MAGFest 19

I didn't go.

Staff members were given the option to defer their badge to 2023, I took that option.

Even if the option hadn't existed, I still wouldn't have gone.  Between the completely toxic response I got when I raised a question about their covid policy, and general weariness about it getting worse in the winter anyway, I still would have stayed home.

The covid policy seemed extremely specific in spots, to the point of being police state-like.  My question had to do with why copies of vaccine cards weren't being accepted as proof of vaccination.  My Vaccination Station™ advised me to make a copy and keep the original in a safe place, so requiring people to bring the originals seemed a bit odd.  The reaction I got was "OMG WHY DONT YOU WANT TO PROVE YOU'RE VACCINATED", "Do you not carry your driver's license and credit/debit card with you as well?", and "You can get the original damaged and destroyed all you want because you can just get a replacement!".

To knock those down one by one:

1. I never said I didn't want to provide proof of vaccination, I simply disagreed with copies being considered invalid for proof.  Way to read between the lines.
2. Driver's licenses and credit/debit cards are designed to be carried with you everywhere you go.  They're sized properly to fit in a wallet, and they're made out of a durable plastic.  To contrast, the vaccine cards are simply made out of slightly thicker paper which damages easily, and aren't sized to fit in a wallet.  One response included the Social Security card in that, which I didn't even deem worthy of a response because you aren't supposed to carry those with you.  You're supposed to keep them in a safe place, just like the vaccine card.
3. I value my possessions; I take care of my shit.  It follows that I don't subscribe to this culture of "because replacements exist it's okay to damage or destroy the original".  People were suggesting that I order some 3D-printed "holder" for it from one or another website, but that seems overkill when I'm only going to need to present it once and then it goes back in my pile of belongings in my hotel room for the rest of the weekend.

One contributing factor I didn't bring up: An alternate form of proof was a QR code, supplied by your state.  When this covid policy was released, the "great" state of Virginia wasn't offering QR codes.  I looked up my info and all I was able to get was a PDF.  A week or so later, QR codes were added.

Even outside of that, the mask policy was ridiculous.  It was incredibly specific about types of masks that were and were not permitted; in combination with the proof of vaccination policy it just made me feel like no matter what I brought with me, they'd find some nit-picky reason to turn me away at the door.  The covid policy was now fully anxiety-inducing, so I refrained from going.

The kicker: at the bottom of it was the line "don't give us sass", suggesting you'd be banned if you did.  No definition of "sass" was provided, so all I can assume is that it would be creatively interpreted to mean whatever they needed it to mean, which would most likely be "don't disagree with us".  MAGFest is run by SJWs these days and SJWs don't tolerate any form of dissent (while claiming to be anti-fascist lol), so... it fits.

If the situation has improved before 2023 and they don't find this post and ban me, I'll think about going to MAGFest 20.

Also, calculating the MAGFest number from the year is now year - 2003.  A while ago they naïvely traded one form of sequential numbering for another while declaring that "sequential numbering is confusing", which makes no goddamn sense to me.

MAGFest 18

Of course I went to MAGFest.  Of course I still staff the console room.  But you already knew that, right?  Right.

Let's cut the pointless exposition and get on with it, shall we?

Wednesday

Like any good MAGFest trip for me, it starts on Wednesday.  I leave in the evening, aiming to get there just after midnight.  Well, that's precisely what happened.  Arrived at 12:15 AM.

Thursday

Of course, the first thing to do is to go down to registration in good ol' Expo Hall E, which so happens to be as far away from the parking as possible, and pick up my badge.  Interestingly, approximately everything physical tat-related was running behind schedule, so the staff lanyards weren't ready, neither were the staff shirts, and hell, neither were the freaking swadges.  The swadges are neat, but ultimately conform to the definition of "physical tat".  I have a pile of them in my room here, with very little reason to go find batteries for any one of them to power them up and play with them.  The two most recent ones sorta solved this by also accepting USB power, but still.

The staff shirt thing was a very last minute "we don't have them" thing where they sent out an email far too late for anyone travelling from any significant distance away to be able to read in time to pack staff shirts from previous years.  Just shows the futility of changing the damn staff shirt every fucking year.  They're redundant for consoles anyway, we have the vests.  I don't re-wear mine outside the event, I'm not a big fan of red t-shirts.

Anyway, Thursday is always the day I'm up for all 24 hours of, and this year was certainly no exception.  I planned ahead and brought a travel mug full of coffee with me, which just barely lasted me until the coffee place in the atrium of the Gaylord opened and I could procure more.  A move I should have repeated throughout the day, but more on that later.

Eventually, the hotel went from being fairly empty to being "attendees everywhere" and the time of MAGFest was upon us.  Grabbed a spot in line for the dealers' room so I could get in when it opened, and made three purchases which ended up being my only purchases of the weekend:  A Super Game Boy 2, a cartridge of Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy, and an actual legit copy of Rogue Galaxy for the PS2.

It's at an angle to avoid getting my shadow in the picture lol

The Super Game Boy 2 is almost identical to the original, but there are a number of reasons to seek one out:

1. It actually runs the games at the correct speed.  The original model runs them about 3% too fast, which perhaps matters more for some games than others, but it affects everything, including the music.  This point is most relevant if you're going to be speedrunning Game Boy games.
2. It has a link port.  This coupled with having the correct clock speed makes linking to other Game Boy systems possible.  They had to correct the clock rate issue and add the link port because of a little game called Pokemon.  Ever heard of it?  ;)
3. It has an extra set of borders to place around the game you're playing, with the original model's set of borders available if you enter a button sequence.  Of course, if a game has a custom border, it'll still show that by default.
4. Also, some games have a different border if they detect that they're running on a Super Game Boy 2.  One example I found while searching the internet for SGB2 stuff is Tetris DX.

Final Fantasy Adventure is perhaps better known to some as the first game in the Seiken Densetsu series, its full Japanese title being "Final Fantasy Gaiden: Seiken Densetsu".  It's the precursor to Secret of Mana.  I played and beat it on my Switch, courtesy of Collection of Mana, but I wanted an original cartridge.

If you sift through my archives, you'll find a whole series of posts where I was playing through Rogue Galaxy, offering my thoughts on the story and explaining anything going on in my gameplay, whether easy, difficult, or neat.  Well, I kinda glossed over how I actually obtained the game, and that's because I just kinda downloaded the ISO of it and chucked it on my PS2's hard drive.  Given how much I liked the game, I wanted to actually have a legit physical copy, so this takes care of that.  Interestingly, when I was flipping through the manual in the case, a purchase receipt fell out.  The game's previous owner apparently bought it for $15 in a GameStop in Brooklyn, NY, back in 2010.  I could tell it was GameStop inventory at one point or another in its existence anyway because of the damn stickers all over it, which I managed to remove before taking the photo.  What you can't see in the photo is that the case is slightly damaged, but hey, I can probably source another case if it becomes a problem.  Just find some bargain bin PS2 game and do a swap.  Also, the box art has some water damage, but it isn't really visible.

I made an attempt to test the SGB2 and Final Fantasy Adventure in the console room, but I forgot that the SGB2 is a Super Famicom cartridge and thus doesn't have the slots for the tabs in a US SNES' cartridge slot, and none of MAGFest's Super Nintendos have the tabs removed.  Testing was postponed until I got home, where I popped the combo into my SNES and it booted right up first try, which was kinda unexpected.

I changed the palette from the SGB's weird default dark purple thing
to the much more sensible grayscale palette before taking this photo.

Yeah, that's one of the SGB2-exclusive borders.  The SGB2 ones are nice.  Also, in looking up how to access the SGB1 borders, I uncovered a bit of trivia I didn't know: almost all the borders have an idle animation that plays after a while of you not pressing buttons.  You can also input a button sequence to start it playing immediately.  I immediately went through all the borders looking at their idle animations.  Also uncovered is that you can input that same button combo on the default SGB2 border to change its color.

