all over the east coast just to touch the Cataclysm demo.  If your goal is to be the East’s premier gaming convention, more needs to be done.  But as it stands, the con is passable and fun if you’re in town or close by.  For those who like numbers, I’d give Blizzcon a 10/10(For reference) and I’d give VGXpo 2009 a 6/10.

I’ve decided due to the internet issues to keep this image-lite(Will edit some in soon, check back!) and save the individual product and developer reviews until tommorow.

Here was our first look around the floor.  Again, not much was happening during the first day.

 

There wasn’t much booth babes at day one.  Some were meh, some were ok, and one is a car. No, seriously. That car is sexy fine. Check out all the photos past the break.

Yea. Not sexy.

The sexiest booth babe of the day

This Booth Babe can kick your ass.. in American Gladiators

]]> http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/10/video-games-expo-day-1-booth-babes/feed/ 3 http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/10/video-games-expo-day-1-cosplay/ http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/10/video-games-expo-day-1-cosplay/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:54:55 +0000 Bill http://pixelatedgeek.com/?p=13600

I finally got the first gallery of Cosplay photos up from day one of Video Games Expo.  Even though day one wasn’t as busy as day two, I still got a good number of photos to share with you, our lovely readers. Go past the break for the full gallery and enjoy.

 

Day 1 of Pixelatedgeek.com’s coverage of the Video Games Expo in Philly has concluded!  and might I say, what an awesome day it was.  Six hours of sleep deprived driving (Two more hours sleeping on the side of the road) later, we’re in Philly, which is like a dirty version of our home in Pittsburgh.  Hotels.com fucked our reservations up and ended up charging us twice for a room they didn’t actually book for us.  Please, do not use Hotels.com, the customer service eats a filthy ass and, well, they charged me $400 for a $200 room.  But enough of my soapbox, we made it to the expo and dammit, did we have fun.

While slightly smaller than I expected it to be, this con is not lacking in gaming goodness.  From the new developers section where we checked out some awesome up and coming games (More on that in a bit) to the “Retro Con” where we got to sample some old arcane favorites, Day 1 did not disappoint.  Booth babes, free energy drinks and some pretty decent cosplays didn’t hurt the deal, either.  Today was slightly lacking in events, however, I not only understand but appreciate that fact, as it allowed us to get the ball rolling while still managing to enjoy the con for ourselves.  Saturday looks jam packed full of some juicy Q&A’s, panels and events.  I believe Sunday will feature a small Video Games Live concert, so I’ll be doing my best to be in attendance.  So I don’t have a ton to report back on today, but the main event is quite exciting.

The day started out very slow, until we ran into some enthusiastic young developers called Storm City Games.  I was skeptical at first, but their enthusiasm kept me interested and listening to what turned out to be some really excellent concepts.  The game that most impressed me was an upcoming title called System Flaw.  System Flaw is going to be the first title packaged specificly for the Nintendo DSi.  It is a first person shooterish type, but here is where shit gets wacky… and creative!  System Flaw, being a true DSi game, makes perfect use of the built in camera.  It does so by making the environment you’re shooting in whatever it happens to be pointing at.  Yes, that’s right.  Shoot the fuck out of your grandmother’s living room, if it tickles your fancy.  Wait!  There’s more!  Not only are you shooting in the environment you’re actually in, but it is a full 360 degrees of play.  If you see an enemy on your radar behind you, you actually have to spin your happy ass around to see and shoot it.  This seems to apply to up and down, as well.  They promised to send me a game play trailer, so I’ll slap that up ASAP, but suffice to say, it is a freaking cool mechanic.  System Flaw is slated to hit shelves November 17th, 2009.  So get out there and get this thing pre-ordered.

Quick Screenie of me playing the System Flaw demo

The other area I spent a decent amount of time in today was with the lady and gentlemen at uFrag.  Think uStream, but 100% for gaming.  I missed their demo due to other events, but from what I did see it looks pretty good and I will not only be checking it out further tomorrow , but looking into streaming some of my WoW raids on their each week.

We saw a few Booth Babes, but my personal favorite was so not because of anything physical.  Oh, no.  She was my favorite because she is a fucking AMERICAN GLADIATOR!  Been watching that show since I was a little kid.  Very cool to finally meet one of the gladiators.

She threw tennis balls at us until we gave up. Didn't take long.

That about does it for major items from Day 1.  My hetero life partner, Dave, will post a photo gallery soon, which was the meat of Day 1 in my opinion.  Enjoy, and come back for more tomorrow!