I want to go on record stating that the BCEC is goddamn huge, probably one of the biggest venues I have been to in any convention, though square foot wise it’s probably the same as Baltimore CC or possibly Connecticut CC. That said this proved to be my undoing as by the end of the day my feet were banged up pretty good. My Pokewalker registered at least 39,268 steps for the day, which was double what I put on for Katsucon Saturday.

Upon arriving I went to the “History of Chiptunes” panel out of curiosity. After getting lost trying to find the damn room, I found it 10 minutes before start. It wasn’t as exciting as I might’ve thought, it was a powerpoint presentation of the history of the chiptune scene, which while very informative, we did not have chairs, as the room was purposed for standing music shows and thus we sat on the floor. Both of my legs fell completely asleep, so by the time I try to get up to leave, I literally cannot feel my legs and almost fell over trying to stand up. Even walking forward was hard. Eventually once the feeling in my legs returned I went into the Exhibition Center. A lot, and I mean a loooooot of companies had booths here. MSI, Gigabyte, NVidia, Microsoft, Nintendo, Gearbox, Valve, you name it they were probably there. All I could do at first was kinda walk around and survey what was going on. A lot of booths had demos and equipment out to play with, others had showcases and setups to test games, several has complete home driving setups to showcase new racing games coming out. Most of the computer manufacturers were giving away free shit for completing a survey, liking them on Facebook/Twitter, or email address, so I took home a number of neat things from MSI, Gigabyte, Newegg, PNY, and more. The lines were very long for most of the demos and showcases, so I got in line for the only one that mattered to me, and that was Valve’s Portal2 booth. The wait was probably about 45-60min. but you get a t-shirt featuring a retro Aperture Science logo before getting to go inside their room to view some new footage from the game, which was the first six minutes of the game featuring Weasley, and a few scenes from later with CEO Cave Johnson in what appears to be a retro test chamber, possibly a look into how testing was done before GlaDOS. I debated getting in line for Gearbox’s Duke Nukem Forever demo, but figured eh, the game should come out next month, so I’m pretty sure it can wait. Other booths were pretty jammed full of people, but it was mostly games I wasn’t interested in or didn’t care to bother with. By then it was about noon so I decided to try the BCEC Food Court, which wasn’t bad, but quite pricey.

Afternoon was much slower, I had only scheduled the chiptunes panels and Scott and Kris panel at night in my “panels I want to see” column but I didn’t want to go sitting on the floor again for the chiptunes panels, so I decided to wander around and check out the other areas. The vintage arcade room was pretty neat, though I didn’t recognize as many of the games as I thought I would. No Pole Position or Super Off-Road, though they did have R-Wing. I walked by the Classic Console room but did not go in, and I should have, I probably would have found something neat. I found the Handheld Lounge, which was a big section of hallway with Sumo beanbag chairs you could lay down on and play handheld games, laptops, sleep, whatever. This was a massive spot for DS gamers, and an even more massive spot for Pokemon players. I managed to find a beanbag early on and camped out there for a couple hours to take a break and play a little White. These beanbags are pretty comfortable to lay in I have to admit. The one next to me was open until all the sudden a huge crowd of people tailing this girl descends onto it. Apparently she was a “gym leader” and they were all there to battle her for a badge. Now, I like playing Pokemon, it’s a fun game and one of the few things I continued from my childhood, but the concept of taking the love of the game further into real life and becoming a “IRL Gym Leader” of sorts isn’t my style. I imagine you have to be pretty high on unwarranted self-importance to do this sort of thing, because I’m pretty sure she got off on the massive amount of attention she got. Almost everyone who fought her won, and really, listening to her state her team was “all Steel-type” and that most leaders pick types, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of challenge to that, so it leads me to believe that you’re really in it for the fun and attention. Hey, not really knocking it, if that’s your thing then that’s cool. I’m impressed my introvert-fu and claustrophobia didn’t kick in being surrounded by so many pokefriends in the same square foot as me.

I took another whack at the Expo Hall later on and bought Ashlynn a plushie Sock Puppet from LittleBigPlanet and also nabbed one of the free Plants vs. Zombies cones from PopCap for her, since she couldn’t come because of work. Wandered around some more, but finally I ran out of want or care to do much of else around 4-ish and ended up back in the lounge to play more Pokemon and rest a bit until Matt got off work in the convention center. We and some of his friends from Ohio went out to dinner, though that was a trip in a half because we ended up walking a good mile or more until we eventually settled on a place. My phone was dead by this time and I stole an outlet at the door to charge while we were waiting. After dinner we went to the Scott and Kris After-Hours panel, which was fucking hilarious. If you seen any of their Blamamations on PATV, it’s like that only several times more down. The line for it was unexpectedly long, we were lucky to get in at the end of the line before they capped it. The panel itself was pretty awesome, a lot of crazy stories, someone gave them a bottle of alcoholic whipped cream (which they used) and Jerry dropped in at the beginning to do the song from one of their Blam episodes. At around midnight we left as I had the drive home to do, got home about 215 in time to watch an hour of my life slip by in an instant. Fucking time change.

Overall, PAX is a completely different experience than most of the anime cons I have been to. It’s organized, especially line management and coordination, there is a lot to do, and if there isn’t a lot to do, there is a lot to not do and the Handheld Lounge is seriously one of the best fucking ideas ever. If I was more of a social bee, I could probably spend all day there playing games on wifi with people, but at the very least, just being able to chill out and play games is enough. The venue was very-well equipped for all of the people, food and drink aplenty, the layout was excellent once you got your bearings straight. As for people, strangely enough gamers are a pretty docile bunch, you have people like me who keep to themselves and others who are a little more out there. There was a small number of people who cosplayed mostly game characters, but so very few and far in-between. There were also significantly less male and female landwhales and hambeasts, and you can cry foul to me all you want, but good lord those type of anime fans are the worst, and I rather appreciated not having to listen or look at them in a gaming convention.

So TL;DR, PAX East was awesome, and I will most likely return next year, and possibly make two days out of it, though one day was probably enough. Christ walking. I am a big guy, though on a scale of 1 to Gabe Newell I am probably under a half of him, but since not working retail or food service anymore, my walking-fu has diminished greatly. Need to work on that, also need better shoes.