Monday, March 30, 2009
-Yo, it's that time of the year again for one of my favorite blogs, the Midwest Gaming Classic wrap-up! Be forewarned, this blog is going to be a barnburner! Like the prior two years, the retro gaming convention went down at the Olympia Resort in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which is a killer 11 hour drive (it's actually just a straight shot down I94 for nearly the entire drive, so it's not all that bad). Joe and Chris made the trek down with me again, as did Chris's fiancee this year, Lyzz. On the way down and back, a majority of the drive through Minnesota was plagued with spotty snow on the way down and rain on the way back.
We persevered through the precipitation, and made it to the Olympia a lot earlier that we originally anticipated because we made last minute plans to leave because of a bigger storm system that was going to hit our area. When we arrived, I was up for over 25 hours and was thankful I had a few hours to spare for a nap.
One of the things I look forward to at MGC every year now has been meeting a lot of the other fellow podcasters and community members of VGevo (the forum/gaming hub that hosts the forums for On Tap). They organized a few awesome community events for MGC. On the night before MGC, over 20 of us met up at a nearby restaurant, the Brewhaus, which was a hybrid restaurant/brewery. Their own custom brew is fantastic, and I enjoyed an awesome platter of fish and chips.
After the amazing meal we all met up at the hotel bar, which was having karaoke night again like the year prior. Unlike the year prior, this night was fully packed and I had to wait nearly two hours for the DJ to call me up for my song. I should have picked a few songs to sing, but I only did one, which was a country song I have been dying to sing for a long time, Hank William Jr.'s "A Country Boy Can Survive." Of course, I bombed the song, I never did karaoke to a country song before and, well.....just see for yourself....
After fraternizing with a lot of VGevo and Robot Panic peeps at the show, I crashed super late. The next day was day one of the show, I preordered my tickets online and was able to forego a crazy long line at the doors. I immediately scoped out the vendors hoping to get a chance to secure any rare games I may stumble across, and ran across a couple TurboGrafX games I've been wanting for awhile now. The first day was super busy too, as I had appeared on a VGevo live podcast recording panel, and checked out a few of the speakers at the event too. We got lunch at a pizza parlor we checked out the year prior, Rocky Rococoa's.
Besides having a ton of vendors with countless games available for impulse buys (a majority of games I spotted seemed to be available for the 8-16 bit era, but there was a fair amount of games available from 32-bit and up), there was also dozens of arcade and pinball machines set up on free play and a modern day video game museum with nearly every console/handheld/gaming pc on display and most set up to play. I got acquainted with a modified version of Space Invaders on the 2600 dubbed "VGevo Invaders," Wolfenstein 3D on the Jaguar and Gigawing on the Dreamcast. The latter was one of the rare shmups I have come across that allows infinite continues, so I made sure to take advantage of that to make GigaWing game #4 beaten this year!
So Saturday was pretty busy, Joey got to compete in the Robot Panic's Game Show Classic again this year and him and his partner RPT of VGevo were racking up a good score but robbed in the all or nothing game challenge finale in Street Fighter 2. After the show ended, both VGevo and Robot Panic had some rocking after parties going down, and I got a chance to finally play Street Fighter IV for the first time, and got a serious beatdown by both VGevo admins Ken & Terry. Also got to play the Wii import Capcom vs Tetsnoku (sp?), the first kickass vs. game that Capcom has released since 2000's Marvel vs Capcom 2 on Dreamcast. That game is equally wacky with all types of extraordinary hyper combos and attacks, and hey it has Viewtiful Joe too, bonus! Got some good Mario Kart DS throwdown with Chris, Lyzz, Kristine and Bolax, and wrapped up the night practicing my No Mercy skills with Joey in preparation for the N64 No Mercy Invitational I was hosting at the VGevo booth.
Day 2 of the show was pretty laid back the past couple of years, but this year I had a bit more on my plate surprisingly. Started off appearing on a recording for the latest Drunken Gamers Radio podcast. A little while later I found out Chris and Lyzz entered Joey and I to team up with them in a Guitar Hero World Tour Battle of the Bands challenge, which saw us face off against other VGevo podcasters. We were judged on showmanship more than score, and Lyzz did a fantastic job singing "Eye of the Tiger," but unfortunately the DGR judges were quick to point out the rest of us didn't look to be all that rockin'. The other team blew us out of the water though with Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer." Glen of the PSnation podcast did an admirable job improvising with the vocals! For our consolation prize we won a few boxes of Planter's nut bars, whoooo!
