For the Midwest Gaming Classic 2006 article, click here.
The LaZer Dork Nerd HURD have attended the Midwest Gaming Classic again, except this time our HURD lost fellow members NASAchusetts and Quintin, but gained Vectorben and Dr. Lazers. With the new Nerd HURD assembled, we headed to Oconomowoc (I can pronounce it correctly now!), Wisconsin for the second time!
Much of this year's convention was the same as last year with some changes for better and for worse. To get the worse out of the way, the biggest loss was the severe lack of arcade and pinball cabinets compared to last year's. There was still a good amount of pinball, but the games just weren't as good and the arcade quality wasn't nearly as good either. Other small complaints include the speaker room not having walls, slightly worse speaker line-up (Marty made a comeback however and that's what counts!), and the Team Fremont game show being less exciting (maybe because Team LaZer Dorks wasn't in it this time).
Aside from the disappointing pinball/arcade set up, there were numerous improvements. The vendors have increased in size and even more greatly in quality. One store in particular was selling lots, and I mean LOTS, of rare gaming stuff, specifically Japanese imports. From Sylphia (PCE) to Shadowrun (Mega CD), there was excitement for everyone. Not only that, but stuff wasn't really overly priced either like you might expect; usually just fair or sometimes even less.
The other really big improvement was the gaming museum room all together. Last year there was some neat consoles and games set up, but this year there was way more and nearly all playable. The set ups ranged from Pong machines, to early game consoles, to classic computers, and to the latest in gaming - basically something for everyone. While most people were horking up the Guitar Hero, I was usually playing Dragon Fire on an old Radioshack computer using this really unique joystick - that game was so addicting.
Some other set ups I enjoyed a lot in this room were the Bally Astrocade (I'm totally getting one of these some day), Vectrex (even though it only had Mine Storm), Virtual Boy with lots of games (including Vertical Force!), and a complete Lynx collection with multiple Lynxs and games, link cables, and prototypes! JagFest also returned this year, which I spent some good time on.
However right next to JagFest was... TURBO FEST, the first known Turbo Grafx 16 convention in America! turbo_sage and I hosted this one together, which we supplied a wide variety of Turbo systems and games. I would also like to thank DHG Hunter of DieHardGamer.Com for supplying a Super Grafx with games for us! The systems we had brought were PC Engine + CDROM2 (briefcase), two Turbo Duos, PC Engine Duo R, Turbo Express, PC-FX, and a PC that played various Turbo clips, mostly from PC Engine FX. I only brought about 12 games, but turbo_sage brought his whole collection which seemed to have consisted of over 50 games, which was awesome since I got to play a bunch of PCE games I hadn't played yet, including that awesome four player Downtown Nekketsu game!
Unfortunately we had a lot more planned for this event that didn't make it in the end, which included tournaments. I also was stupid and didn't bring an TVs, so poor turbo_sage was the only person to supply them which gave us three TVs to deal with. However it turned out much better than I expected and I think even random people who attended the MGC had fun with it, especially when Devil's Crush was on! It was also nice to meet turbo_sage, who is a wonderful guy! If we do it again next year, I think we'll be prepared to do an even better job. For what we had though, I think we even gave JagFest a little run for their money ;) .
2007 overall was much of the same last year, which isn't a bad thing at all considering MGC 2006 was just jawesome! You can probably count on at least one of us LaZer Dorks attending again for 2008.
-Keranu Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 8:20pm USA central Time
- Keranu