I've been dodging actually mentioning the button sequence and that's because there's a little more setup to it.  To get the SGB1 borders you have to select the black border and exit the SGB menu, then enter the button sequence: L L L R.  You'll hear a chime if done correctly.  Go back into the SGB menu and you'll find the SGB1 borders available.  If you input that button sequence with the default border selected, that's what changes its color.  Finally, if you input that sequence with basically any other border selected, its idle animation will start.

Anyway, 4 PM rolled around and I was finally able to check into my room.  I wasn't the first one, and actually, all four people showed up this year, so no room to myself again.  I only got to talk to three of them, interestingly.  The fourth was never awake when I was awake.

Fitness stuff still happened, I'll just mention that here and nowhere else.

Friday

So my first staff shift began promptly at midnight, and this is where the subject of my caffeination, or the lack thereof, comes into play.  I was almost dead by the end of it.  Anyway, dragged my ass upstairs and went to sleep.

After a good amount of sleep I went back down to Consoles and did some of the challenges, for which I never actually claimed the one reward I earned: a single M-point.  I've got enough physical tat, and I never spend M-points anyway.

There isn't much I remember about Friday.  It was really all just playing games and having fun.  I figured out Pole Position on the Atari 2600 at some point.  It's a surprisingly well-done game for the Atari 2600, somehow managing to cram all the necessary controls into a joystick and a single button.  Like I said, fun was had.

Saturday

Another midnight, another staff shift.  I was considerably less dead at the end of this one, on account of having actually gotten sleep.  The consoles this year were (mostly) all in cages, locked with key-locks.  Some didn't have key-locks and were instead zip-tied shut, which was annoying to encounter.  This also meant that some consoles were a lot harder to do game swaps for than others.  Basically any console with a front-loading disc tray, like the PS2 or Xbox 360.  I still don't know what they were thinking with the placement of those, I had to turn so many cages sideways just to be able to open them far enough for the tray to fully eject.  Also there was a GameCube whose lid latch had broken, which was fun to discover while attempting to do a game swap on said GameCube.  It was working properly, I opened the lid and swapped the game, and then it just wouldn't close anymore.  The "doing it live" solution got implemented: just tape it down.

Anyway, after that shift, sleep.

I had wanted to do another Pepper Palace run this MAGFest but had forgotten to go mid-day Thursday.  Looked up their hours and discovered they were open until 10 PM, so I went after grabbing some dinner from staff suite.  Tasted a bunch of stuff and ended up grabbing a salsa and a mustard.  I got three bottles of hot sauce for Christmas, which influenced me to look at their non-hot-sauce products.

Messed around with some computers in the Museum for a bit before heading down to do my final shift of the event.  Man, these things fly by.

Sunday

Last shift, and this one ended at 4 AM instead of 8 AM like the others.  No incredibly unusual requests for games this year, certainly nothing like previous years where an attendee would ask for a game reccomendation or say "I'd like to play X genre of game on the SNES, surprise me" or anything like that.  Smooth sailing through the weekend.  Got off my shift and went upstairs to get whatever sleep I could before about 10 AM, just to give me enough time to get my shit together and get out of the hotel before the hotel's deadline, which MAGFest said was 11 AM but the hotel said was noon.  I dunno about you, but I'll trust what the hotel says over what MAGFest says in this regard.

Anyway, the drive back was fairly uneventful, thankfully.  Started to encounter a traffic jam due to an accident on I-95 southbound, but luckily the Dale City rest stop was right there.  Stopped, took care of coffee-related business, and by the time I got back to the car, traffic was moving again.  Some jerk tailgated me for a while on Route 20, but eventually found a cromulent passing zone and went about his way at 1.5x the speed limit or whatever those jerks think they're entitled to do.

Video games are fun.

MAGFest 17

Continuing my resistance to using the year number instead of simple sequential numbering, this post is all about the MAGFest that just ended.

This year, I wanted to get all my clothing into one bag, and success was had.  Last year, I took workout clothing, but I was an idiot and took so much other shit I didn't use that I couldn't fit it in my regular duffel bag, so I had to take an extra bag to hold the workout stuff.  After omitting the shit that I didn't use, it all fit quite nicely into one bag.

I kinda screwed up signing up for shifts, I didn't get to it fast enough and a lot of my preferred stuff was already taken.  This MAGFest was a mishmash of both Floor Staff and Inventory as a result.

Wednesday

I drove up on Wednesday evening, just like usual.  Fortunately, this year there was zero snow in the forecast, so I didn't have a repeat of last year's anxiety-inducing 25MPH drive north.  I parked in the Gaylord's garage this year, because after careful consideration, the reserve-a-spot lots that MAGFest was promoting were both uncovered, one was a gravel lot, and my usual garage a block away would charge me in real time as opposed to in Gaylord room-nights, meaning I'd theoretically have to pay more to park there.  For once, the Gaylord's garage looked like the cheaper option.

I arrived at 11:30 PM or so, grabbed my badge, and walked up to the LAN room to hang out with some friends for a while, and eat the meal I'd made for myself to eat when I arrived, which consisted of a ham and cheddar wrap with ground pepper, shishito peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, and brown mustard, a banana, and some Coke Zero.  After that it was just me aimlessly wandering around the hotel.

Almost immediately in the wandering, I noticed this new vending machine with ice cream inside.  It looked kinda neat, so I took a picture of it.  Sadly, I don't have any video of it in action.  I bought some on Saturday after dinner, just for the novelty.  It's sorta like Dippin' Dots, and while it was neat, it wasn't really worth the price.

The rest of the wandering was just, you know, wandering.

Thursday

Wandering continued well into Thursday, where around 2:30 AM I decided to try and find coffee.  Spoiler alert: you can't get coffee in National Harbor, MD at 2:30 in the morning.  I walked all the way out to where the gas station and McDonald's were, to no avail.  The Starbucks was closed.  Even the coffee shop in the Gaylord's atrium was closed.

At 5 AM, the atrium coffee shop opened, and I finally got my damn coffee.  It was almost four dollars, but I didn't really care, I needed the caffeine.

Later I picked up my "swadge", which is basically just a custom PCB with a microcontroller and some other shit on it that does token novelty stuff.  Honestly, my badge collection is filling up with this stuff, and I don't touch it after the event.  Can it be optional for staff in the future?  That'd be nice.  Anyway, I appear to have been the only one to whom they didn't give batteries, so I had to borrow two rechargeable AA batteries from Consoles while I was on shift just to have the thing light up like it was supposed to.

Thursday was home to the sole panel I went to: DwangoAC's TASBot panel.  He highlighted some technical difficulties (and a baggage handling problem that broke some of his stuff...) while giving a nice presentation and showing a few TASes of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World.  If you've seen all the various TASes of those that have been shown at GDQs, then you've seen the TASes he showed here.

After that came the sole dealers' room raid of the event.  My bounty was Super Nintendo-filled:

Getting cartridges to boot in old systems is sometimes a hassle, so Future XT™ will chime in with details about that.

Future XT™: Hey, Past XT™!  Super Metroid, The Lost Vikings, and F-Zero all boot just fine with zero or very little hassle.  I've already spent a while playing Super Metroid and died like an idiot trying to sequence break and get the Wave Beam early.  Anyway.  Unfortunately, Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3 are very temperamental, but I have gotten both of them to boot.  I'll give their contacts a good cleaning with some isopropyl alcohol and see if that doesn't help.  *mutters something incomprehensible about still needing to do this with Blaster Master*

Back to you, Past XT™.

Past XT™: Thanks for the input there, Future XT™!  Now, where was I?  Oh yeah, that's right...

I bought a Super Famicom cartridge of Super Metroid because Japanese cartridges are cheaper than their US counterparts for some silly reason.  The Japanese and US ROMs of Super Metroid happen to be identical, with English text and an option for Japanese subtitles.  It's just the cartridge shell and label art that are different.  All the more reason to break off those tabs in your SNES' cartridge slot.

