Thought some of you guys might be interested in my writeup of Otakon, from the perspective of someone not really into anime, but more so covering the games elements, that's why I posted it here, although it easily could fit into OT.
This past weekend I went to Otakon in Baltimore (www.otakon.com) - it was my first experience at a con of this size, in the past I've been to I-CON at Stony Brook but that is more of a general sci-fi (although lately it's been focusing more on anime/gaming) convention, and it's much smaller in size... not to mention it's in freaking Stony Brook, which isn't really that exciting
Alright, onto the convention...
I went with my friend Dan, who set up the hotel arrangements. We rented a car from Enterprise, but neither of us had a valid VISA (they wouldn't take debit/check cards, they only wanted a full credit card), so I had to use my corporate card as a hold... they then wanted to charge me $75 extra because I was under 25 (I tried to plead with them since my 25th birthday is less than a week away)... but no. At least we got a cool car, a Dodge Caliber with only about 150 miles on it. The drive down was pretty comfortable and it went fast, I popped in the new Sasha CD I bought (Instant Live - Avalon) and wow, what a bad CD... to think at one point this guy was my #1 DJ, now all he plays is boring ass Booka Shade/MANDY "mnml" stuff that I hate, not to mention the mixing ain't that great and there is even a part at the start of disk 2 where the music stops due to a software error (the whole CD was mixed live using Ableton)! Alright, well enough about that. Yeah, so we get to Baltimore, unfortunately by the time I checked in to Otakon and got my badge, the Smash Bros doubles tournament was going on, so I couldn't enter
So, on the first day, we decided to check the game room for a bit, and maybe go to a few panels. The first thing I noticed about the con was that downtown Baltimore was pretty much loaded with cosplayers. A lot of the costumes were absolutely incredibly done, and there were tons of people decked out in gaming/anime tees and a lot of Hot Topic stuff. The crowd was mostly younger than me, like I'd say from 16-21, although I've seen a few parents (some of them fans themselves) with their kids. So I felt a bit out of place, as I didn't dress up or anything either. But damn, there were some NICE looking women there!
The games room was really nicely set up, a commendable job by UnholySpectacle of these boards. They had mostly 2 player games there, and a few single player titles... mostly in the shooter, fighter, and rhythm categories. The shooter selection in particular was pretty interesting - Ikaruga, Einhander and R-Type Final being the most recognizable... but they also had Under Defeat, Trigger Heart Exelica, Senko no Ronde, and Twinkle Star Sprites. The vertical shooters were all in tate mode, with the TVs properly rotated, which was great. Under Defeat is a great game, with some lovely graphics, I only got to play a few stages though and I played with a second player. The real star of the show for me was Twinkle Star Sprites... kind of like a cross between a shooter and a 2 player attack puzzler... you create chains by firing down enemies in a traditional shooter setup, and the larger the chain, the more bullets you can send your opponent's way. I definitely need to get a copy!
I also played Beatmania for the first time, and even though it's nothing like regular DJing, it's hard as ****. I was quickly overwhelmed, then again I suck at rhythm games and don't really care for them much, so whatever.
Some other games they had: Gears of War, Halo 2, Rez, Keyboardmania, Typing of the Dead, Samurai Shodown V, KOF XI, Third Strike, Guardian Heroes, Hajime no Ippo Wii, Wario Ware, the Bleach and Naruto fighting games, Smash Bros Melee, and Mario Kart (the latter 2 played on huge flat-panel TVs). Mountain Dew was also giving out free Grape Mountain Dews if you would play Halo 2, they had a pretty big setup. I don't like Mountain Dew and I've played plenty of H2 so I didn't participate Overall a nice and diverse lineup of games, wouldn't have minded seeing some RPGs there but then you have people playing the game for hours at a time (like when I went to the games section of NY Comic Con in '05 and some old black guy was playing Shadow Hearts 3 for like 3 hours, and then I asked him what he thought of it and he said "it sucked")
Anyways, back to the panels... The first panel we went to was "The 10 Games You Should've Played", I am more into games than anime, so the panels I was mostly interested in going to, involved games. This first panel, just had 2 dudes from a web comic (I forgot which one unfortunately) and a video of a bunch of games, where they discussed (in some good detail) about the gameplay mechanics of each of the particular games.
