February 24, 2009

• Some Conventions Get Better, Others… Not So Much

  Ok, a few negative things have happened over the last day or two. But I can’t really talk about them just yet, so I’ll try to keep this post upbeat.

  Katsucon 2009

  I went to Katsucon this year again. Every year, I have to find a new reason to justify going, and it really does get harder every year–it’s very likely this time will be the last I’ll go. Some conventions get better year after year (like MAGFest), some conventions hit a point and then plateau (like Otakon), and some just slide downhill.

  This was a case of the latter.

  The Bad

  Basically, there were a few problems that really stood out this year. Starting at the top: 

  • There was a similar crowd, but in a much smaller venue (the same hotel that it was in back in 2003). This caused some massive overcrowding.
  • I couldn’t find where to wait in line. Now, I didn’t mind the long wait (2½ hours–but I had a book with me), as I expected it. But, when I arrived, I waited in a line outside the front entrance of the hotel that I was told (by staffers) was the registration line. When the line got up to the hotel entrance, and filed inside, it vanished. It took me 10 minutes to finally track down someone who could show me where the end of the line really was.
  • The “Maid Cafe”. I’d rather not provide a link. It was an awful idea, and I wouldn’t mind having a word in person with whatever dipshit thought it was a good one. Fortunately, it didn’t eclipse the convention itself, but it did provide plenty of fodder for the WaPo article that basically mocked the entire convention (which chose to focus on the Maid Cafe, conveniently forgetting that there was an actual con going on).
  • DS Pictionary sounds good in theory, but it sorely overestimates the capacity of the DS to keep up with 4 concurrent chats of 16 people each. If you use PictoChat, then don’t use it for something that’s dependent on timely responses and a lack of lag-time.

  The Good

  Now, that being said, there were some significant highlights that still made it worth attending. I just have my doubts if they’ll be enough to get me to come out next year. Starting with the quick-to-explain things:

  I did meet up with a few people I know through XKCD. I did get to talk to some of the folks who run MAGFest, and let them know how amazing their convention was. I saw a few good artists, and I might be able to get a neat Kuribo’s Shoe icon to hang on my car’s rear-view mirror. On account of the Anime Music Videos, and the concurrent DS PictoChat commentary, I noticed a new series that looks good enough to check out, called Baccano: an action/crime/semi-paranormal series set in 1930s New York and Chicago, with a jazz/swing soundtrack. It looked so good that I went ahead and picked up the first DVD volume.

  The Really Good

  There were a couple of other major highlights.

   

   

  First, I managed to finally pick up a Japanese Sega Saturn–which I’ve needed since I ran into memory issues with playing imports on my US Saturn. (Picked up from Mad Gear, the best vendor for new and classic video games.) Second, I found another place that had Daigassou! Band Brothers DX for the Nintendo DS, a sequel to Daigassou! Band Brothers. Basically, it’s a music/rhythm game that’s sort of like Rock Band for the DS, though with more flexibility to play a range of notes, write your own music, and so on. The DX version has a ton of new features, including: more songs to play, up to 100 additional songs available for download, better sound, and, most importantly, a karaoke mode where you sing into the built-in microphone. I’ve already downloaded several J-Pop, J-Rock, anime, and video game songs for this (the shot on the left is of the karaoke mode for “Single Bed” by Sharan Q). I may have more to say on this later.

   

   

  Third was Marble Madness. Katsucon regularly has a pretty good game room set up, with at least a few classic arcade cabinets set up as well. This year, they had an original Marble Madness arcade machine, complete with the track-ball. This was one of my favorite games for the NES, so I was playing it off-and-on over the weekend. Sunday was the best day for that, though. With the con winding down, about four of us (randomly, I don’t think any of us really knew one another) were taking turns trying to get as far as possible through the levels. We were cheering, high-fiving, and everything–basically, the four of us were making more noise than the group of two-dozen folks playing Street Fighter 2. And this was for a 25-year-old arcade game with a trackball, just fighting the clock (and that damned black marble). When I got home, I tried playing the NES version via emulator… and got to the last level on the first try. I did that once when I was a kid in all my years of owning it. I suppose the arcade version really is a lot harder (not to mention it’s more challenging, and fun, with a trackball instead of the NES controller).

  Next Time

  So… I’m not so sure there’ll be a next time now, at least for this convention. It’s definitely gone a bit downhill, and the highlights, I’m sure I can get at other conventions that are improving (like MAGFest). But, we’ll see.

  My next post, I mean to respond to this “25 things” list I was tagged with. I’ll aim for doing that this weekend. ‘Til then. KF

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