All the stuff I bought at MAGFest

Of course I had to try out all the new stuff I got.

Everything that powers on reliably

• Secret of Mana: It has all four saves in use with parties of varying levels, including one that's close to the end of the game.  I've searched around the internet and found that there's no official way to delete the data from a given slot, but the general trick to wiping any cartridge's SRAM is simply to repeatedly hit the reset switch.  The constant switchover from one power source to another for the SRAM chip will eventually cause it to be unpowered for just long enough for the data to disappear.  It's brute-force, but it'll work.
• Donkey Kong Country: It had a save near the beginning of the game, I erased it and started over.  Fun game is fun, and according to my save I've already got 49% completion.
• Street Fighter II Turbo: this game doesn't have an SRAM chip, but as long as the console is powered on, your options appear to be preserved.  Even if you hit the reset switch.  That's neat, I guess.  That being said, it's readily apparent that the game would massively benefit from having a controller with a button layout similar to the 6-button Sega Genesis controller.  Using the L/R buttons on a regular SNES controller for heavy punch/heavy kick is awkward, to say the least.  I know, I can rebind in the options, but something will end up on L/R and I don't really want to just not use some of my input options.  I've played a bit of it, but I'm not that great at fighting games.  I just like to dick around, so my play time testing out the cartridge consisted of Hadoken spam.  I wanted to have a non-Gundam fighting game on the SNES, though, and this was a pretty good option.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: When I first tried it, it took a little careful nudging before it would boot, but I came up with a consistent way to nudge it into the right spot (press gently on the eject button and then power-cycle the console), and then more recently it's started right up without issue.  Either there was no save data on the cartridge, or my efforts to get it to boot resulted in the cartridge's SRAM getting wiped.  I started a new game and have been progressing nicely through the dark world.

I've mostly been going back and forth between Donkey Kong Country and A Link to the Past.

The ones that take a bit more effort

• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars: For some reason, this cartridge puts the cartridge connector in a death grip, making it difficult to insert and remove.  Is this normal for games that use the SA-1 expansion chip?  It also makes nudging difficult, but the method I came up with for A Link to the Past provides a good starting point.  Since it uses the SA-1 expansion chip, it exposes the problem with the incorrect power being provided by the generic power supply I have: there's a red/green/blue horizontal color gradient moving down the screen.  Once nudged into the correct position, the game is playable (with the aforementioned color issue).  However, it's very sensitive to any kind of light shock or vibration, and I'm worried it'll fuck up my save data or something if I actually dig into the game.  There's one save on the cartridge that's near the end of the game, I hit New Game just to play a bit of the beginning but didn't actually save my progress.
• Blaster Master: This one is incredibly temperamental.  I usually either get a solid blue screen or a blinking blue screen when I insert it and power it on.  After a bit of careful nudging with no real method to its madness that I've found so far, it does eventually boot up and I've played far enough to die horribly on the first boss.

I'm hoping that these two will just sort of magically work better after I clean their contacts, I honestly don't know what other options I have.  I know it's the cartridges and not my NES/SNES, because everything else I put in either of them boots up on the first try.

The multitap and controller

• Multitap: It works perfectly, and Secret of Mana apparently requires it to be connected to the second controller port.  I don't have any games other than Secret of Mana that will use it, so I can't really test ports three or four on it.
• Third-party turbo controller: It's a bit janky and needs some work to function properly.  It has a switch on the back that applies turbo to the Start button, I have no clue why that's desirable as a feature, but it was switched on when I plugged the controller in and it took me a while to figure out what was going on.  Now for the actual issues that prevent it from being useful right away: The right button on the d-pad also inputs up unless I hold it in a very specific manner.  Also, the Y button doesn't work at all until its turbo is turned on.  These sound like issues that could be fixed, but I don't know how easy they would be to fix.

Overall

Incredibly happy with my purchases.  Still kind of kicking myself for not also grabbing Super Metroid as soon as I saw it, but hey, I can't do anything about that now.  eBay seems to be the best choice for genuine SNS-002 power supplies, so I guess I'm going to have to bitchslap Virginia Credit Union so they'll actually let me spend money via PayPal...

MAGFest 16

This year was all donut-themed, and unlike last year, I had zero nearly-crippling anxiety.

However, a winter storm that I've been referring to as the ColdSplosion™ made the trip up to National Harbor, MD a bit treacherous.  The normal route I take uses a bunch of state roads instead of interstates, and once I'd gone sufficiently north, things got kind of slippery rather quickly.  Getting there took four hours instead of the usual two or so because I was going 25 MPH or slower for a large portion of the journey.  Any faster just felt unsafe.

Anyway, I made it to the hotel safely, and MAGFest was a thing that could happen for me after all.