The games (that I remember) were as follows:
Techromancer (DC)
Mother 3 (GC)
The Addams Family (SNES)
Twinkle Star Sprites (PS2/Neo Geo/Saturn)
Sin and Punishment (N64)
Darkwing Duck (NES)
Rival Schools: Project Justice (DC)
The Guardian Legend (NES)
Under Defeat (DC)
Interesting list... and honestly a few of these games were new to me. the Addams Family game in particular looks pretty cool, kinda reminiscent of Goonies II. Looks like I need to track this one down. Seeing Mother 3 makes me want to give Earthbound a fair shake now, and I was really excited to see Sin and Punishment, one of the only good things about the N64, make the list. 'course, there are a lot of games I would have personally put on my list of the "10 games you should have played"... One of the Phantasy Stars, Shadow Hearts:Covenant, Metal Storm, Wrecking Crew, Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap, Kororinpa: Marble Mania, etc. But the list was still pretty decent.
Yeah, so after that, we checked into the hotel, then went to eat and explore the Inner Harbor. Ate at a sushi restaurant, 'cuz Dan loves sushi (ehhh, I think it's OK but a bit overrated - it's like a food people like to eat to seem "sophisticated". No wonder why it was a favorite of my pretentious ex's). The hotel was the Mariott at Camden Yards, pretty comfortable and classy hotel, we had a nice view of the Inner Harbor from out of the window, not to mention it was only like 2 blocks from the convention center, which made coming and going really convenient.
So after all that, we decided to check out the anime dance rave... It was mostly the big local DJs playing out and as soon as I went in, I heard some guy trainwrecking with some super cheeseball trance/J-pop. Which is what I thought was par for the course. But then, that guy left and some other dude came on, who played some nice, bassline-heavy, electro house. Highlight being the Dirty South remix of Higher State Of Consciousness, the biggest song from WMC this year. The music played was a lot more diverse than I expected, I've heard everything from soulful house, to funky/Florida breaks, to electro-tinged progressive ( <3 <3 <3 )... and the people were REALLY getting into it! So many people were dancing, breaking, playing with glowsticks, and most of them were in costume, which made it even better (especially some of the girls in their scantily-clad costumes ). Definitely more of a vibe than most of the clubs back here in NYC (which are usually filled with obnoxious guidos), it took me back to my "Groove Attack" rave days. Some cute blonde even asked me to dance with her
The next day, we decided to hit up a panel on the Lunar series, Dan was a big fan of the old SEGA-CD titles, and I've played Silver Star Story Complete on PSX, (thought it was decent, I need to play the original SEGA-CD titles). The panel highlighted some of the differences between the SEGA-CD and Saturn/PSX remakes, and some of changes, retranslations made by Working Designs for the US versions. Most of the people in the audience were pro-WD, which is interesting since WD (RIP) still gets tons of postmortem hate on message boards. My only disappointment was they skimmed over Magic School Lunar, the most obscure title in the series (originally being a Game Gear RPG, and later ported to the Saturn, and never got a US release). They showed a small anime video based on Magic School Lunar, that was really ridiculous with lots of "anime humor" (i.e. fast talking, really ridiculous, lots of slapstick). It was actually really funny though! I think the video is online somewhere...
Then, I went to a Q and A panel with Eminence (a Japanese composer I'm guessing, I'm not even sure who he is), and Hitoshi Sakimoto, the musician for many great games (including Radiant Silvergun, FFT, FF12, BOF: DQ, and Gradius V), and one of my favorites. I wanted to ask a question but I didn't get called on. The best was some girl asked a question about the baroque influence in his work, and he was like "I don't have a clue what you are talking about". He mentioned he's a bit influenced by electronic dance music (!!), even though the only soundtrack in that style was Gradius V. Missed my chance to get his autograph though... wish I would've known in advance, I would have brought my copy of RS... imagine how much a copy of that signed by Sakimoto would go for on ebay??? Holy shit...
I also called my friend from LJ, Brad/Rail, and we met up for dinner... ate at a nice, but slightly overpriced, surf and turf restaurant... was really cool getting to meet him in person, we discussed everything from life in Huntsville (funny enough I first started to talk to him on LJ like a week before I went to Huntsville), to demographics, to just general anime/game stuff. Then after dinner, back to the hotel, and to the next panel, a Silent Hill panel.
