March 26, 2010

• Greetings everyone! It’s been over 6 months since my last update, but no, I haven’t forgotten about this blog. I’ve just been… quite busy lately. I don’t want to miss anything, so this is going to be the start of a brief series of Better Late Than Never (L>N).

  L>N Part 1: MAGFest 2010

  
  In short, MAGFest is an annual music-and-gaming convention in the area; MAGFest 8 was January 1st-4th in Alexandria, VA. And it remains, by far, the best convention I’ve ever been to. Last year (MAGFest 2009) I called it “one of the most fun conventions” I’ve seen, and this year just took it over the top.

  Three things that MAG taught us:

  PMD (“Post-MAGFest Depression”) – The onset of sadness once the convention is over and everyone has gone their separate ways. Symptoms include longing for concerts and free arcades, yelling like Colossus in public, and saying things like “Man I wish MAGFest was all year long” without realizing the down-side of it. The only known cure is more MAGFest.

  H1M1 (“MagFlu”) – Illness that sets in about two days after the end of the convention. Recommended treatment is lots of bedrest and video games (16-bit era preferably). Of course, you’re less likely to catch H1M1 if your diet during MAGFest consists of something other than cheap beer and ramen.

  WOOOOOOOOAAAAAGH! (“Colossus Yell”) – You remember the six-player X-Men Arcade game, right? You always knew one was in the arcade since the only sound you ever heard was WOOOOOOOOAAAAAGH! from Colossus using his mutant power. I mean, I’m sure that game had other SFX and music somewhere, but that damn Colossus yell drowned out everything. And… that was the official MAGFest theme. One person would tell WOOOAAGH! Inevitably followed by a few others repeating WOOOOOOAAAAGH! Followed by a chorus of WOOOOOOAAAAGH! on down the hallways.

  Now that you have a little background, here were some of the highlights.

  New Years Eve

  The New Years Eve party is a little pre-MAGFest celebration, all of us crowded in the concert hall starting the fun a little early. In years past, MAG had to contend with a rival James Bond-themed NYE party down the hall in the same hotel. This year, the Bond aficionados moved to another hotel, so Mr. MAGFest and company decided to fill in the gap with a little Bond theme on our part. The call went out to dress in your best Bond attire, plus relevant gear/gadgets and, quoting, “HAX if you pick Oddjob”. Naturally, I went as Oddjob. Between randomly throwing my hat at people, spending time with J, seeing a bunch of folks from OCReMix a little early, and checking out some lesser-known videogame-themed bands, it was definitely a great way to kick things off. Bonus for the chiptunes version of Auld Lang Syne and Jon St. John as Duke Nukem himself ringing in the new year.

  The Guests

  On that note, they really picked it up with the guests this time.

  First, they had Sid Meier. Sid -freaking- Meier. Sid -Father of Computer Gaming- Meier. Sid -nearly made me fail my midterms with the release of Civ3 Meier. Sid -got me to spend more time playing Civ4 than sleeping- Meier. And he was awesome. I mean, I didn’t expect him to be that friendly. I figured he was a nice guy, but, for being the designer of one of my favorite game series of all time (Civilization, for those who don’t know me that well), he was really laid back about it all.

  Sid: So, in the early 80s I worked on games like F-15 Strike Eagle– (cheers) Sid: Wow, I didn’t expect to get cheers for that. Then, you know, there was Pirates– (loud cheers) Sid: Hey this is easy! I just name games and you guys cheer! …Covert Action… (cheers) Sid: Railroad Tycoon! (loud cheers) Sid: Civilization! (very loud cheers) Me: So… did you intentionally release Civ3 around my midterms? Sid: Yes. We wanted you to fail. Thanks for your continued support!

  Anyway, Sid mostly talked about the history behind the games he’s worked on, the process involved, and a lot of detail on what all goes into developing and maintaining a game that ends up being beloved and inspirational for all-time. (Ok, well, he didn’t use that many embellishments; that’d be my take on it.)