Finished off the day with the aforementioned Invitational. I was only hosting it for an hour, and pretty much the first two people to beat me in one-on-one matches in the greatest wrestling game of all time won either a $20 PSN Store or Live Marketplace card off me. I didn't go in feeling that optimistic as I lost twice to Joey last night when practicing, and of course Joe wanted to get in on the tournament too but I told him at least to hold off for about a half hour to give other people a try. I ended up with 7 wins before I finally lost twice. First guy we had a real close contest which could have went either way, second opponent was a guy who didn't play in awhile so I was able to hold my own, third match I lost to VGevo member shakewell in a very back and fourth match.
Joey challenged me next and somehow I managed to pull it off against him. Fifth guy was an extremely close match that I thought I was going to lose, but made a lucky comeback in the end. Sixth match I still feel guilty for as it had to be a 7 or 8 year old kid and wanted to play for fun since he didn't have a 360 or PS3. I should have let him pull off a few moves on me, but I knew my time was limited and proceeded to annihilate him in under two minutes. Seventh match saw a guy I challenged earlier have another go at me, but I managed to hold my own again allright. Eighth match Joey challenged me again, and we had another close bout which saw me wind up winning with a German Suplex. Final match had shakewell challenge me again, and this time just obliterate me in under five minutes as time was running over the hour. Overall, the Invitational was a ton of fun, and I'm glad I was able to have MGC as an outlet to get some awesome time in for one of my all time favorite games.
We took off almost immediately after the No Mercy Invitational as the last day was winding down. I ended up buying a total of eleven games in total, here's all my loot for the 2009 MGC. With the exception of Ninja Spirit being $25, the rest of the games all only ran me under $10 a piece, so it didn't do that much damage to my wallet as I thought.
NES - Super Dodge Ball, Super Tecmo Bowl.
Genesis - Micro Machines, Road Rash 3, Saturday Night Slam Masters
3DO - Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Way of the Warrior
TurboGrafX - Dungeon Explorer, Bonk's Revenge, Ninja Spirit, JJ and Jeff, Controller, TurboTap
Now here's my crazy ironic tale about how I almost got something at MGC. I've been semi-interested in picking up a Sega Nomad for awhile now. Our local used store in town sells them for $75, but hasn't got one in for awhile and I think I've been on their call list for when they get one for a couple months now. Ebay I'm use to seeing them go for around $100-125. For those that didn't know, it was a portable 16-bit Genesis, with also the ability to hook it up, and play it on your television like a normal Genesis. Downside to it is that it has extremely poor battery life, I'm thinking only 2-3 hours off 6 AAs if memory serves right.
Anyways, I stumbled across one at MGC by one buyer who was selling it for $90. Was a little more than I wanted so I thought I'd wait and chance to see if he would have any day 2 sales. And sure enough he had a sign saying everything will be 20% off come 1pm. So I came back a few minutes before 1pm, and as luck would have it I got there right when the dealer was wrapping it up for someone! I was a little ticked, yet somehow relieved I didn't have to plunder down some 70-odd dollars.
Then freaking irony stuck hard with a vengeance, because not even 10 minutes after witnessing someone purchase the Nomad, I get a call from my local dealer stating they just got one in! With no hesitation I told them to put it on hold for me! I went out and picked it up the next day when we got in town. Tested out fine, but the clerk gave me 10% off because I pointed how the A/C jack is a little loose, so I ended up picking up a Nomad for $67.50! Huzzah for savings! I still like my Genesis games, but I am not usually all gung-ho lately about hooking up the Genesis to my HDTV and playing with crazy stretched out graphics. Add this to all the Ultimate Genesis Collection on 360 I've been playing a ton of lately, and I have a good feeling my Genesis library is going to be receiving a ton of attention this year!
Ok, that wraps up my crazy long entry about MGC, I know I rambled like crazy, and I could have saved you some time by linking you to the latest On Tap which is all about our experience at MGC, but that would have taken all the fun away from this. Here are a few links to our wrap-up and the casts I appeared on.
