I heard about MAGFest last year at PAX East while watching a chiptune show. In July, I decided to entice some people into coming with me. The promise — unlimited free gaming, 24 hours a day — was too awesome to resist. Several months later, we arrived in National Harbor, Maryland (off the border of Washington DC) and prepared for a crazy weekend.
The view from the sidewalk.
MAGFest has grown tremendously, now amassing over 4,000 gamers. Will you be there?
From this year forth, the QB team will be working on covering multiple conventions including PAX East and GDC. To start off the year right, we’ll be at MAGFest all this weekend! I’m heading out in a couple of hours to arrive fashionably late, so this post will stay short.
Here is a bit of information about MAGFest from their website:
MAGFest, The Music And Gaming Festival, is an annual event in the Washington D.C./Virginia/Maryland area dedicated to the celebration of video games and video game music. Each year, MAGFest offers 24-hour console, arcade, and PC game rooms, over twelve live video game cover bands, a vendors area, and guest speakers from the video game industry and fan scene. It also features a “JamSpace” available to all attendees for impromptu music performances. Numerous other events are scheduled each day.
What makes MAGFest unique is that it’s an event run by fans for fans. There are no corporate sponsors, no over-crowded showfloors, and no top-secret-behind-closed-doors showings. MAGFest is built from the ground up to be a party-like atmosphere with focus on community and fan creations, which creates an environment that no other expo or convention can ever recreate.
We hope to see you there! We also promise not to spam-post. Tune in for more MAGFest goodness and other fun stuff!
I was born a SEGA fan. Even so, Nintendo was often the cause of awe and admiration in my childhood. That love didn’t start with the popular SNES or Game Boy — I was incredibly satisfied with the Genesis and Game Gear. My affair with Nintendo began with the Pokemon TV show and game. I was a young videogame enthusiast and Pokemon was in all the gaming magazines and all over the boob tube. Every generation since the baby boomers has had a gigantic TV-show-turned-game-turned-anything-under-the-sun hit (the order of conversion may differ based on decade in which it was created), and Pokemon fit the bill for mine. It was a nonsensical concept: a ten-year-old running across the country without any adult supervision (unless you count the occasional Oak), trapping big monsters in tiny capsule balls. It was absolutely absurd, but I was young and therefore I loved it. Apparently it was the plague to almost anyone over the age of 13 at the time of release, but I was oblivious to this fact.
I had been looking for the best way to play my favorite old games for over a year and my G2 just wasn’t cutting it. Don’t get me wrong; the animation is smooth and the sound is crisp, but I found myself wanting a D-Pad layout and separate battery life consumption.
The Backstory
After subscribing to Wired for a couple of months, I received a catalog from ThinkGeek. Being the nerddorkgeek I am, I found so many things to love. Upon turning one page, everything else in the catalog was no longer interesting.
AN ACTUAL HANDHELD EMULATOR! My jaw dropped and my fingers went tapping away on Facebook: it was almost Christmas and the world needed to know the number-one item on my wishlist. My close friend ordered it shortly after, and time passed.
A lot of time passed and she never went to the post office. I was too busy with finishing my portfolio and working to notice. I didn’t mind that I hadn’t received the gift; it’s merely an object. However, upon graduating I decided to finally treat myself to the handheld emulator of my dreams. I went to the website and looked for the item, but it was sold out. However, the Wiz WAS on sale for $99, so I bit the bullet and spent the cash.
It arrived a few days later, and I’ve been having fun ever since.
The Review Part One - The Body
The front of the Wiz manages to be comfortable, yet filled with buttons.
Dying is more fun without consequences.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn was hyped to be the most innovative game of 2010. However, it did nothing more than bore fans of the Kirby franchise. The original premise was amazing. The graphics were beautiful and smart, using fabric to illustrate kirby’s normally pixelated/smooth world. It had a new feeling and was quite refreshing to play. However, after twenty minutes, I soon realized that there was no way to die. I jumped off cliffs, ran into enemies, but all I did was lose gems.
Why should I care if I lose gems? Can’t I just get them back again? The fact that my in-game suicide attempts had no dire consequences completely destroyed my interest. If I wasn’t forced to start from a point far back in the level or thrown somewhere else and made to work hard to get back to where I was before, why should I waste my time? I was told Epic Yarn was a fairly difficult game, but it lost my interest as soon as I was given the freedom to kill myself at will. I want punishment in a game. Am I being reasonable, or am I incredibly masochistic?
So, I’ll admit it.
I love cell phones. And lately, it seems 600 million of them are coming out. However, none are what I want. Recently, Android phones with keybroads have been teh lackburgers. Okay, The MyTouch 3G Slide is out, but it’s got this strange monstrous OS created by the scientists at T-Mobile, HTC, and Android. Not to mention the keyboard looks strange. And the Droid…whichever one it is, it’s ugly. I don’t like Verizon Android phones at all.
Sprint doesn’t have physical keyboard Android phones I’d even want to look at. How am I going to play Oregon Train on Candy Apple without a keyboard?! Sad, sad times.
Screw you, phone makers. Make me a good phone!
I CANT PLAY WITHOUT IT.
BY THE WAY, SCREW THE LINE-HEIGHT ON THIS THEME! GGGRRRRRRFGH!
*slams door*