4 PM rolled around and I checked into my hotel room.  I was the first one of the people assigned to my room to get there, so I had to dodge putting my debit card on the room for incidentals.  As it turned out, neither of the other people assigned to my room materialized, so I ended up with a hotel room to myself for the weekend.  Not complaining.

Later I remembered that I hadn't yet paid for parking, so I went back to the hotel reception desk to take care of that.  Or at least, I tried to take care of that.  There's a separate exit lane for pre-paid parking, and it would have taken the whole thing off of my mind for the weekend.  Unfortunately for me, the guy at the reception desk misunderstood my request as "activate the parking lot in/out privileges on my room card" and my attempts to dumbfoundedly rephrase "I'd like to pre-pay for parking" so that I could get my point across failed spectacularly.

I didn't have a staff shift on Thursday night this year, so I just played games for a while and went to bed.  I beat World 2 of Yoshi's Island, including successfully doing a 1-1 warp on one of the levels.  I also figured out how to be reasonably decent at Asteroids on the Atari 2600.

Friday

Going to bed marked the end of my usual really long first day of MAGFest.  I got up at 11 AM on Wednesday and didn't go to sleep until 2 AM on Friday.

During my wandering around on Thursday morning looking for coffee, I'd noticed a shop in the National Harbor area that I'd never had the opportunity to notice before because I always just stay in the hamster habitrail: Pepper Palace.  They sell hot sauces, spicy seasonings, and lots of it.  I went back there on Friday, spent a while looking around the store, and using their sampling station to try various sauces before settling on a couple to buy.  I ended up with a bottle of Wok Dis Wey, which has a panda on the label and came with a panda keychain (they all had different ones, so I spent a while looking at them to figure out which one I wanted), and a bottle of The Great American Hot Sauce.  Wok Dis Wey is sweet and spicy, and The Great American Hot Sauce has a nice smoky flavor to it.

After that, I walked over to Subway and bought lunch: my usual footlong sub.  I ate half of it and saved the other half for the trip home.  Hotel rooms have refrigerators these days, did you know that?  They keep food from going bad in the short term.  They're nice.

Once I was back in the hotel and fed, I went down to consoles and did some of the challenges.  I accrued enough points to get a couple rewards, and declared myself done there.  I didn't actually pick up my challenge rewards until Sunday morning, though.

I did another walk around the dealers' room before my shift began and flagged a couple things as "if they're sti2ll there later, possibly buy them", but then I never went back later to see if they were still there.  They were all lower-priority things, but still, it would've been neat to get a SNES mouse, the mouse pad that goes with it, and Mario Paint.  Maybe next year.

Friday was the beginning of possibly the worst thing I've ever had to do: a 12-hour shift.  I made the mistake of standing for the entire first four hours, which was an Inventory shift.  Given that the second four hours was Floor Staff, which involves a lot of walking, that didn't turn out so well.  I ended up trading off some Floor Staff work with others who were on Inventory just so I could rest my feet.

I say the 12-hour shift wasn't that great, but it could've been far worse.  I originally had an entire extra mathematically unnecessary shift in my schedule that would have made it a 16-hour shift.  Once I did the math and noticed the extra shift, I dropped it.  In the meantime, though, I was very close to emailing STOPS and asking if I could work something out to swap shifts with another staffer.

There was cake during the shift, that helped somewhat.  As seems to be the usual when a group has cake and wants to offer me some, I was invited over to get a slice by one of the higher-ups asking me if I liked cake.  It was a "Do you like cake?  Because we've got cake!" kind of thing.

On one of my bathroom breaks I experienced something I can only really explain in video game terms: I call it an NPC interaction moment.  Basically, staff can do certain things that regular attendees can't, in this case it was the ability to enter the expo hall through doors marked as exits.  Ostensibly for the convenience of staffers transporting large items or something that need to use the door that's most convenient to them, but certainly usable by me for a quick bathroom break without having to run all the way back around to the entrance in order to return to my shift.

The security staffer on duty at that exit door saw me walking over to the door and said "you can't enter here, this is an exit".  I showed my staff badge, and he said "oh wait, you're staff, go on in".  It's like in video games when there's a guard standing in front of the door you need to go through that refuses to let you pass no matter what, but when you have that one key item that grants you permission to pass (and, typically, progress the story), he immediately changes his tune.

The 12-hour shift took me into Saturday as well.

Saturday

During my shift, I saw a Wii running a game that had been left on this screen.  I don't know what game it was, but since Waluigi is a character everyone likes to talk about (previously WALUIGI AMIIBO PLZ, now mostly how he's not in Smash), I found this kinda funny and took a picture of it.  It stayed that way for several hours.

I haven't been mentioning it here, but of course, I went to the Gaylord's fitness room once every day.  I absolutely didn't feel like doing anything other than sleeping after the 12-hour shift, so I had to do Saturday's workout after I woke up.

My next (and final) shift didn't begin until Sunday, so I had a bit of time to kill.  I decided to spend it playing Super Mario World.  A couple of other people showed up and we started passing the controller around after each level completion, stomping our way through the game.  Before they had to leave, we got to the end of World 6, I pushed it a bit farther to partway through World 7 (with all of Star World complete and Special World unlocked) before my shift.

It didn't help that we were playing it on an LCD TV, which meant there was input lag messing with us and making us miss easy jumps and stuff.  Using the cape is a lot harder when there's a significant delay between pressing a button and seeing the result on screen.  Anyway.

Sunday

Consoles must have been through some shit in the hours prior to me and the others that comprise the usual evening crew arriving on the scene, because when I got there, the operations officer on duty said "hey, a competent staffer!".  What the hell was someone screwing up?  Staffing consoles isn't even that difficult of a thing to do correctly!

Anyway, this was more my usual style of shift: only eight hours long.  After it ended, I went down to the fitness room for one final workout before packing up and heading home.  Parking ended up being cheaper as expected, $72 instead of $80.

The one remaining issue I have yet to solve reared its ugly head once again: driving fatigue on the way home.  I kept two 500ml bottles of Coke Zero and the other half of that footlong sub I got on Friday for this purpose, but it didn't work.  I had to stop a few times to regather myself.  One time I stopped and walked into a McDonald's just to use its bathroom.  Apparently you can order something that vaguely resembles food there?  I dunno.

I prevailed over the driving fatigue one way or another and made it home, and hey, now I'm here typing this, taking photos of things I bought, and grumbling about how uploading pictures to Blogger doesn't work in Pale Moon.  Well, it kinda works.  You can upload them, but you can't add them to your post.  I don't have the patience to pretty print and reverse engineer obfuscated JavaScript just to look for a solution, so I get to launch a Chrome incognito window instead.

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!

MAGFest 15

This MAGFest, like many before it, was preceded by some anxiety on my part.  I can't quite explain why it happens.  I enjoy MAGFest, but the closer it gets, the less I want to actually go to it.  Something about packing up and travelling there just feels wrong, and I can't put my finger on it.  In the beginning, this started with the feeling that going to MAGFest was some sort of impulse thing that I did.  You know, like that day was just like any other and I decided "you know what?  I'm gonna drive 150-200 miles north now!".

The unusual part was that the anxiety was still there after getting to MAGFest.  Usually it disappears instantly, but it took a day this time.  Not sure why.

Anyway, with that out of the way, the usual daily summary is after the break.

MAGFest 14

I refuse to call it "MAGFest 2016".  The reason for changing the numbering was, and I quote, "sequential numbering was too confusing".  Well, congratulations.  You've only changed from one sequential numbering system to another.  Wow, you accomplished so much.  I will refer to it as "MAGFest 14" because IT'S THE FOURTEENTH MAGFEST.  I will refer to it as "MAGFest 2016" after we have 2002 more MAGFests and actually get to that number.

...Now that I've gotten that off my shoulders, MAGFest!