On Tap MGC wrap-up
VGevo MGC 2009 roundtable
Drunken Gamers Radio MGC show
-Now I would end the blog here as it is already at a ridiculous length, but I got more to talk about dammit! I made some great gaming progress that must be blogged! I finally, finally knocked out the Wasteland Survival Guide, I think that alone took me about a good 10 hours. That achievement I'm definitely holding in high regard. Joey borrowed me Killzone 2, which I promptly knocked out in about 8 hours to make Killzone 2 game #5 beaten this year! I'm catching up Matt! Speaking of Matt, him and Danielle were in town for a few days due to the flood scare in Fargo and we got to do some Rock Band 2 multiplayer. Joey joined in also and we all got a chance to rock the mic! We also threw down some Dreamcast multiplayer for the first time in months. We played a ton of Marvel vs Capcom 2, and I don't care how graphically superior and how in-depth the mechanics are in the latest fighters, I still consider Marvel vs Capcom 2 my all time favorite fighter.
-Finally, I saw several movies over the weekend I want to share my thoughts on.
I Love You, Man - Saw this at the theater almost by accident as I forgot it was playing and went in not really knowing anything than the very basic premise going by the vague trailers, and it blew me away. I won't spoil it, but it has by far one of the best shock laughs I have ever seen, and the theater erupted at the moment that would make MK's Bo Rai Cho proud! Rudd and Segel are just amazing in this, I will not rave about this any longer as I don't want to overhype it for anyone....aw, hell...10/10.
Hot Rod - I went into this with very low expectations, and the movie exceeded them to a degree. The highlights of Hot Rod are the innovative ways that Rod wipes out, and the crazy complete acts of random Family Guy-esque gags thrown in that actually helped saved this film from mediocrity. I came out of this movie with a whole meaning of the term "cool beans." 7/10
Knowing - This film reminded me of The Day the Earth Stood Still, but with an actual payoff. I like these type of mind-benders, but things get all types of crazy in the last 20 minutes or so, and depending on your own views your either going to come out really liking this or hating it. Took me awhile to put to get some perspective on it, but minus some odd pacing and scenes, this was pretty good, and far better than the Day the Earth Stood Still. 8/10
Leatherheads - Longtime readers know I'm a sucker for sports films, and I don't recall many, pardon the pun, tackling the grassroots of professional football. So I ate this up pretty good. Seemed like it captured the era pretty good with everything from Prohibition to ignoring Prohibition to the old school pads and rules...or lack thereof. 8/10
-Ok now I'm done, infinite apologies for this eating up a good chunk of your time. Later!
We persevered through the precipitation, and made it to the Olympia a lot earlier that we originally anticipated because we made last minute plans to leave because of a bigger storm system that was going to hit our area. When we arrived, I was up for over 25 hours and was thankful I had a few hours to spare for a nap.
One of the things I look forward to at MGC every year now has been meeting a lot of the other fellow podcasters and community members of VGevo (the forum/gaming hub that hosts the forums for On Tap). They organized a few awesome community events for MGC. On the night before MGC, over 20 of us met up at a nearby restaurant, the Brewhaus, which was a hybrid restaurant/brewery. Their own custom brew is fantastic, and I enjoyed an awesome platter of fish and chips.
After the amazing meal we all met up at the hotel bar, which was having karaoke night again like the year prior. Unlike the year prior, this night was fully packed and I had to wait nearly two hours for the DJ to call me up for my song. I should have picked a few songs to sing, but I only did one, which was a country song I have been dying to sing for a long time, Hank William Jr.'s "A Country Boy Can Survive." Of course, I bombed the song, I never did karaoke to a country song before and, well.....just see for yourself....
After fraternizing with a lot of VGevo and Robot Panic peeps at the show, I crashed super late. The next day was day one of the show, I preordered my tickets online and was able to forego a crazy long line at the doors. I immediately scoped out the vendors hoping to get a chance to secure any rare games I may stumble across, and ran across a couple TurboGrafX games I've been wanting for awhile now. The first day was super busy too, as I had appeared on a VGevo live podcast recording panel, and checked out a few of the speakers at the event too. We got lunch at a pizza parlor we checked out the year prior, Rocky Rococoa's.
