Midwest Classic: Report

[goatdan]

I've copied most of this from a post that I just made on JI2, but I figured that a lot of people may be interested by this:

 

I'll just post one here as quick as I can, then bed is needed BADLY. Ignore bad grammer... *Ahem*:

 

The event was well attended, although the event really went in shifts. The total was somewhere between high 90's and early 100's.

 

By 10:00, there was about 20-25 dealers, vendors, exhibitors and helpers there working on things. By 1:00, about 60 more people had showed up. By 3:00, a bunch of the vendors left and there was about 30 people. Then, between 6:00 and 8:00, we had another 20ish people come in.

 

All of the events went off with very little hitches. The finalists in the Warring Worms competition were Carl F., Eric A., and JD Norman. In a very close competition, JD beat Carl to win a copy of Warring Worms. 20 people took part in that tournament, which was awesome.

 

The Dreamcast stuff was incredible. Of the developers, they gave out a disk with about 20 new demos and complete games for the 'Cast. I stopped by and checked out an awesome Breakout game and a 3D Space Invaders game. It was great to see that stuff there!

 

The pinball worked out really well throughout the day, with lots of people playing it and some really close competitions going on with it. Eventually, Billy Eno (programmer of Warring Worms) got the highest score which stood all day. No problems with the game all day :-)

 

The museum was incredible. Between Marty and JD, we had so much gaming material... I can't even describe it. We filled up our camera with over 100 pictures, and we didn't even really scratch the surface of the Gaming Museum or the Computing Museum. Everything was really well done, and people played each other all day at everything from the original PONG to arcade games, XBox, Jaguar and more!

 

On Jaguar related notes, Clint was there and he brought his Jaguar VR. As it was last year, I can't get over how insanely cool that thing is/was, and how it really could've made the Jaguar a must-own system. A lot of the newer system guys that saw it said that it was way ahead of it's time. There was also some funny conversations about Jaguar music that resulted in blaring Fight For Life and Cannon Fodder theme songs during the day.

 

Carl was, as always, accomponied by tons of awesome stuff. I for a second saw a copy of Protector SE that had the Jagfest 2K1 picture on it.

 

The two copies of the Midwest Classic 2600 games went over pretty good, but we did not sell out. If you are interested, please email me at [email protected] and I will send you more information about purchasing Warring Worms and/or Mr. Roboto (oh yes, Berzerk with Mr. Roboto as music!)

 

Honestly, everything went as good as we could've hoped for all day. One of the most interesting notes to me was finding out that the Donkey Kong Country movie is... a musical!?! Odd... but cool!

 

Planning for the next MWC is already underway, and we expect that the event will really grow next year. Everyone who was there had a great time, and we can't wait to do it all again! For everyone that I saw there, it was great to see everyone again -- you make doing all of that worth the hundreds if not thousands of hours of work that these things take from everyone involved. For everyone that couldn't make it, I hope to see you in the future as the Midwest Classic grows and expands!

[KAZ]

Next year, I'm getting a hotel room I think.

 

I didn't get much sleep "the night before" the event....since I've never been to a classic gaming convention it was like the night before Christmas as a kid, I could NOT sleep even tho I tried really hard.

 

So I "got up" at around 3am, and drove to pick up this guy I went there with at around 4am. I had a bunch of snacks and we hit the road.

 

We got there at around 9:45am, but we ended up driving around trying to find the place....they had it very well hidden, hehe.

My mapquest said Dana Street, but we drove up and down Dana Street and didn't find anything. We drove past the convention like three times, it was funny (well kinda).

 

So we finally waltzed in like 10 minutes after opening, and I snagged #6 of 60 of warring worms.

 

I had a good amount of energy, but it quickly faded at around 1:30-2:00pm. We ended up leaving at 3pm.

 

And I knew I had to drive 5 hours and 45 minutes back

 

So like I said, next year I'm going to do some planning, and invest some money in getting a hotel room, so I can invest more time in the place, and festivities. A two night hotel stay would be perfect!

 

Even in that 4 to 5 hours, I saw everything I needed to see I think. I'm going next year, there's no doubt.

[Nukey Shay]

Paying a little extra is *definately* worth being able to sleep in...not to mention saving your energy for the event. Being able to speak to people after things calm down a bit is worth half of any event IMO (I'd be the one looking for the poker game).

[KAZ]

That's funny you mention it, because I had like 6 or 7 very intense conversations with people during the "little" bit I was there.

 

I was very very happy to have people who shared my interest also want to talk about it. Goat Dan was one of them He told me the history of the name of their site and everything. Him and Gary too were so cool to people there. And I had a personal one on one 30 minute chat with the maker of Warring Worms (while I played him at his own game). I talked to him alot about how to program games, and got some useful newbie type advice. Our conversation was so distracting to him, that I ended up having a higher score. I was beating the maker of his own video game, there could not be a higher moment!! hehe

 

All this talking of course made me even more tired than I already was, and it became very uncomfortable at around 2pm.

 

 

On a slightly unrelated note....at around 7pm or 8pm that night I was really surprised that I suddenly wasn't tired anymore (like an adrenaline rush) but I had a sneaky feeling I knew what it was. My body probably just said fuck you, and stopped giving me signals that I was more tired than I had ever been in my life.

 

Kinda like when you are SO hungry that your stomach just says "figure it out yourself, I'm not helping anymore".

[Nukey Shay]

No, that's just your second wind kicking in...kinda like passing up your body's internal clock by enough margin for your mind to forget hearing the alarm (until it becomes unbearable, of course).

 

Actually, if it were me...I'd have just crashed out in the car for a bit (works better than coffee).