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Too Many Games 2011
In case you need another convention to go to this convention season I will share Too Many Games that will take place in Oaks, PA May 6th to the 8th. They have panels open in case you want to submit an idea to have take place at the event and have a prereg for $20 that gives you access to the Friday shows.
Why do I point this out? Well if you are a collector of retro video games they have the best vendor hall I have ever been to, it is the same place my Atari was fixed (later given to Scrym) and that was done during the event. Also they have some Tabletop Gaming and are releasing the first 15 copies of Dig Dug for the NES. However my main reason...Concerts.
If you are going let me know and lets meet up and have a good time.
Why do I point this out? Well if you are a collector of retro video games they have the best vendor hall I have ever been to, it is the same place my Atari was fixed (later given to Scrym) and that was done during the event. Also they have some Tabletop Gaming and are releasing the first 15 copies of Dig Dug for the NES. However my main reason...Concerts.
If you are going let me know and lets meet up and have a good time.
Comments
Positives:
Dealer Room: Remember when I said that this room was the best dealer room I have ever been to when it comes to retro games? We ll they managed to improve upon that by adding Manga, anime, artists, and indy devs. This year I did not buy a single game from any vendor but my wallet was bringing for the various art,sculpture,DVDs,Shirts,Independent Board/Card/Video Games they had on the floor. So once again it made their show.
Concerts: Except the snag from the setup in the beginning it went off without a hitch, placed in the back corner inside of a bar (which was fully stocked and open) people were jamming to the tunes of rock, hip hop, and chiptune while some were at the bar enjoying it from a distance.
IGDA Presence: The Philadelphia location was a supporter of the event and had a lot of pull in getting the indie scene involved with the floor. I enjoyed their offerings of getting indie studios from up north to come down and check out, plus the added feature of the Game Jam being out in the open allowed people to peek into a live competition of video game making.
The Not so Positives:
Panels: Withholding mine being canceled a fairly the last minute the offerings were weak. The one panel I wanted to go to turn out to be a poorly presented mess that I walked out of when the presenter admitted it was their first time presenting it. For a small convention it is hard but to show some selective process on how to pick them instead of picking the ones with the biggest draw would be the best in the future.
Board Games: This is going to sound odd, but they had a HUGE area for board game (not pax big but a good amount of size) however there was no library, no person running the area, so it was more of empty tabled with "paused" games that no one knew if they just quit in the middle of it or would come back. If they had the ZenKaiCon board game library there it would elevate this so much.
Console Play: There was one main isle to go and partake in console games, no arcade games, just controllers on TVs. That did not look appealing.
I did not check out the tournaments or LAN yet so I will withhold judgement until then. Needless to say this convention is approaching the point where I could recommend it for anyone to travel to get to outside of the tristate area, and for being now the ONLY PA video game convention these days that is a good thing.