Now, I'm not the biggest fan of the SH games, having only played 2 and seen the movie. But I definitely respect the stories and themes present in the SH series, even if the gameplay of the second one really sucked. So I went in, expecting a detailed analysis of the storylines, with people in the audience discussing their own personal theories on the games' themes. But what I got was some really silly panel that didn't take itself seriously in the slightest. This is what happens when you have fangirls run shit I guess There were some awesome costumes though attending the panel... a whole bunch of Pyramid Heads, complete with metal helmet and large blades. The girls mostly made fun of the characters in the games, using a lot of hyperbole, and showed some funny clips from the games, and some Pyramid Head videos with lots of sexual innuendo But everybody else was into it, so I dunno. They showed a few trailers for the games, too, and had a trivia contest with some real challenging questions, which I guess that was cool. The highlight of it (or the low-light of it) was when they showed the UFO ending from SH3, complete with a song about the characters in the game, where a whole bunch of people lined up to sing along (it's all in Japanese) and dance.
We ended the second day with another night at the rave...
The final day, we spent exploring the dealer's room... Dan got a Yuri Paddle (a giant wooden panel with "YURI" written on it), and a Domokun cap, I went to the MAD-GEAR LLC store (they also had a video game store from NYC present, but their prices were EXTREMELY rip-off) and picked up Star Ocean: Blue Sphere for GBC (I'm a major fan of the SO series), and another store that specialized in Japanese PC games, and got Ys Origin and Ys: The Oath in Felghana... another series I'm a major fan of. Also picked up a Starfi plushie, some souvenirs for my buddy Marce and his wife Karen, got him a Trigun action figure and her a little stuffed Jiji, the cat from Kiki's Delivery Service. Karen has recently gotten into the Miyazaki movies, so I think this would be a cool gift. Yeah, so the game room closed at 12, and even though the con went on till about 6 or so, nothing terribly interesting was going on, so we left and went to the Inner Harbor.
We checked out the Aquarium, which was absolutely amazing (sharks, manta rays, poisonous frogs, clownfish, an actual coral reef, and ugh dolphins), and then ate at a tapas bar. My first time having tapas and I am HOOKED... Yeah, then we left and had a shitty drive back, stuck in massive traffic getting through Staten Island, and yeah, here I am back at work
Overall, I had a really great time and look forward to next year's! The people were all pretty friendly and I didn't notice any attitude, then again where I come from, every other person has a chip on their shoulder. Anime geeks get too much flack that should be reserved for my main enemies, the guidos and wiggers. Didn't notice anybody really freaky or scary, then again I stayed out of the hentai/yuri/yaoi panels and movie showings, so who knows Pics to come soon, when my friend gets off his ass and transfers them from his cell phone
This past weekend I went to Otakon in Baltimore (www.otakon.com) - it was my first experience at a con of this size, in the past I've been to I-CON at Stony Brook but that is more of a general sci-fi (although lately it's been focusing more on anime/gaming) convention, and it's much smaller in size... not to mention it's in freaking Stony Brook, which isn't really that exciting
Alright, onto the convention...I went with my friend Dan, who set up the hotel arrangements. We rented a car from Enterprise, but neither of us had a valid VISA (they wouldn't take debit/check cards, they only wanted a full credit card), so I had to use my corporate card as a hold... they then wanted to charge me $75 extra because I was under 25 (I tried to plead with them since my 25th birthday is less than a week away)... but no. At least we got a cool car, a Dodge Caliber with only about 150 miles on it. The drive down was pretty comfortable and it went fast, I popped in the new Sasha CD I bought (Instant Live - Avalon) and wow, what a bad CD... to think at one point this guy was my #1 DJ, now all he plays is boring ass Booka Shade/MANDY "mnml" stuff that I hate, not to mention the mixing ain't that great and there is even a part at the start of disk 2 where the music stops due to a software error (the whole CD was mixed live using Ableton)! Alright, well enough about that. Yeah, so we get to Baltimore, unfortunately by the time I checked in to Otakon and got my badge, the Smash Bros doubles tournament was going on, so I couldn't enter
So, on the first day, we decided to check the game room for a bit, and maybe go to a few panels. The first thing I noticed about the con was that downtown Baltimore was pretty much loaded with cosplayers. A lot of the costumes were absolutely incredibly done, and there were tons of people decked out in gaming/anime tees and a lot of Hot Topic stuff. The crowd was mostly younger than me, like I'd say from 16-21, although I've seen a few parents (some of them fans themselves) with their kids. So I felt a bit out of place, as I didn't dress up or anything either. But damn, there were some NICE looking women there!