My staffing schedule this year was much like previous years: overnight console room desk staff.  Except this year, instead of the position being called "desk staff", it's "inventory specialist".  Ooh, now I'm a specialist!  The gist of it is that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, beginning at midnight, I worked the desk in the Console room, which I've gotten great enjoyment out of in past years due to it being an awesome department in general.

As usual, I left on Wednesday evening.  I may decide not to do this in future years.  There's less and less incentive for me to get there on the butt-crack of Thursday morning.  I'd like to get there early enough that I can get to registration and get my staff badge without issue, but I could accomplish that and leave several hours later if I so desire.  The main issue is that parking is incredibly expensive in National Harbor, MD, and MAGFest staffers haven't gotten a discount basically since MAGFest 10 when due to a fluke or a glitch in the system or whatever it was $11 for the entire weekend.

I originally planned to do a day-by-day summary, but it wouldn't really say the things I want to say, so here's a series of categorized summaries and some closing thoughts.

On Randomly Selected Roommates

Every year, I take advantage of MAGFest's 30-weighted-shift-hour staffing perk: a free hotel room.  This has saved me a lot of money over the years, and I'm quite a fan of that.  However, beginning with this year, rooming with randoms is kind of beginning to suck.  Here's how it went down, names not mentioned because I either forget them, or never learned them in the first place.  (to be fair, we do get sent an email with names and contact details of everyone who's going to be in the room, but I always forget that information)

1. I checked into the hotel on Thursday, and as usual I was the first one in the room.  Put my stuff down between the closest bed to the door and the wall, as if to claim that area and hopefully sleep in that bed.
2. Later on, $NON_OBJECTIONABLE_ROOMMATE arrives and drops off his stuff.  I happened to be in the room at the time.  We exchanged pleasantries, which for whatever reason didsn't include introductions.  Whatever.
3. Later that evening, $GUYS_WHO_RAN_ROCKSMITH showed up while I'm out and about.
4. I got back from my staff shift, after 4 AM.  All of the Rocksmith equipment is neatly packed into one corner of the room (so it was as out of the way as it could possibly be, indicating some small level of human compassion).  One of them placed his stuff on top of my stuff.  Both of them were fast asleep in the bed I was hoping to sleep in. *sad trombone*
5. My stuff had been covered up by one of theirs to the point that I had to carefully and quietly extract my toiletries bag so I could get ready for bed.  I decided to move the rest later after they were gone.  Perhaps I'm too nice.
6. I inspected the sink and bathroom area to see that it's now a total disaster area and that someone doesn't know how to flush a damn toilet, which would be a recurring theme.
7. I proceeded to spend the rest of the event picking up after them in various cases.

On Cell Phone Chargers

Apparently, it's now standard practice to charge your phone with someone else's charger instead of getting out your own, if someone else's charger is available and not currently in use.  I wouldn't have a problem with doing this, except that one of the $GUYS_WHO_RAN_ROCKSMITH plugged his phone into my charger and then proceeded to go to sleep.  I came back from my shift while he was asleep and was then unable to charge my phone while I was asleep.  Yeah, I'm too nice, I should've just unplugged his phone.  It worked out in the end, though, because of the difference in our sleep schedules.  They got up and left, which unavoidably woke me up in the process since they had to move all the Rocksmith equipment, so I reached over and plugged in my phone really quick.  My phone charger spent the rest of the event in my backpack, except when I was using it.

On Methodology Of Staying In A Hotel Room

So, when I stay in a hotel room, I keep all my shit together.  All of my stuff stays in my bags unless I'm using it.  Once I'm done using it, it goes right back in the bag.  I don't leave shit everywhere around the room, and I always put any trash I generate in the trash can.  I consider this to be the most efficient and courteous-to-hotel-staff method of doing things.  Keeping everything in my bags means packing up to leave the hotel takes about five minutes tops, and putting the trash in the proper place as soon as possible makes it even more clear that I'm not leaving anything behind by accident.

Apparently, though, other people have other ideas.  My roommates, for instance, had their shit everywhere.  $NON_OBJECTIONABLE_ROOMMATE kept his stuff mostly together and wasn't really an issue.  The $GUYS_WHO_RAN_ROCKSMITH, however... as I said above, the sink became a disaster area.  They just left all their toiletries strewn about, taking up a maximum of space and forcing me to rearrange their shit just so I could have room to put my shit down while I used it.  It was exactly two people's worth of stuff, and it didn't arrive until they arrived, so I know it wasn't the doing of $NON_OBJECTIONABLE_ROOMMATE.  Also, their stuff consisted of two pre-made, store-bought "men's travel kits".  One of them had a tiny can of Barbasol and a generic blue two-blade shaver.  I didn't even know they still made generic blue two-blade shavers.  All the rest of their stuff was "travel size", i.e. tiny.  For contrast, my toiletries bag contains stuff I grab out of my regular bathroom stuff and just chuck in there.

Also, during the first encounter with housekeeping, they got two fresh towels and didn't exchange any of the used ones.  I, however, was the only one there for the second encounter with housekeeping, during which I exchanged ALL the used towels and got five fresh ones, even though there were only four of us.  You can thank me later.

On Hotel Shower Design

Why is it that hotel showers never have exhaust fans?  Every single time I showered, I was sweaty going in (event with lots of people in the same space = all that body heat combines = con funk), and sweaty coming out.  The only thing that had happened was that I had cleaned myself in the meantime.

On Highway Design

So, whatever asshole decided it was a great idea to have a 495 and a 95+495, that are mutually exclusive with different sets of exits, and even crossing the Potomac on different bridges, needs to die.  I lost two hours of my life and a quarter tank of gas due to having gotten on the wrong 495.

On Foot Pain

It fucking sucks.  I don't know what I can do, to be honest.  I got a brand new pair of supportive shoes specifically to wear to events like MAGFest, and nowhere else, and my feet are still completely in pain at the end of each day.

On The Best Department Of MAGFest

Shoutouts to Consoles for having the best staff and the best organizational layout.  Everyone from the department heads, managers, and mini-managers, to the rest of us floor staff, inventory specialists, and runners, are a great bunch of people.  We're all serious about getting our jobs done, but we don't let that get in the way of having fun.  Every position's duties are helpfully laid out on easily-accessible sheets of paper for the duration of the event, and as long as you're doing the things you're supposed to be doing, you have total autonomy.  It's macromanaged rather than micromanaged, and it's completely refreshing (not to mention ideal) for an introvert such as myself.  To be allowed to make judgment calls on minor things while still elevating more major things to the appropriate people is awesome.  To be allowed to do my job without someone coming around every 5 minutes asking for a status check, is also awesome.  If this was eBay-style feedback, I'd probably say something along the lines of AAAAA++++++++++ WOULD STAFF AGAIN.

I've staffed a few other areas of MAGFest, but the current Consoles department is the one I'll gladly work overnight double-shifts for time and time again.

On The Staff Suite

I've been hard on them in the past, and even again this year, having tweeted "Dinner is over an hour late. Staff Suite business as usual(tm).", but they don't really deserve it.  Staff Suite provides those of us staffers who work enough weighted shift hours with food for the duration of the event.  They keep us alive and able to do our jobs.  Every year, Staff Suite has gotten more and more streamlined and improved in its operation.  The system before Staff Suite became a thing was to fill Fest Ops with packages of cup ramen, snack-size bags of chips, Pop Tarts, and other things, and just let people try to get a decent meal from that.  A lot of people went out for food.  I was a gopher at MAGFest 5 and at one point ended up with the task of taking people's orders and money, and driving around the area grabbing food to deliver to them.  The point I'm trying to make is, the current system is way better than the way we used to do it.  If they need an extra hour to make sure we get fed, go right ahead.  Just don't do it too often, okay?  Also, can we get some spicy brown mustard?

