 |  |  |
   |
Features« Battlefield: Bad Company (360) | Features Home | Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (360) » I went to Penny Arcade Expo (or commonly refered to as PAX) in Seattle a week ago - an annual expo on gaming culture - including video gaming, LAN gaming, tabletop/RPG gaming. This year's PAX was at the Washington State Convention Center from August 29 thru 31. Penny Arcade is a comic about witty situations and conversations between two guys typical of the video game culture. Personally, I never did "get" the comic and don't think its funny at all - but then, I guess I'm not really Penny Arcade's core audience. I have heard other game players say the comic is hilarious and true however. PAX covered four floors on the main building, and three fours on the annex across the street. The Exhibit Hall was certainly the busiest part of the event that most people come to PAX for. In addition, there also are various Satellite Theatres with a wide variety events to watch - such as game demos to present upcoming games, discussion panels on various topics of interest, and interesting movies. At each evening, there were concerts by popular geek cultural bands such as The One Ups and MC Frontalot playing. The PC Area had 630 PC's all hooked up to a mega-huge LAN. (All pictures taken by Brian Moy, unless noted)  Quite a sight walking thru the PC Area in the morning before the tournaments start. Across the street at Pike Street Annex was three fours of tabletop gaming. In two areas, there were the Handheld Lounges - where piles of beanbag chairs are setup for player to hangout and play DS games. Lastly - and the reason why I had the chance to go to PAX this year - was the Console Freeplay Rooms, well specifically the Console Freeplay Classic Gaming rooms. Players and spectators pack together to view the 8 player vs. Saturn Bomberman competition on the SEGA Saturn
 The room was a popular spot with people playing rare titles and familiar classics - all set up to huge flat screen monitors Organized by Nathan Martin, the Console Freeplay Classic Gaming Room was three rooms of 24 consoles setup to play for free where guests can sign-in to check out a game from the library. Consoles were mostly NES's, but there was some more esoteric stuff as well such as a Vectrex and a Telegames Pong unit courtesy of John Hancock.As far as what the Console Freeplay Classic Gaming Room has to do with me being at PAX - I carpooled up to Seattle with John, Rick, and Chuck of NWCGE. John and Rick came to help staff the Console Freeplay Classic Gaming Room, Chuck and I just came along to check out what PAX is all about. This was the first time that Chuck and I had been to a major national industry gaming expo like this. And if its going to be our first, why not go to the biggest gaming expo on the west coast for 2008??
C'mon Chuck, lets pay for our passes and get our goodie bags!! The main thing I think about when going to any trade show or expo is of course, the free merch I can pick up! To be honest, the amount of free merch and trinkets available seemed to be slim - and speaking with attendents from past PAX's, they said there really was less free T-shirts and merch being given out this year. Of the best free merch I saw was given out by Fallout 3 and clubNAMCO. The neatest single item I saw was a Fallout 3 plush hand puppet in the style of the 50's propaganda character used in the in-game literature. It was definately one of the most wanted items for those that missed the demo at 2:30 Saturday. The single coolest booth I saw was Fallout 3 - with a 50's trailer home totally decked out for attendents to check out. I wasn't willing to wait forever in the DisneyWorld-like lines snaking around the booth to see it though.  The Fallout 3 people definately went the most out for their display at PAX clubNAMCO's booth gave out a mixture of free trickets - the neatest in my opinion being the Pac-Man light-up bouncy ball.
