The fourth Music and Games Festival has concluded and I’m leaving a happy man. Much more smoothly run than M3, MAGFest 4 showed how things were supposed to come together last year. I’ll first begin with the Saturday through Sunday events that I hadn’t covered before.
Saturday was the day Kevin had to leave the festival to see his friend get married, as you saw in his last blog post. Jimmy left to watch the Redskins game, so I manned the Virtual Fools table myself. I attended Robert V. Aldrich’s panel discussion on what he considered to be the top 10 most important things to happen to the video game industry (barring technical innovations like the invention of the processor and so forth). I didn’t necessarily agree with everything on there or the order in which they appeared, but no two people would have the same list. Aldrich entertained and informed like any good panel should do.
Not much went on between 4 and 7, yet I still didn’t venture much into the Game Room. I gotta admit, I’m kind of out of place in there. I generally enjoy single-player games to multiplayer, and when I am playing multiplayer it’s usually with a group of friends. So going in and getting my ass whooped at Super Smash Bros. Melee wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. I did get to play some Gangster Town with both AE of Wave Theory and Dino of Chromelodeon’s video game cover band Sprite Slowdown. It was a light-gun style shooter on the Sega Master System with variety and accuracy unseen on the NES.
Saturday Night meant the “big” concert: Wave Theory, Sprite Slowdown, Smash Bros., and Minibosses. It just so happens that these are all my favorite of the bands from the weekend, so having them grouped in one night meant one kickass show. There were some problems with the sound all night long and the hall wasn’t exactly condusive to good acoustics, but otherwise I rocked out with my proverbial cock out. I look forward to the Smash Bros. releasing an album soon.
We got to hang out in X-Strike’s room after the show and kick back with a few drinks. Once the third podcast gets up you’ll be able to hear all about the rando with alcohol poisoning affair and some (read: a lot of) flour being thrown along the third floor. Props to the X-Strike folks like Rory who had to be the care-taker for many hours.
Meanwhile, Kevin and I worked on our presentation for Sunday morning’s panel while Jimmy played TMNT the Arcade Game next to some hippie guy from Dominos whom he badly wanted to podcast with. At around 3 AM we announced we’d be showing off X-Strike’s River City Rumble with the “Zombie Commentary” track playing, in which they basically make fun of Tim the whole time and talk about dead hookers. It prematurely ended when the Devil May Cry 3 movie needed the room to show their film since Brendan was a little preoccupied calming down the hotel and convincing them not to call the cops, and therefore couldnt unlock the PC in the main hall. It was quite alright, though, cuz all three of us were ’bout to pass the fuck out. So we just packed things up and went back to my house.
The next morning Kevin and I made it back to the hotel to give our presentation on “Graphics in Gaming: From Abstraction to Accuracy,” for which the turn-out was amazing. We were totally stoked that people had interesting things to say and kept the conversation going until we were forced to end the discussion so that the auction could start. We hope you enjoyed our panel as much as we enjoyed having you.
Speaking of auctions, the FusionGC guys did their standard song and dance to get people to buy stuff this year, and it seemed to work better than years past. There was some great stuff for sale (including a NES w/ R.O.B. in box that went for $250). I picked up an “ol’ grey” Game Boy in box with Link’s Awakening and a factory sealed copy of the first Madden game for SNES. Other things I dropped my dollars on this weekend? I pre-ordered Project: Snake, picked up the One Ups’ first album, and Gauntlet for the Atari Lynx.
Oh yeah, and in case you hadn’t assumed so already, Empire Arcadia’s Trifroce won top prize in Kevin’s Super Smash TV tournament.
Virtual Fools would like to say thanks to everybody cool we hung out with this weekend like X-Strike and co., Fusion GC’s crew, Rez, Sean the “Lord Phoenix”, Aldrich, the members of the bands, and all those folks who stopped by the table or chatted with us here and there.
Another thanks to the often thankless job of the Staffer, whose jobs can be as exciting as pulling bodies out of a mosh pit (Gabriel) or as boring watching the video room at 3 AM (Roope).
A special thanks to Brendan for learning from last year’s glitches, coming up with new ideas, and putting on another successful MAGFest. Don’t forget to leave Brendan your constructive feedback (good and bad) at the MAGFest website when he posts the thread. We hope to see you all next year.
Oh, and some will photos be posted shortly.
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