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!