On Music And Gaming

That's the entire purpose of MAGFest, after all.  It's right in the name.  Music And Gaming Festival.  I played some games and I listened to some music.  But wait, that description isn't satisfactory in the slightest, now is it?  Well...  I played some Muchi Muchi Pork, I cheesed a new high score on the MAGFest-hacked Arkanoid Machine and entered "XUL" as my initials because it went past T and doesn't have a backspace, I discovered that I suck at Mario Kart Wii, and then there was this arcade game called Killer Queen.  No, it doesn't involve the Queen song with the same name.  It's actually a really neat idea, and it's really well executed.

Killer Queen is two connected machines that support up to five players each, and the group on one machine are playing against the group on the other machine in an attempt to defeat the other group and win.  There's three ways to win: Military, where your group takes down the other group's queen three times; Economy, where your group brings back enough of these little purple blob things to your base, one at a time, and unable to defend yourself while you do it; and Snail, which involves getting a snail that spawns in the middle of the stage to your team's side of the stage, again, completely vulnerable while you do it, and also moving really slowly because it's a snail.  It makes for some hectic and incredibly fun action.  It's sorta like Joust, except all the characters on screen are controlled by players, and with other goals than "kill the enemies".  Games are fast, strategic, and can swing either way at a moment's notice.

Also, the console room had a "MAGFest Plays Pokemon" thing going on.  There was a projector displaying Pokemon Red on one of the walls, and eight buttons were randomly located throughout the room, each connected to a specific input for the Gameboy.  Predictably, there ended up being a Pokemon nicknamed "Penis", and while I don't really know my Pokemon, it knew Poison Sting.  It pretty much ground to a halt because the wall was also lit by ceiling lights and gameplay eventually progressed to a dark area, which resulted in nobody being able to see what the fuck was going on.

Music-wise, I went to the Psychostick concert, which was every bit as awesome as I'd hoped it would be, except maybe for the parts that were more awesome.  Psychostick is very much a crowd participation band, and it's an incredibly fun and awesome experience.  If you ever have the opportunity to see them live, I totally recommend it.

...On Music And Gaming

Every year I have the same set of emotions in roughly the same order regarding MAGFest.  For most of the year I'm eagerly awaiting the next MAGFest.  As it approaches, I gladly retweet announcements, spread event dates, etc.  I eventually sign up for shifts once they're available.  Then, about a week or so before MAGFest, I start to feel uneasy about the whole thing.  It's hard to describe because I'm not currently in that state, but I do know that the act of leaving for and driving to MAGFest has never felt right to me, for whatever reason.  It feels like I'm doing it on impulse.  "I could do all this other stuff, or I could go to MAGFest!" kind of sums it up.  Even if "all this other stuff" is actually just everything I do in a normal sequence of four days, which isn't much because I'm unemployed.  Then I get to MAGFest and the hype is back.  The hype stays until the end of the event, when I pack my stuff and leave.  Driving home has a much different feeling than driving to MAGFest, as I spend the drive home reflecting on everything I experienced.  Then I spend about the next month or so recovering, because I totally reverse and go full extravert for the duration of the event, and it eventually catches up to me.

This year, the uneasiness came with something I'd never experienced before: the thought that either this might be my last MAGFest, or that I might switch to going to MAGClassic instead.  I can't say for certain what's going to happen because I'm in "of course I'd go to another MAGFest and you'd be silly to think otherwise" mode, but I've noticed that I spend far less of my time at MAGFest actually roaming the festival, playing games and attending panels and concerts.  It kind of feels like going to MAGFest has become more of a habit and less of a desire.  Maybe I'm entitled to think that way after having gone to eleven of them and having staffed ten of them.  I dunno.

On The Summarization of Summaries (Sup Dawg)

MAGFest 14 was great and I'll probably go to MAGFest 15, if for no other reason than to staff the overnight console room shifts.  Hopefully by then I'll have a job, and therefore a budget for more than just parking and gas.  Might even leave the hamster habitrail, you never know...

Surprise! You're going to Nekocon!

So, around 11 PM on Thursday evening, I was informed that I was going to Nekocon the following day.  Just got back about a half hour before I started writing this (5:30 PM).  This won't really be my usual style of day-by-day con report.

I stopped liking anime conventions a while back.  In that regard, I think MAGFest has spoiled me.  The atmosphere at your average anime convention doesn't really do anything to encourage people to socialize outside of their groups, whereas MAGFest's atmosphere promotes it.  Cosplay picture-taking doesn't really count towards foreign social interaction.  I've been to a few panels at anime conventions and I've never really found any I actually liked.  This means the vast majority of my time at an anime convention is spent doing one of three things:

1. Playing games in the game room
2. Browsing the dealers' room
3. Walking around the con floor

Game rooms at anime conventions are always lackluster.  They just drop about ten or twenty consoles in there with some games, and maybe have some arcade games or something.  The game selection is terrible and doesn't really change much, if at all, throughout the weekend.  Dealers' rooms are pretty much about the same wherever you go, it's just stuff to buy and you look around and see if anything strikes your fancy.  Not too much to say there.  Same goes for walking around the con floor to be honest, it's just a crowd of people, some of whom are in costume.

There are only two real things of note. The first is that it rained for a while on Saturday, which resulted in me having to spend a few hours in the hotel room drying off clothing while drinking Jack and Coke and trying to use the shitty hotel internet to watch YouTube videos.  The second is that, while perusing the dealers' room on Sunday, as one does for the best deals since the dealers don't want to take all that crap back with them, I found a Super Famicom cartridge of Chrono Trigger for $30.  I was worried when I saw that the price tag had been stuck on the cartridge label, but thankfully it came off cleanly and I moved it to the plastic (where it doesn't actually stick that well).  Because pics or it didn't happen, here's a potato-quality picture from my phone.

I'm not even kidding, when I saw that I was skeptical that $30 could possibly be the real price, so much so that I asked the guy at the booth just to make sure.  A quick look reveals that the $29.99 price tag is actually stuck on top of another price tag, this other price tag said $39.99.  So it would've been rather inexpensive anyway.  After eating dinner, I set out to remove the plastic tabs from my SNES so I could actually play the game, and a victory was had.


I wonder how long that save battery's good for...

Also, anyone who pronounces Marle's name as "mar-lee" is WRONG.  Her name is マール, which romanizes to Māru, meaning the correct pronunciation is "marl".  End of discussion.

MAGFest 13

This one will be a bit shorter than the past several, the reasons for this should be made abundantly clear to you if you keep reading.

So, a few months before MAGFest was even scheduled to happen, I went to go sign up for shifts only to discover that yet again, whoever it was that had promised to mark my shifts as "worked" in the staffing system had failed to do so, and I had to annoy some people to get into the database.  Chalking this up to the fact that I usually staff Teardown, which ends after the staffing system is taken offline, I decided to go for Setup this year.  My shifts got entered, but it was due to some organizational changes involving individual departments actually having access to the staffing system so department heads could actually mark shifts as "worked", get this, DURING THE EVENT.  Anyway.

Daily summaries and all that after the break.

MAGFest 12

Another year, another MAGFest.  Let's get to it.

Wednesday

Woke up: 3:30 PM

Just like usual I left Wednesday evening.  However, this year my dad decided that my car (a 1990 Honda Civic) wasn't quite reliable enough to make the trip, and offered up the slightly newer Toyota Corolla he normally drives to work as a replacement for the trip.  I don't exactly like that car, but whatever, I took it.

List of the Toyota's issues:

• I can't feel the gas pedal under my foot.  It's obviously there somewhere because when I push my foot forwards the car goes faster.  However, there's no weight to it at all.
• The brake pedal is very stiff and doesn't have much travel.  It's still possible to brake just a little bit, but doing so requires more finesse than I'm really comfortable with.
• As I discovered once I got on the highway, it's incredibly "floaty", either suspension-wise or tires-wise.  It seemed to want to move around in the lane even when I was holding the steering wheel still.

