PAX 04 was a first for Penny-Arcade.com. It was the first convention they had ever held by themselves -- and with some minor disregards, it was an enjoyable experience for young and old by the end of the event.
After driving myself and a few of my friends (Dylflon/Dylan, FissionMailed/Andrew, Zaglar Ninja/Brian) and after a couple of weeks of careful planning, we arrived in Sunny Bellevue to be greeted by a -- "super" line-up -- for lack of better terms. This line-up consisted of geeks and nerds of all kinds. We took our respective spot in the line (at the very end) and had no choice but to wait it out. Eventually Dylan and I decided to pop over to Lanwerx to check out the local arcadage while Brian and Andrew held up the fort in our staked spot in the long super line. We found it was fifty feet to the north from the convention centre while the line was snaking in from the south side. Dylan and I played Dance Dance Revolution to pass the time, and eventually we walked back to the line.
Unforuntately we were in a bit of an upset, because we could no longer find our friends in the line. After some walking, we discovered they were in the other, faster line that a couple of chums had told them about. Before we walked in, we were sharked out by two Microsoft representatives who were getting names and numbers in order to find game testing talent. We all signed up except for Andrew. I'm now employed by both Electronic Arts and Microsoft for pretesting: Take that, system!
We eventually were let in the doors, only to be sorted into more lines: The registering lines which Andrew and Brian went into and the preregistering lines for those of us who payed online, which was Dylan and I. I got a nice close shot of the Omega Collection; a collection worth well over 25 grand American.
After we were all registered and stamped, we went up the elevators. We saw the "famous" banner during the long ride up and I grabbed a nice shot of it.
At the top of the elevator we went straight over to the Exhibition room. This room had all sorts of unreleased games, T-shirts for sale, and an Asian shop complete with Pocky and Wallscrolls. Dylan and I got straight to business and bought some T-shirts. He was a little quicker than I was (he picked the Mr. Period T-shirt) but I eventually got the event t-shirt which had the plain "PAX-04". We then split up for a mere moment while I went to scout out the Wallscrolls in the Asian shop. I found a really nice one with Yuna, Final Fantasy X-2 style. The girl who sold it to me told me that it was her favourite too. I then went over to the bathroom to change into my PAX04 T-shirt, and while my shirt was off, Porkfry (a la Porkfry.com) walked out of one of the stalls. He held the door for me on the way out, and that lead to small conversation, and I got a picture with him afterwards. I think he felt good about being famous.
Back in the exhibition room Dylan and I tried out Conker and Fable respectively. Dylan liked Conker. I had to wait a while for Fable -- namely, half an hour -- because they were exhibiting the full version of the game. I played for a long time, and I got some minor impressions: The combat system is as deep as you see it. The mixing of magic and attacks is fun, but plain attacking is no fun. Combat just feels too repetitive but the magic system and the quick-command system save it. For instance, a rep pointed out to me that potions would be easily used by pressing left on the digital pad, and any item that replenishes life would replace that space. I like tihs feature because you don't have to manually set new items every time; health is always generated by pressing left. Very handy. The graphics are fairly ho-hum but I really liked the game in terms of style. From what I saw it really did look like a fairy tale, and the voice acting was a treat. I also saw a cutscene in which a flashback occured at the same time in real time, and it was put together really well.
Here's an example set of TVs that they had. They had about 100 TVs in a large circle in the middle of the room housing Forza, Jade Empire, Conker, Fable, and what have you.
I liked Conker. The control system was fine and easy to get into; it's basically a third-person FPS that can easily be changed into first-person. I won't post specific impressions, but I'll mention a really cool experience I had with it.
They have tanks lying around in the game, and the opposing team grabbed the rocket launcher gun on the top. Well, I sneaked up to it as it was blowing it's load all over the place, and he caught me at the last minute, but the trick is, it can't aim close to itself, or turn around very fast. So I had him going around in circles trying to catch up with me as I pumped tons of hot lead into the tank.
Before I knew it, it exploded, and I jumped out of the way to avoid damage.
Needless to say, that sold me on the game right there. But the story-mode rehash looks very promising indeed.
After all the action, we decided to have lunch at the local Dairy Queen. We Canadians don't care much for American fast food, so I just ordered a burger and got a cup of water. Here is a shot of Brian feeling awkward, and Dylan looking worried about the fries he's digesting at the moment.
When we got back inside the convention, we met up with our buddies at pa-cult.com. We know a bunch of the members there, so we hung out in the meet even though we aren't registered with them.
The convention hall was huge, and we didn't even use most of it. This is a panning shot that night to get an example of how big this building was. On the fourth floor at the top, there was the DDR Extreme machine where the famous "Fatty-wipe out" occured. Now you can see why Andrew was scared for his life when that man started falling towards him: he could have been knocked four stories with him. This shot was taken from the 3rd floor, the registry/ballroom/food level was on the 2nd floor below us, and on the very bottom 1st floor was the tabletop area where people played Diceland and such.
They had a number of tournaments for our enjoyment, and I waited at the end of the first day for the Guilty Gear XX tournament. Beforehand we listened to the live music and it was really nice. Unfortunately, it was very late and I lost very early in the tournament but I was happy to, since I could go back to our campground and get some much-needed sleep after a day of excitement.
Day 2 was much of the same, except we didn't have to wait in line. Day 2, I also bought a "16-bit" shirt with a picture of the Sega Genesis controller and the Genesis specs below it. I like it a lot. I played more of the exhibited games (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Matrix Online, Guild Wars). They also announced that Ubi Soft was picking random people to go up against the online clan Frag Dolls, which is a group of girls who are really good at games.
The winner of each round (and you were LUCKY to win against these girls) won a copy of Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow signed by the Frag Dolls, and the losers won a T-shirt. Unfortunatley both times Brian and I stood in the pool, the PA Enforcer did not pick us.
We also played a couple tournaments this day; the Smash Brothers tournament and the Mario Kart Tournament. The Smash tournament was at 11 and our friend Andrew, the champion from last year, was eliminated immediatly. Brian and I held out for longer though, which is why Dylan and Andrew went off to the PC room without us.
The last event of the day for us was the Mario Kart Tournament, and we were really forced to leave as soon as possible since it was a normal work-day monday the next day. But Dylan and I stood out until the Semi-finals of the event. It was pushed really late because somebody stole games and a PS2 out of the console room. They tried their hardest to stop it but you can not stop the inevitable.
We got to talk to Tycho this year, and we got pictures with most of the guys, but since it was so big, we only got so much time to talk to the guys individually. I snapped this photo with Tycho the end of the first day though, luckily.
Also, a running joke at the convention was the name of a restaurant nearby: The aptly named "What the Pho" was yelled during tournaments and the like.
Overall, it was a very fun event, and I can't wait until next year. This writeup would have been longer, but this was completed a week after the event, and I've forgotten a lot of the cool things that happened, and the exact order - that's what you get for putting off your life for a weekend though.
And that was PAX.
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Penny Arcade Expo 2004 (56k unfriendly)
Linear Mode