The games room was really nicely set up, a commendable job by UnholySpectacle of these boards. They had mostly 2 player games there, and a few single player titles... mostly in the shooter, fighter, and rhythm categories. The shooter selection in particular was pretty interesting - Ikaruga, Einhander and R-Type Final being the most recognizable... but they also had Under Defeat, Trigger Heart Exelica, Senko no Ronde, and Twinkle Star Sprites. The vertical shooters were all in tate mode, with the TVs properly rotated, which was great. Under Defeat is a great game, with some lovely graphics, I only got to play a few stages though and I played with a second player. The real star of the show for me was Twinkle Star Sprites... kind of like a cross between a shooter and a 2 player attack puzzler... you create chains by firing down enemies in a traditional shooter setup, and the larger the chain, the more bullets you can send your opponent's way. I definitely need to get a copy!
I also played Beatmania for the first time, and even though it's nothing like regular DJing, it's hard as ****. I was quickly overwhelmed, then again I suck at rhythm games and don't really care for them much, so whatever.
Some other games they had: Gears of War, Halo 2, Rez, Keyboardmania, Typing of the Dead, Samurai Shodown V, KOF XI, Third Strike, Guardian Heroes, Hajime no Ippo Wii, Wario Ware, the Bleach and Naruto fighting games, Smash Bros Melee, and Mario Kart (the latter 2 played on huge flat-panel TVs). Mountain Dew was also giving out free Grape Mountain Dews if you would play Halo 2, they had a pretty big setup. I don't like Mountain Dew and I've played plenty of H2 so I didn't participate
Overall a nice and diverse lineup of games, wouldn't have minded seeing some RPGs there but then you have people playing the game for hours at a time (like when I went to the games section of NY Comic Con in '05 and some old black guy was playing Shadow Hearts 3 for like 3 hours, and then I asked him what he thought of it and he said "it sucked") Anyways, back to the panels... The first panel we went to was "The 10 Games You Should've Played", I am more into games than anime, so the panels I was mostly interested in going to, involved games. This first panel, just had 2 dudes from a web comic (I forgot which one unfortunately) and a video of a bunch of games, where they discussed (in some good detail) about the gameplay mechanics of each of the particular games.
The games (that I remember) were as follows:
Techromancer (DC)
Mother 3 (GC)
The Addams Family (SNES)
Twinkle Star Sprites (PS2/Neo Geo/Saturn)
Sin and Punishment (N64)
Darkwing Duck (NES)
Rival Schools: Project Justice (DC)
The Guardian Legend (NES)
Under Defeat (DC)
Interesting list... and honestly a few of these games were new to me. the Addams Family game in particular looks pretty cool, kinda reminiscent of Goonies II. Looks like I need to track this one down. Seeing Mother 3 makes me want to give Earthbound a fair shake now, and I was really excited to see Sin and Punishment, one of the only good things about the N64, make the list. 'course, there are a lot of games I would have personally put on my list of the "10 games you should have played"... One of the Phantasy Stars, Shadow Hearts:Covenant, Metal Storm, Wrecking Crew, Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap, Kororinpa: Marble Mania, etc. But the list was still pretty decent.
Yeah, so after that, we checked into the hotel, then went to eat and explore the Inner Harbor. Ate at a sushi restaurant, 'cuz Dan loves sushi (ehhh, I think it's OK but a bit overrated - it's like a food people like to eat to seem "sophisticated". No wonder why it was a favorite of my pretentious ex's
). The hotel was the Mariott at Camden Yards, pretty comfortable and classy hotel, we had a nice view of the Inner Harbor from out of the window, not to mention it was only like 2 blocks from the convention center, which made coming and going really convenient.So after all that, we decided to check out the anime dance rave... It was mostly the big local DJs playing out and as soon as I went in, I heard some guy trainwrecking with some super cheeseball trance/J-pop. Which is what I thought was par for the course. But then, that guy left and some other dude came on, who played some nice, bassline-heavy, electro house. Highlight being the Dirty South remix of Higher State Of Consciousness, the biggest song from WMC this year. The music played was a lot more diverse than I expected, I've heard everything from soulful house, to funky/Florida breaks, to electro-tinged progressive ( <3 <3 <3 )... and the people were REALLY getting into it! So many people were dancing, breaking, playing with glowsticks, and most of them were in costume, which made it even better (especially some of the girls in their scantily-clad costumes
). Definitely more of a vibe than most of the clubs back here in NYC (which are usually filled with obnoxious guidos), it took me back to my "Groove Attack" rave days. Some cute blonde even asked me to dance with her The next day, we decided to hit up a panel on the Lunar series, Dan was a big fan of the old SEGA-CD titles, and I've played Silver Star Story Complete on PSX, (thought it was decent, I need to play the original SEGA-CD titles). The panel highlighted some of the differences between the SEGA-CD and Saturn/PSX remakes, and some of changes, retranslations made by Working Designs for the US versions. Most of the people in the audience were pro-WD, which is interesting since WD (RIP) still gets tons of postmortem hate on message boards. My only disappointment was they skimmed over Magic School Lunar, the most obscure title in the series (originally being a Game Gear RPG, and later ported to the Saturn, and never got a US release). They showed a small anime video based on Magic School Lunar, that was really ridiculous with lots of "anime humor" (i.e. fast talking, really ridiculous, lots of slapstick). It was actually really funny though! I think the video is online somewhere...