Regardless, it has a working radio, which my Honda doesn't.  That at least provided me with music until I got to Orange and didn't think to try and scan for stations.  Towns and cities really need signs on incoming roads that list radio stations in the area and what they play.  Just saying.

I left later than I really wanted to, but regardless, I got to the Gaylord around 10:30.  After a while of walking around and saying hi to people I knew who were already there, I found some people to hang out with and did some hanging out.

Thursday

Around 8 we decided to go get some breakfast.  We were going to walk all the way out to the McDonald's, but we got as far as Subway and decided to go there instead.  I got a bacon, egg, and cheese on flatbread.  Cheese was pepper jack.  For toppings I got jalapeños and chipotle southwest.

Around noon I checked in to the hotel and got my room key and the first surprise of the weekend: my room was on the second floor of the hotel.  The second floor is on the same level as all the panel rooms, and I just had to go down some escalators to get to the game room/marketplace.  Pretty sweet deal.

Eventually the game room/marketplace opened for the general public and I made my first (and most expensive) purchase: A SNES with all the essentials (controllers/AC adapter/AV cable), a Super Game Boy, and a cartridge of Chrono Trigger.  Yes, you heard (read?) me right.  I have a cartridge of Chrono Trigger now.

Around 1 PM I stopped by the staff suite.  They really had their shit in gear this year, everything was set up so that we could get our nourishment as quickly and efficiently as possible, and it went really well.

Later in the day I bought a MAGFest hoodie.  I was wearing my Floating Block of Ice hoodie at the time, but it's not a zip-up and I really prefer zip-up hoodies.  I also grabbed the shirt I got for staffing hours, and bought the AVGN Volume 7 DVD.

Tested the SNES to find that the AC adapter basically didn't work.

Dinner was Nando's.  There were three of us, so we decided to split a jumbo platter, which is two chickens and two sides.  Two whole chickens.  We ate most of it, too.  Nando's is expensive if you eat there by yourself, but if you split a platter with a friend or two, it gets rather cost-effective pretty quickly.  I also like how the whole process of ordering and getting the food happens there.  They hand you a menu when you walk in.  You decide what you want and order it at the register, where you then pay for it.  They give you a table number, you go sit there, and your food comes to you.  Since you pay for it up-front, you can just leave when you're done.  It's so handy.

Also, it started snowing just before we left to go to Nando's.  It didn't really accumulate on the roads very much, there was slush but that was about it.

Friday

Promptly at midnight my first staff shift began.  Good old floor staff in the console area.  I doubled up, so they had me until 6 AM.  Another staffer and I spent about three hours organizing and clearly labelling the bins for all of MAGFest's cartridge games so that other staffers would be able to actually find them easily when people came up to request game swaps.

Went to sleep: 6:30 AM-7 AM (39 or so hours awake)

Woke up: 1 PM (6 or so hours asleep)

Went to Ellen McLain's panel.  For the uninitiated, she's the voice of GLaDOS, among other things.  She talked about the experience of providing the voice for Gipsy Danger in Pacific Rim, and of course the entire panel room sang Still Alive, with her husband (John Patrick Lowrie, the voice of the Sniper in TF2, among other things) on banjo, one person from the audience on an ocarina, and possibly the most star-struck cosplayer ever assisting on vocals on stage and sitting next to her.

If you read that paragraph and realized that GLaDOS is married to the Sniper, congratulations.  Needs fanart, stat.

Dropped by the marketplace and explained the dead SNES AC adapter to the dealer I bought the SNES from, they exchanged it for another at no cost.  Tested it and the new one worked.  Immediately went to a friend's room with everything and tested all the cartridges; everything was in working order.  Saved the best (Chrono Trigger) for last, and upon discovering that it had a fairly high-level (mid-upper 60s) clear save with a lot of endgame equipment, I set up a party, beat Spekkio, did the Sun Stone quest, failed at the Lab 32 bike race (turboed into the back of Johnny at the end, lol), took a nice leisurely stroll through Lab 16 without having any encounters, then started a New Game + and got the developers' ending for kicks.

Grouped up with the same friends I went to Nando's with and this time we went to the Cadillac Ranch.  It's basically your average family restaurant with hamburgers/steak/chicken/pasta/salad/mixed drinks/whatnot, except more expensive.  Unfortunately the mechanical bull didn't start until 9, so we didn't get to watch drunk people fall off of it this year.

After dinner we went to Smooth McGroove's panel.  For the uninitiated, he does solo acapella covers of video game music, with a frame of his head (and occasionally his cat) for each part of the music.  I got introduced to him thanks to a coworker and ended up buying his albums on bandcamp.  It was his first panel ever and his first MAGFest ever, which was pretty cool.

Saturday

Promptly at midnight, my second staff shift began.  Still console floor staff, but I didn't double up this time, so I got off at 3.  As with every year so far that I've had a staff hotel room, it worked to my advantage to have brought a sleeping bag, because both the beds were taken when I went back to the room to get some sleep.  Ganked a pillow from one of the beds and I was good.

Went to sleep: 3:30 AM-4 AM (14 or so hours awake)

Woke up: 11 AM (7 or so hours asleep)

Sadly, this year Egoraptor had no midnight panel.  His panel was instead at 2PM.  It was still good.  I had to get in line for it at 12:30 PM, though.

After Egoraptor, we decided we were hungry and drove over to McDonald's for lunch.  We discovered that they have both a Bacon McDouble and a Bacon McChicken now.  We also discovered a neat thing: instead of ordering a large drink, order sweet tea.  It's cheaper, the cup is the same size, and they don't actually care what you fill it up with.

Later on was the Angry Video Game Nerd panel.  He updated everyone to the status of the movie (done shooting, 100% in post-production now!), and discussed a bunch of other fun stuff.  ScrewAttack was filming it, so expect a video of the panel from them.

I honestly forget what we did for dinner.  I think we might have skipped it, or at least I did.

With nothing else planned to do between dinner and my next staff shift, I decided to roam the marketplace or maybe go play some games.  I'd told myself on Thursday that if the copy of The Great Waldo Search that I'd seen was still there on Saturday, I'd buy it.  Being a relatively obscure title that probably nobody else even wanted, it was still there, so I bought it, along with the only copy of Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World that I could find.  After all, why have the classic Mario games on separate cartridges and systems when you can have them all together on a single cartridge?

While wandering and randomly checking the schedule, we decided to check out the "Obscure JRPGs You Should Play (Available in America)" panel.  It was... a thing that happened.  On one side, it was easy to tell that the panelist really liked her JRPGs.  On the other side, she was way too hyper and spent too much time discussing everything and going off on tangents, which led to her only covering about three or four games.  Also, this panel brought up a good point: how exactly do you define "obscure" as it relates to video games?

Sunday

Promptly at midnight, my third staff shift began.  Once again console floor staff.  This time, however, we caught wind of something that sent us into a bit of a panic and emergency meeting/calling for backup: the headlining band, Machinae Supremacy, was planning on hitting up consoles/arcade.  They had a group of about 200 or so up at concerts, so we assumed the entire group of 200 or so would be invading all at once and planned for that.  The band ended up managing to slip in with most of their fans unaware and the huge influx of people we planned and strategized for never happened.  That shift once again ended at 3 AM.

During that shift, though, was the second and perhaps the biggest surprise of the weekend: I ran into someone from the kendo classes I used to take.  Since floor staff basically involves just walking around making sure people are behaving, not stealing, ensuring that games aren't frozen (walk up, hit a few buttons, try to unpause, etc.), and directing people to the table when they come up to me asking if they can get a game swapped out, it was rather conducive to walking and talking, so I did precisely that.  I think I remember her name.  I'm pretty bad at remembering names, but I remember people, if that makes any sense.

Went to sleep: 3:30 AM-4 AM (15 hours or so awake)

Woke up: 12 PM (8 hours or so asleep)

I found out that despite the email I received before MAGFest indicating that everyone would be in the room on Sunday night, nobody else would actually be staying Sunday night.  I basically had the room to myself.