  Second, they had Jon St. John, the voice of Duke Nukem (and some other roles, but seriously, Duke Nukem is the one I’ve heard the most). And similarly, I figured he’d be laid back, but I didn’t expect him to be that friendly. Some folks might try to act all low-key about it, but Jon St. John is pretty damn straightforward: he loves playing the Duke, it’s a fun character to act as and, well, be honest, it’s awesome getting paid to do it. JSJ spent a lot of the time also talking about the voice acting business and even giving some useful tips for anyone actually wanting to go into it. And on Duke Nukem Forever? He “wasn’t at liberty to talk about it”.

  There was also the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN), plus Kyle Justin. I’ve been following AVGN / Cinemassacre since I first saw him at last year’s MAGFest. Since then, I’ve pretty much watched all his AVGN videos and become a fan. This was mostly just talking about the show and all, so nothing too big.

  Concerts

  Now my favorite bit at MAGFest is actually the concerts. Three straight nights of video game-themed bands. Last year was great, but my only complaint was that there was a bit of a rock/metal bias. This year, they still had that, but they really got some variety in there. Besides guys like Metroid Metal (metal) and The Megas (rock), they had A_Rival (hip-hop), Select Start (classical?), The OneUps, and more to jazz things up a bit. I won’t go into every act that was up (or I’d never get this done), but here were some of my favorites:

  I saw The Megas last year and this year was even better. They hit up everything from their main album, Get Equipped, an arrangement of all the Mega Man 2 themes (which, really, had the best music of all the NES-era games), plus a couple from their latest album Megatainment–a collaboration between The Megas and Entertainment System with some songs from Mega Man 1 (and though the game didn’t have great music, they managed to turn it around into a great album), and a little taste of their planned Mega Man 3 album in the works.

  Oh yeah, their latest latest album is now available: Get Acoustic is an acoustic rendition of all the songs from their Get Equipped album. I just picked it up last week and. While not as good as Get Equipped itself, it’s still worth it.

  

  By far, the best “new” act I saw was A_Rival, a hip-hop group with AE / A_Rival, Aimee, and DJ Circuit. I say “new” in that I hadn’t heard of them at all until A_Rival came up on stage during The OneUps set for a collab and, well, I was pretty damn floored by that point. So, I made sure to catch their full act the next evening and was left pretty damn speechless. I just got their album released last week, 8-Bit Pimp, and I’ve been listening to it nonstop since.

  Best aspect of their act, though?: A_Rival working the Colossus yell coming from the crowd into his music. You can judge a bit for yourself (apologies for the quality–these aren’t my videos, though, but I assure you that if I’d shot them then they’d be much worse):

  Select Start were a very welcome change-of-pace. All instrumental, and all talented.

  Metroid Metal were the polar opposite (except in the talented part). I only include them since I’m actually not a fan of metal–it’s the only genre that I generally dislike. But despite that, I still liked them. Technically and musically they’re damn near flawless, and despite metal not being my thing, it’s still really apparent in how well they play. I can understand why they have so many avid fans; if metal were my thing, I’d probably be among them.

  The Chiptunes concert one evening was great as well. Not a lot to say other than how I found it funny that everyone was dancing to the songs that (I thought) didn’t have much of a rhythm to them, but when someone lays down something with more of a hip-hop beat to it, everybody’s still… The guy at left, by the way, is Dauragon, perhaps the best one that night–mostly GameBoy-based but I think he might be one of the best chiptunes DJs I’ve seen yet.

  The Company

  The best aspect of MAGFest is its character, and it’s a character built entirely by the people who attend it. It’s relatively small–only 1300 or so people–but it attracts people from all over the country and world. Through it all, it feels like one giant party where you feel comfortable around everyone there.

  As I said before, there were a lot of other folks I knew from OCReMix. And even people you don’t really know, you can get to know here. So all it took to start up a conversation with someone was to ask who they were and you could really just take it from there.

  Ah, yeah, and J was with me the entire time.

  

  Other Stuff

  Besides that, you also had the video game room and arcade, which (as I’ve said last year) was pretty much like my idea of heaven: an arcade with unlimited free play on everything. And they even had a Marble Madness machine this time!

  …I wasn’t good enough to place higher than #9 on the rankings though…

  Conclusions

  So that’s that. MAGFest as always was awesome, and you can bet I’ll be there next year. You should be too–it really is worth every minute. KF

  • 12:53 am
  • 1 Comment