Then, I went to a Q and A panel with Eminence (a Japanese composer I'm guessing, I'm not even sure who he is
), and Hitoshi Sakimoto, the musician for many great games (including Radiant Silvergun, FFT, FF12, BOF: DQ, and Gradius V), and one of my favorites. I wanted to ask a question but I didn't get called on. The best was some girl asked a question about the baroque influence in his work, and he was like "I don't have a clue what you are talking about". He mentioned he's a bit influenced by electronic dance music (!!), even though the only soundtrack in that style was Gradius V. Missed my chance to get his autograph though... wish I would've known in advance, I would have brought my copy of RS... imagine how much a copy of that signed by Sakimoto would go for on ebay??? Holy shit...I also called my friend from LJ, Brad/Rail, and we met up for dinner... ate at a nice, but slightly overpriced, surf and turf restaurant... was really cool getting to meet him in person, we discussed everything from life in Huntsville (funny enough I first started to talk to him on LJ like a week before I went to Huntsville), to demographics, to just general anime/game stuff. Then after dinner, back to the hotel, and to the next panel, a Silent Hill panel.
Now, I'm not the biggest fan of the SH games, having only played 2 and seen the movie. But I definitely respect the stories and themes present in the SH series, even if the gameplay of the second one really sucked. So I went in, expecting a detailed analysis of the storylines, with people in the audience discussing their own personal theories on the games' themes. But what I got was some really silly panel that didn't take itself seriously in the slightest. This is what happens when you have fangirls run shit I guess
There were some awesome costumes though attending the panel... a whole bunch of Pyramid Heads, complete with metal helmet and large blades. The girls mostly made fun of the characters in the games, using a lot of hyperbole, and showed some funny clips from the games, and some Pyramid Head videos with lots of sexual innuendo But everybody else was into it, so I dunno. They showed a few trailers for the games, too, and had a trivia contest with some real challenging questions, which I guess that was cool. The highlight of it (or the low-light of it) was when they showed the UFO ending from SH3, complete with a song about the characters in the game, where a whole bunch of people lined up to sing along (it's all in Japanese) and dance.We ended the second day with another night at the rave...
The final day, we spent exploring the dealer's room... Dan got a Yuri Paddle (a giant wooden panel with "YURI" written on it), and a Domokun cap, I went to the MAD-GEAR LLC store (they also had a video game store from NYC present, but their prices were EXTREMELY rip-off) and picked up Star Ocean: Blue Sphere for GBC (I'm a major fan of the SO series), and another store that specialized in Japanese PC games, and got Ys Origin and Ys: The Oath in Felghana... another series I'm a major fan of. Also picked up a Starfi plushie, some souvenirs for my buddy Marce and his wife Karen, got him a Trigun action figure and her a little stuffed Jiji, the cat from Kiki's Delivery Service. Karen has recently gotten into the Miyazaki movies, so I think this would be a cool gift. Yeah, so the game room closed at 12, and even though the con went on till about 6 or so, nothing terribly interesting was going on, so we left and went to the Inner Harbor.
We checked out the Aquarium, which was absolutely amazing (sharks, manta rays, poisonous frogs, clownfish, an actual coral reef, and ugh dolphins), and then ate at a tapas bar. My first time having tapas and I am HOOKED... Yeah, then we left and had a shitty drive back, stuck in massive traffic getting through Staten Island, and yeah, here I am back at work
Overall, I had a really great time and look forward to next year's! The people were all pretty friendly and I didn't notice any attitude, then again where I come from, every other person has a chip on their shoulder. Anime geeks get too much flack that should be reserved for my main enemies, the guidos and wiggers. Didn't notice anybody really freaky or scary, then again I stayed out of the hentai/yuri/yaoi panels and movie showings, so who knows
Pics to come soon, when my friend gets off his ass and transfers them from his cell phone 