At 3 PM, teardown officially began.  For whatever reason the TechOps teardown was split into two shifts, a four hour shift beginning at 3 PM, and a three hour shift beginning at 7 PM.  I know from experience that teardown usually hits a certain point where there's not really much more to be done other than loading things onto box trucks, and we usually stop having anything to do at that point, even if it isn't the end of the actual shift.  We reached this point around 8 PM.  Since there wasn't really going to be an official after-party (or if there was, it was planned for much later), I retired to the hotel room that I had to myself for the night.

There I hooked up the SNES and played some mofuggin' Chrono Trigger.  I decided that, rather than simply hitting New Game and selecting a slot, overwriting a save and doing everything from scratch myself, to just use the already established clear save with decently-levelled characters and good equipment and just start a New Game +.  Fun was had.  Also, briefly, before I started Chrono Trigger, I found Waldo a few times, and played some various Mario games (mostly Super Mario 3).  Not exactly sure when, but this bled over into Monday.

Monday

Went to sleep: 1 AM (13 hours awake)

Woke up: 8 AM (7 hours asleep)

Had coffee, packed up, loaded the car, checked out, drove to McDonald's for breakfast, then drove home.  Nothing much eventful happened on the way home, other than accidentally passing the exit I needed to use for Route 3 in Fredericksburg, but luckily the next one was Route 3 in the other direction and it was a cloverleaf, so I just kept turning right and eventually I was back on track.

Once I got back home, I picked up a temporary parking permit at my apartment complex for the Toyota and unloaded my shit.  Grabbed the laundry bag out of my stuff, grabbed all my other laundry, and went and did my laundry.  Swapped back for the Honda I know and love, bought my dad a pizza, and hung out with friends while watching some football (with wrestling interspersed).  Only one of said friends wasn't at MAGFest.

That was my weekend in a nutshell.  MAGFest still ends way too quickly.  Having to face real life again kinda sucks lol.

Now for some photos, courtesy of the absolutely amazing 640x480 camera that LG put in their 420G phone.  I've done some basic corrections in Photoshop, namely auto levelling and color balancing, but there's a limit to how shiny you can make a turd.  I'm also too lazy to steal my roommate's lamp long enough to re-take them with decent lighting.

SNES, cables/controllers, and the games!	The weird shadow you see is from my phone lol
Glare thanks to kitchen light	MAGFest square wave hoodie, properly lit even

MAGFest 11

I awkwardly shift back and forth between "I" and "we" during this post without establishing having met up with a friend (or multiple friends on occasion).  Deal with it.  Also, the quality of writing slopes steadily downwards towards the end, because I was getting more and more tired while typing it.  I might go through and fix shit later, I might not.  We'll see.

Wednesday

Woke up around 8 AM.  I actually wanted to get up at noon, but I couldn't sleep any longer.  Did laundry while catching up on YouTube videos I'd been neglecting.  With relaxation time built in, I ended up packed and ready to go just before dinner.  The plan was to leave after dinner, so it worked.

A bit after 7 PM I loaded my bag into my car and went on my way.  The route this year would take me past my usual gas station to top off and grab some 20oz. caffeine vessels, perhaps better known as bottles of Mountain Dew.  I used Google Maps to figure out how to get on my regular trek north without having to double back and waste gas, and it worked beautifully.

On Route 20 my biggest concern was deer.  I honestly don't believe that Route 20's 55MPH speed limit is safe at night.  During the day it's perfectly safe, though.  Instead of deer, however, I had to slow down to avoid hitting someone's dog.  Whatever.

I love driving at night, but the darkness does make navigating a bit difficult when you can't clearly see where a connecting road is.  I ended up having to turn around once because I went past where I should have turned.

In Orange I drove down my favorite road system anomaly ever.  In Orange, Route 15 and Route 20 meet and become the same road briefly.  Except that when you're heading north on Route 20, you actually end up heading south on Route 15 (and vice versa).  There's something fun about being able to say you can go both north and south at the same time.

Blah blah blah battlefields blah blah Fredericksburg no traffic because I left after its rush hour 95 North yay.

Stopped at the same rest station on 95 North that I stopped at last year, except that this time the Mountain Dew I drank was a lot cheaper because I bought it at the gas station when topping off along with a buddy for $2.50.

There's nothing really difficult at all about the route from Fredericksburg to the Gaylord, you just have to pay attention to the signs to know which side of 495 to get on, since it splits into local and not local.  Spoiler: you want the local side.  You end up going across the drawbridge, at which point you can already see the Gaylord.  If you've never approached this hotel from over this bridge at night, I recommend doing so at least once in your life.

Anyway, just before 10 PM I arrived and nabbed a parking space right near the elevators.  Went in and started refamiliarizing myself with things, especially since MAGFest's layout changed significantly compared to last year.  There were still a couple of things I never found.  "Use the map!", you say?  To that, I say "what map?  I don't have a smartphone, and therefore can't use the digital-only guidebook!"  Those digital-only guidebooks: WORST.  DECISION.  EVER.

Anyway, the first game I played was Sega Super GT.  Because, you know, it totally makes sense to play a racing game immediately after driving for two and a half hours.

Thursday

After a while of derping around a couple other staff members and I decided to get some food from the hotel cafeteria, which MAGFest staff have access to during the weekend.  It's the odd thing out in both the National Harbor area and specifically in the Gaylord because it's crazy inexpensive.  I got scrambled eggs, fried potatoes with green and red peppers, and a few strips of bacon for $3.45.  With infinite drinks.  Anyway.

Checked into my hotel room, where I discovered I was the first person to check in.  Managed to dodge getting my card put on the room, since the account it's linked to doesn't really have any money to speak of in it.  I did pre-pay for parking, though, which was awesome only in the sense that I didn't have to worry about it for the rest of MAGFest and could actually spend money unlike last year.  It wasn't awesome in that last year it was $11, period.  This year it was $14/day.  The price did come out to $42, but... still.

Later on, MAGFest began proper, and so I went to a few panels I'd been looking forward to.  Jon St. John mostly.  He spent most of the panel prank calling people's friends as Duke Nukem.  Skipped the first Egoraptor panel because he had a second one scheduled at midnight and that's always the better option.

While skipping the panel, I went to dinner with friends at the Cadillac Ranch, which is basically just like your average family restaurant (i.e. Applebee's, TGI Friday's, Chili's, etc.) except it's more expensive.  Seriously, the cheapest burger is $11.  Their food is good, but I don't really think it's worth the prices on the menu.

Spent the rest of the night playing games.  In the Arcade section, which had an entire expo hall to itself this year.  In my opinion, Arcade beat Consoles by far this year.

Friday

My first staff shift started at 2 AM: my staple schedule-filler LAN Overwatch.  You basically just have to walk around and make sure nobody's stealing anything.  It's really easy, and you get to see what everyone is playing.  Spoiler: it's either TF2 or DOTA 2/LoL.

At 6 AM my shift ended and I decided to get some sleep before Jon St. John's second panel, which was at midnight on Saturday (meaning I'd have to get in line on Friday, you idiots who interpret time wrong).  I figured, having been up for 46 hours at this point, I should get a decent chunk of sleep, right?

Wrong, I couldn't get back to sleep after 6 hours.  However, just after I got in bed the fire alarms went off.  So I had to hurriedly get dressed in the dark because my roommate didn't feel like actually turning the light on even though he was right next to the switch.  We walked down the hall to the stairs, which were fully saturated with people and we couldn't go any farther, and then the alarm system (which is voiced, by the way), announced the "all clear" and we went the fuck back to our rooms and went the fuck back to sleep.

So around noon I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.  Oh well, whatever, went down to Arcade and played for a while.