Thursday

In the early hours of the morning I arrived and made my way into the hotel.  Since I have friends who run the LAN room, I headed there after getting my badge.  Hanging out proceeded to happen until the staff suite opened, at which point I GTFOed for food.

Later the dealers' room and whatnot finally opened, and I made the mad dash for SNES games.  Yet again, nobody had a copy of F-Zero.  Well, there was one copy, but it was a sealed-in-box copy of the game and I want to actually be able to play the damn game instead of just staring at it.  Dejected, I picked up some other games that were also on my list: Super Mario RPG, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Secret of Mana, and Blaster Master.

This would look professional if the top of the Zelda cartridge
wasn't cut off, and if I'd had proper side lighting so the
flash would be less noticeable and/or necessary.

At 4 PM I finally got access to my staff hotel room and brought my stuff in from the car.  The rest of the day was spent playing games and trying out the challenges.

The challenges which were really neat this time around.  There was something special about most of them, for instance, there was a Super Mario Bros. challenge where you had to beat world 1-1 without stopping.  Pressing left, hitting a vertical surface such as a block or pipe, trying to go down a pipe, or, you know, dying, would all end the challenge.  The hard part was the steps at the end.  I got them once and called it good.

There was a Super Mario World one where you had to beat Lemmy's Castle, but every time you jumped, gravity flipped.  It made routing the level interesting because certain jumps were possible that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.  This gravity flipping also applied to the boss fight.

Friday

12 AM marked the beginning of my first staff shift, and as usual I doubled up, so I was doing Inventory Staff in Consoles until 8 AM.  Once 8 AM rolled around, I finally went and got some sleep.  I'd been awake since noon on Wednesday, after all.

In another sweep of the dealers' room, I added two more games to my haul: Street Fighter II Turbo and Donkey Kong Country.  I looked around and no dealers who had any SNES stuff actually had official SNS-002 AC adapters, they all had the generic ones that don't provide the right power.  The one I have for my SNES is one such generic and it's causing some issues.

Some more video gaming awesomeness
(I tried to have the flash not reflect horribly off of SF2T, I really did...)

Just like on Thursday, most of the day was spent playing games and trying various challenges.  I ventured into the Arcade section for a bit, played some Ms. Pac Man, but left fairly soon thereafter because it was way too loud in there.

Saturday

Another day, another shift beginning at midnight.  This one was doubled up as well.  Afterwards, I tried challenges until noon and then went to sleep.

Did some looking around the dealers' room again, noticed a few things that I was thinking about acquiring (one dealer had the first three Etrian Odyssey games for DS, but the caveat is everything they sell is overpriced).  Found a copy of Super Mario Galaxy, but held off because I couldn't also find a copy of Super Mario Galaxy 2.  I want to get both of them so I can play them back to back, you see...

Bought a new MAGFest square wave hoodie, size Large, to replace my old one, size Extra Large.  The new one fits way better and has a bonus extra Atari joystick printed on the front.  Still going to keep the old one, it could come in handy if I need to layer up.  Also, The Yetee was there selling some custom shirt designs based on various games, and they had one based on Chrono Trigger, so I bought it.  It's a really neat depiction of Crono and Frog doing their dual tech X Strike.

I didn't take a picture of the hoodie because the design is really
difficult to frame up.  It goes up one sleeve, across the back, and
down the other sleeve.  Also there's an Atari 2600 joystick on the
front in the new version, that wasn't there on the old version.

Sunday

Last staff shift, but this one wasn't doubled up, so it ended at 4 AM.  I waited until the dealers began trickling back into the dealers' room.  Unfortunately, the one that had my planned Sunday purchases hadn't made it back before I really needed to leave, so I made alternate purchases instead: a SNES multitap and a SNES controller (since I bought Secret of Mana).  The SNES controller is a bit odd, it's an off-brand with turbo switches all over it.  I wanted a turbo controller, but the Select/Start layout is weird.

Multitap and janky third party turbo controller!

After that, I promptly left and drove home.  The roads were fine, made it back with no problems.

Overall

Mentally, this MAGFest was a way better experience for me than last year.  I had a lot of anxiety going in last year, thanks to insecurity about my weight.  I ended up working out way too goddamn much and didn't have any time to do anything other than eat, sleep, staff, or work out (or buy all the Mario Kart).  I guess this year's much better experience just goes to show that a year or so of maintaining weight loss will make you feel a lot better about where you stand.

I had a rather large wall of text in here about the stuff I bought, but I decided to cut that out and make it its own post.  You're welcome.

Also, I ran into a couple friends I hadn't seen in a while, so that was cool.  If you're one of them and you're reading this, then hi!  Otherwise, no "hi" for you.  Just kidding.  Hi, random person on the internet!