A funny little story: On the way up to Seattle, the guys and I were all talking about what kind of stuff we wanted to get at PAX. I mentioned that if anybody saw any western style belt buckles with video game logos on em, to let me know. (That most likely won't make sense to anyone unless you've met me in person - then I think you'll get that) So the last thing I expected to see was at clubNAMCO's booth where they have brushed metal belt buckles of a ghost in Pac-Man when Pac-Man eats a power pellet and it turns blue. It was pretty much a "must get" for me - but I didn't think enough to bring any extra money with me and I was sort of hesitant to borrow money from one of my friends. [Sidenote to the story: I ended up going to clubNAMCO.com to just buy the buckle from their online store only to find that the prices at the show were WAY higher than their regular prices!! On the website, the belt buckle is only $12.99 ($20 at show). T-shirts also are $19.99 ($25 at show). Even with shipping came to less than what I would have paid if I bought it at the booth at the show. Its funny, because there was a sign at their booth saying they were show special prices. Naturally, I figured they meant the special prices for the show were lower than regular.] As far as the Expo Hall, there was lots of opportunities to demo new release games and upcoming releases. All current formats were covered. I did notice, however, that there was really hardly any PSP games being promoted - compared to so many for every other console, system, and PC. The only PSP games on display I recall for sure was at the Sony booth. About half the vendors were video games and related. The other half of the vendors were PC/LAN, tabletop/hobby, and Anime culture. The second half of stuff doesn't interest me - so basically I pretty much just checked out half the show. Another thing I noticed - there was hardly any free demos to pick up. Seriously, I don't think I picked up any at all! Maybe I have the wrong kind of expo in mind, but I was thinking PAX was the kind where all the publishers would be giving out demo discs of their new games. I'm a big demo disc collector myself - with hundreds of demo discs. I like to get em as often they will have some exclusive content, like special stages, interviews, or the cover artwork might be unique and cool. I do have to say there was demo discs of PC and MMO games available - but I don't play online, and very little PC so I didn't bother taking any of those. Among the most interesting games I noticed that I was introduced to by PAX: (meaning I didn't already know about the game prior to attending) The Maw - I spotted the cool advertising piece with the neat drawn artwork style in the goodie bag picked up at registration, and I knew I had to check out their booth! The game is coming out on Xbox Live Arcade and developed by Twisted Pixel. Its a 3-D adventure game where there's a round purple monster (basically, it looks like a big grape with an eyeball and a mouth) and it eats things and takes on special ablities of the items you eat. I gladly picked up a poster and talking to the booth guy was able to get this cool T-shirt of The Maw with the very nifty artwork! Actually, its was the only free T-shirt I was able to get at PAX - so I'm glad it was of a game that I wanted to check out! Strange Attractors 2 - This game looked very interesting - I spotted a demo of it being played and it looked like fun! The visual look reminded me of Asteroids at a glance - but the gameplay was more pinball like. But, there was no flippers involved - the screen centered on the ball itself while the entire playfield moves, and various bumpers attract an repel the ball as it floats around in the outer space setting. The game is for PC and is developed by Ominous Development. A lot of attendents to PAX came dressed in costume as various video game characters or cultural icons. The two most common ones I saw were Master Chef of Halo and girls in private schoolgirl uniform. The girls wearing schoolgirl costumes I noticed looked to be all underage. With the over-the-knee tights, short blue skirts, and often pigtails - well the total package creeps me out as that look really appeals to two types of people mostly - shy young boys and desperate old men.
The costumes I saw that I personally liked the best were two girls dressed as Mario and Luigi, and another set of girls dressed as the Psychonauts characters.
(picture taken by someone else - I'll credit you once I find out)
(picture taken by 8bitjoystick.com) Some other interesting things I noticed:
Okay... well that list turned out to be not very interesting. (daggit!) As I think up more things, I'll add em to the list. AND the missing pictures I promise do exist and will be added when I get them. I forgot to put the media card in my camera I brought (dolt!) so I borrowed John's and I just gotta be patient till he sends em to me. Links: Penny Arcade Expo official website Specialty Gamer is on FaceBook!Specialty Gamer ShirtCategoriesPast Features
[What is this?] All website graphics and style created/edited by Brian Moy (unless noted), Copyright © 2007-2010 SPECIALTY GAMER LLC and may not be copied and/or used on other websites without permission. All other writing/content licensed individually by author's choice - in general may not be copied/reposted for profit, or without at least credit or link back to the author/website. 
|
||
What are these icons for? 
Comments (1)
Definitely sounds like I missed out on one great show. This pretty much guarantees that I'm going to do everything in my power to attend next years event.
Posted by Josh Parr | September 8, 2008 8:31 AM