Eventually I met up with a friend and we went out to get some dinner.  There was a place we'd heard about from a friend of ours after MAGFest X, so we decided to check it out.  It was a Portugese place called Nando's, and their specialty is Peri-Peri chicken.  Basically, the entire menu is chicken.  You choose a sauce from their mostly tame spice scale, pick the format (platter, sandwich, etc.), and some sides or whatever else you want, and then go order it.  They have this neat fountain drink machine which only has one dispenser instead of the usual 8-10.  Instead, it has a touchscreen and you can add all kinds of extra flavors to your soda.  For instance, you can get grape Mello Yello.

Anyway, long story short, Nando's is amazing.  We split the full chicken platter, which was an entire chicken and two sides.  Definitely A++ would eat again.

Saturday

Later that evening we went to Jon St. John's second panel.  The first one was titled "Jon St. John Speaks" and the second one was "Jon St. John: Voiceover Whore".  True to the panel name, he mostly discussed what it's like being in the voice acting business and how you have to basically be constantly looking for work to keep pulling in the money.  He threw in a couple prank calls towards the end, and then concluded with a blues-style song he wrote about MAGFest called "Balls of Steel".

Immediately at 1 AM I went on-shift, once again doing LAN Overwatch.  It was at this time I discovered that LAN Overwatch had been modified to also be backup for the check-in desk, which I have wanted to avoid since doing an entire MAGFest of it a few years in a row starting with M6.  Whatever.

I played some more games for a while, but kept an eye on my watch, because at 10AM the Kinuyo Yamashita panel was happening and no way in hell was I going to miss that.  For the uninitiated, she composed the music for Castlevania.  None of its sequels (of which there are only three (inb4 SotN fanboy hate)), but just the very first Castlevania game.  She's done other stuff since then, too.

After that I played games for a bit and then went to get some sleep.  Seeing as how I was fairly sleep-deprived at this point, I thought I could easily sleep until an hour before the panel, but I woke up after four hours.  I figured getting to the panel line for AVGN 45 minutes early would net me a decent spot in the line, but holy fuck was I wrong.  Luckily, there was plenty of space in Panels 1 and I easily made it in.  James decided to spice things up by bringing in some of the games he's reviewed as AVGN and gave some panel attendees a chance to actually play them and experience how astronomically ass they are.

After that, we left the hotel to get dinner at the nearby McDonald's because McDonald's is affordable.  I grabbed a McGangbang, specifically what we call an "unprotected" McGangbang (basically, get the spicy McChicken instead of the regular one), a McRib, and a large drink.  I debated trying to fit the McRib in the McGangbang so I could dub it "ribbed for her pleasure", but I ended up eating the McRib separately.

When we got back, we tried what we'd wanted to do for a while: make a mixed drink we wanted to call "Blue and Blue on de Ting".  You see, there's this Jamaican grapefruit juice drink called Ting, and we had some curaçao to make it blue.  Well, it kind of worked, but the grapefruit juice overpowered the orange flavor of the curaçao and gave it a weird flavor.  We didn't have anything else to mix with it to try and balance it, so we just consumed it as-is.

Sunday

The next panel I wanted to go to was the midnight Egoraptor panel.  The line for it, in and of itself, was awesome.  We were all bored waiting, and someone started singing.  People joined in, and then it turned into "hey what should we sing next?"  This lasted pretty much until they started letting people into the panel room.  The panel itself was awesome, he had people hold up random items so he could easily identify people to ask questions.  He established early on that since that panel room had a bunch of free time after when his panel was scheduled to end, he'd just keep going on.  I unfortunately had to leave "early", at about the panel's normal end time, so I could go to my Floor Staff shift in Consoles.

Now, all weekend, I'd seen various staff members wearing these orange vests with the MAGFest square wave logo on the back, and on this shift, I got to wear one.  Floor Staff in Consoles is pretty much just like Overwatch in LAN, except that occasionally you have to reset a frozen console or make sure unattended wireless controllers are brought back to the staff table so they don't mysteriously disappear.  Also, you know, helping people find specific games or handling any requests or problems they may have.  I actually ended up taking a photo of a group of people with an iPad.

About halfway through that shift, my feet, which had been in pain since Wednesday night, finally started hurting so much that I could barely stand.  Fortunately, Floor Staff don't need to be constantly combing the room, so I was able to sit down for a while, but it didn't help much.  I got into the "limping with both legs" state that I was in last year.  I really, really need some decent insoles or just better shoes overall, because it's quite clear that what I was wearing just didn't cut it.

The odd thing is that playing racing games (specifically Sega Super GT, but I also played some OutRun 2) helped my feet calm down.

Scheduled at 8:30 AM in Panels 5 was James Rolfe's First Blood on AC/DC.  I'd seen it when he originally brought it to MAGFest, but hell, it was awesome and I wanted to see it again.  Except that when I got there to get in line for it, Panels 5 was closed and locked.  I still don't understand what happened there.

With that having fallen through, I had a nice chunk of time I was planning on using to sleep until my next shift, which of course was teardown at 4 PM.  However, it was then that I looked closer and discovered that the room I was in only went through Sunday, even though I was supposed to have a room until Monday because of working teardown.  I got my shit out of there and put it in my trunk just to play it safe, and chugged the coffee in a friend's room to keep myself awake.

Partway through teardown, it became time for the staff post-MAGFest party.  A fuckton of pizza was procured, and there was soda.  At first it was just that and a musical performance (because, after all, live music happens every day at MAGFest), but then finally the alcohol showed up.  Right away I saw that Jon St. John was there and mixing screwdrivers for people, so I got one of those.  Then it became random milling about drinking different things.  I'm not going to go uber-chronological on what I drank, but I had some Jameson, two gins mixed together (Bombay Sapphire and Gordon's) (because of a quote from an old friend who moved away a while back, "gin is good with gin I bet"), some legal moonshine (yeah, I know...), and then, I noticed.

What did I notice?

There was both grapefruit juice and curaçao.  Also, there were other juices, so I could experiment.

My first experiment ended up being a success.  Added some orange juice to the mixture.  It balanced it out quite well and gave it a nice electric blue color that looked like a couple ice cubes wouldn't go amiss.

Eventually I realized that even with the party happening, teardown was still going on and I should probably get back to work.  I went back to ops where the mantra of the night was "find stuff and put it in boxes!", found stuff, and put it in boxes.  Eventually there was no more stuff to put in boxes, so we called it quits.  Also, during this, the head of staff operations was in the room helping, so I asked him about my hotel situation and it turned out I had a different room for Sunday night.  He was unsure what I needed to do about parking, but I figured I'd worry about that in the morning.

Armed with a new (to me) room key, I got my shit out of my trunk and headed to my new room.  My still mostly drunk mind deduced from the placement of personal belongings in the room that there was only one other person in the room, and he showed up after a few minutes.  To grab his stuff and leave.  Also, he left me three cans of Coca-Cola, which I put in the fridge right away.  I didn't really dick around too much, I needed way too much sleep at that point.

Monday

I made it to sleep a bit after midnight and woke up at 8:30.  Reasonable success.  Upon inspecting the check-out system on the TV, I noticed that all the parking charges for the room were zero.  After drinking the available coffee and packing the three cans of coke in my bag so I could get them to my car, I went to the check-in desk to inquire, and confirmed that there were no parking fees to be paid on my new room, meaning I could just scan the card and GTFO back to Charlottesville without having to pay any extra money.  I took that deal, and drank all three cans of Coke on the way back.

Stuff I ended up with

• Small metal Pac-Man machine that functions as a candy tin that originally had Pac-Man-shaped candy in it - totally obtained by accepting candy from strangers (or, the awesome guys from ThinkGeek that buzzed the Jon St. John panel line on Thursday)
• Suction-cup-attachable joystick for capacitive touch screens (i.e. iPad, iPhone, etc.) - I really don't know why I grabbed this, but I did.  They were also given out for free by ThinkGeek.  I think it was just the appeal of "hey, free shit".
• AVGN DVD Volume 6