Besides having a ton of vendors with countless games available for impulse buys (a majority of games I spotted seemed to be available for the 8-16 bit era, but there was a fair amount of games available from 32-bit and up), there was also dozens of arcade and pinball machines set up on free play and a modern day video game museum with nearly every console/handheld/gaming pc on display and most set up to play. I got acquainted with a modified version of Space Invaders on the 2600 dubbed "VGevo Invaders," Wolfenstein 3D on the Jaguar and Gigawing on the Dreamcast. The latter was one of the rare shmups I have come across that allows infinite continues, so I made sure to take advantage of that to make GigaWing game #4 beaten this year!
So Saturday was pretty busy, Joey got to compete in the Robot Panic's Game Show Classic again this year and him and his partner RPT of VGevo were racking up a good score but robbed in the all or nothing game challenge finale in Street Fighter 2. After the show ended, both VGevo and Robot Panic had some rocking after parties going down, and I got a chance to finally play Street Fighter IV for the first time, and got a serious beatdown by both VGevo admins Ken & Terry. Also got to play the Wii import Capcom vs Tetsnoku (sp?), the first kickass vs. game that Capcom has released since 2000's Marvel vs Capcom 2 on Dreamcast. That game is equally wacky with all types of extraordinary hyper combos and attacks, and hey it has Viewtiful Joe too, bonus! Got some good Mario Kart DS throwdown with Chris, Lyzz, Kristine and Bolax, and wrapped up the night practicing my No Mercy skills with Joey in preparation for the N64 No Mercy Invitational I was hosting at the VGevo booth.
Day 2 of the show was pretty laid back the past couple of years, but this year I had a bit more on my plate surprisingly. Started off appearing on a recording for the latest Drunken Gamers Radio podcast. A little while later I found out Chris and Lyzz entered Joey and I to team up with them in a Guitar Hero World Tour Battle of the Bands challenge, which saw us face off against other VGevo podcasters. We were judged on showmanship more than score, and Lyzz did a fantastic job singing "Eye of the Tiger," but unfortunately the DGR judges were quick to point out the rest of us didn't look to be all that rockin'. The other team blew us out of the water though with Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer." Glen of the PSnation podcast did an admirable job improvising with the vocals! For our consolation prize we won a few boxes of Planter's nut bars, whoooo!
Finished off the day with the aforementioned Invitational. I was only hosting it for an hour, and pretty much the first two people to beat me in one-on-one matches in the greatest wrestling game of all time won either a $20 PSN Store or Live Marketplace card off me. I didn't go in feeling that optimistic as I lost twice to Joey last night when practicing, and of course Joe wanted to get in on the tournament too but I told him at least to hold off for about a half hour to give other people a try. I ended up with 7 wins before I finally lost twice. First guy we had a real close contest which could have went either way, second opponent was a guy who didn't play in awhile so I was able to hold my own, third match I lost to VGevo member shakewell in a very back and fourth match.
Joey challenged me next and somehow I managed to pull it off against him. Fifth guy was an extremely close match that I thought I was going to lose, but made a lucky comeback in the end. Sixth match I still feel guilty for as it had to be a 7 or 8 year old kid and wanted to play for fun since he didn't have a 360 or PS3. I should have let him pull off a few moves on me, but I knew my time was limited and proceeded to annihilate him in under two minutes. Seventh match saw a guy I challenged earlier have another go at me, but I managed to hold my own again allright. Eighth match Joey challenged me again, and we had another close bout which saw me wind up winning with a German Suplex. Final match had shakewell challenge me again, and this time just obliterate me in under five minutes as time was running over the hour. Overall, the Invitational was a ton of fun, and I'm glad I was able to have MGC as an outlet to get some awesome time in for one of my all time favorite games.
We took off almost immediately after the No Mercy Invitational as the last day was winding down. I ended up buying a total of eleven games in total, here's all my loot for the 2009 MGC. With the exception of Ninja Spirit being $25, the rest of the games all only ran me under $10 a piece, so it didn't do that much damage to my wallet as I thought.
NES - Super Dodge Ball, Super Tecmo Bowl.
Genesis - Micro Machines, Road Rash 3, Saturday Night Slam Masters
3DO - Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Way of the Warrior
TurboGrafX - Dungeon Explorer, Bonk's Revenge, Ninja Spirit, JJ and Jeff, Controller, TurboTap
Now here's my crazy ironic tale about how I almost got something at MGC. I've been semi-interested in picking up a Sega Nomad for awhile now. Our local used store in town sells them for $75, but hasn't got one in for awhile and I think I've been on their call list for when they get one for a couple months now. Ebay I'm use to seeing them go for around $100-125. For those that didn't know, it was a portable 16-bit Genesis, with also the ability to hook it up, and play it on your television like a normal Genesis. Downside to it is that it has extremely poor battery life, I'm thinking only 2-3 hours off 6 AAs if memory serves right.
