A Con in Review 2: PAX East 2011

So, for those of you unfamiliar, I was in Boston a few weeks ago for the second annual Penny Arcade Expo: East Coast Version. This is my story.

First, I'll start with the basic setup. This was a three day convention, on March 11-13, at the Boston Convention Center in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. I drove down there with a friend of mine, Greg, and because of the distance, Thursday and Monday were designated as travel days. The drive down there was pretty uneventful; got to our hotel at about 1AM, and rested for the big day ahead of us.

Day 1, at the convention center. My first order of business was to make a beeline to the expo hall to check out Nintendo's booth. The expo hall is the area of the convention where all the industry types show of their latest games/technology, and there are several stores there too. I would spend the majority of my time in this place.

This is but a small fraction of the craziness of the expo hall.

I lined up at the Nintendo booth first, hoping to sample the 3DS. And sample I did. I own a 3DS now, but I still got to try some games (Kid Icarus, Zelda) that aren't out yet, and I had a great time doing so.

See? Great time, didn't I say it?

In case you're wondering, that hat is a Plants vs. Zombies pylon hat, which was given away for free. Apparently, there was a chance to win a prize if you were seen wearing the hat, but that didn't happen to me.

Here's a better picture of my awesome hat.

I won't break this down on a day-by-day basis because it all blurs together now, but my time spent in the expo hall was fantastic. Here's a couple other awesome things I saw:

Pokemon B/W preview tins. I bought one of each of them.

Giant Pikachu will kill us all! Aaaah!

Mario Chess. Awesome stuff right here. Would have bought it except it was $50 and I would have had to carry it. Also, Luigi is the queen, lmao.

And what's this? Professor Layton for 3DS. Felt so weird seeing a 3DS game at retail. If not for the language and the price tag, this would be a definite buy.

The best part of the expo hall, 3DS notwithstanding, was probably all the stuff I came away with. I spent a bit too much money on Pokemon cards, T-shirts, etc. but that's a con for you, I guess. If you've seen me lately you've probably seen the shirts I bought.

I also won some stuff, which is pretty cool. Firstly, I was at a card shop, and the guy behind the counter told me, "Hey, you wanna make some cash?" Suspicious of this man and his enticing claim, I inquired further, and he directed me to a WoW TCG promotion wherein you are given a key, and can attempt to open a chest to win rare cards. The line for it was pretty long, but he said that even if you lose, you're given a free random card, and he would buy it from me. Luck is a superfluous thing, though, as I didn't open the chest, but the card I got randomly was worth $50! How about that?

Following this, on a whim I lined up in probably won of the most fantastic lines ever, at the CyberPower booth. They had a promotion where you filled out a survey, then spun a wheel for a prize. Just for waiting in the line, they were handing out random stuff like stress balls, pens and paper, T-shirts, mousepads, etc. When I got closer to the front of the line, they held a raffle for a free Xbox 360 game, Dark Star One. I probably wouldn't play the game, but who cares, free stuff! The challenge: pick a number between 1 and 100. I pick 52. The right number: 52. No joke. Free Xbox 360 game for me. Then, I finally get up to the wheel. I do the survey, and spin! I land on "Drawing," which I thought was like a picture or something, but it turned out to be a draw for a bigger prize. I won an awesome keyboard. How about that!?

Yeah, pretty awesome.

Ok, leaving the Expo Hall, finally. The other main attraction of PAX East was LoadingReadyRun, sketch comedians of whom I am a huge fan. They had a panel and screening block on Saturday night, which I was promptly in attendance at. They also had the opportunity to take pictures.

I asked them to pose like they were photo-bombing me.

During the screening block, I invited them out to dinner again, as I had last year. I didn't get a picture of that, but here's a picture I got from the same occurrence last year.

Last year featured the whole group rather than just the three that showed up this year, but that, in its own way, was just as fun, because it meant they spent less time chatting amongst themselves. Look at my hair, it's so long!

And that was PAX East. I finished all of the headcount surveys in Pokemon Black while I was there, with time to spare. With an attendance of nearly 70,000 people, it was apparently the most successful PAX to date, which counts all of the Seattle-based ones as well. The drive home was similarly long and uneventful, and marked the end of our journey to Boston. I'll leave you with this awesome bumper sticker I saw in the parking garage.

Until next time.