Anyways, I stumbled across one at MGC by one buyer who was selling it for $90. Was a little more than I wanted so I thought I'd wait and chance to see if he would have any day 2 sales. And sure enough he had a sign saying everything will be 20% off come 1pm. So I came back a few minutes before 1pm, and as luck would have it I got there right when the dealer was wrapping it up for someone! I was a little ticked, yet somehow relieved I didn't have to plunder down some 70-odd dollars.
Then freaking irony stuck hard with a vengeance, because not even 10 minutes after witnessing someone purchase the Nomad, I get a call from my local dealer stating they just got one in! With no hesitation I told them to put it on hold for me! I went out and picked it up the next day when we got in town. Tested out fine, but the clerk gave me 10% off because I pointed how the A/C jack is a little loose, so I ended up picking up a Nomad for $67.50! Huzzah for savings! I still like my Genesis games, but I am not usually all gung-ho lately about hooking up the Genesis to my HDTV and playing with crazy stretched out graphics. Add this to all the Ultimate Genesis Collection on 360 I've been playing a ton of lately, and I have a good feeling my Genesis library is going to be receiving a ton of attention this year!
Ok, that wraps up my crazy long entry about MGC, I know I rambled like crazy, and I could have saved you some time by linking you to the latest On Tap which is all about our experience at MGC, but that would have taken all the fun away from this. Here are a few links to our wrap-up and the casts I appeared on.
On Tap MGC wrap-up
VGevo MGC 2009 roundtable
Drunken Gamers Radio MGC show
-Now I would end the blog here as it is already at a ridiculous length, but I got more to talk about dammit! I made some great gaming progress that must be blogged! I finally, finally knocked out the Wasteland Survival Guide, I think that alone took me about a good 10 hours. That achievement I'm definitely holding in high regard. Joey borrowed me Killzone 2, which I promptly knocked out in about 8 hours to make Killzone 2 game #5 beaten this year! I'm catching up Matt! Speaking of Matt, him and Danielle were in town for a few days due to the flood scare in Fargo and we got to do some Rock Band 2 multiplayer. Joey joined in also and we all got a chance to rock the mic! We also threw down some Dreamcast multiplayer for the first time in months. We played a ton of Marvel vs Capcom 2, and I don't care how graphically superior and how in-depth the mechanics are in the latest fighters, I still consider Marvel vs Capcom 2 my all time favorite fighter.
-Finally, I saw several movies over the weekend I want to share my thoughts on.
I Love You, Man - Saw this at the theater almost by accident as I forgot it was playing and went in not really knowing anything than the very basic premise going by the vague trailers, and it blew me away. I won't spoil it, but it has by far one of the best shock laughs I have ever seen, and the theater erupted at the moment that would make MK's Bo Rai Cho proud! Rudd and Segel are just amazing in this, I will not rave about this any longer as I don't want to overhype it for anyone....aw, hell...10/10.
Hot Rod - I went into this with very low expectations, and the movie exceeded them to a degree. The highlights of Hot Rod are the innovative ways that Rod wipes out, and the crazy complete acts of random Family Guy-esque gags thrown in that actually helped saved this film from mediocrity. I came out of this movie with a whole meaning of the term "cool beans." 7/10
Knowing - This film reminded me of The Day the Earth Stood Still, but with an actual payoff. I like these type of mind-benders, but things get all types of crazy in the last 20 minutes or so, and depending on your own views your either going to come out really liking this or hating it. Took me awhile to put to get some perspective on it, but minus some odd pacing and scenes, this was pretty good, and far better than the Day the Earth Stood Still. 8/10
Leatherheads - Longtime readers know I'm a sucker for sports films, and I don't recall many, pardon the pun, tackling the grassroots of professional football. So I ate this up pretty good. Seemed like it captured the era pretty good with everything from Prohibition to ignoring Prohibition to the old school pads and rules...or lack thereof. 8/10
-Ok now I'm done, infinite apologies for this eating up a good chunk of your time. Later!
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