GenCon 2019

And what I did there.

Whoa. This kid has landed home. Albeit for a short amount of time. Just got in from the road trip to GenCon 2019. We wrapped a fantastic show. And this year I even played more games!

August is shaping up real nicely for me. I’m living that con life just about 100% of the time. This to me is a huge part of my definition of nerd life. If you’re in academia, you’re at universities all the time. If you’re a nerd, you’re at cons all the time. Living among your people.

Last week I was at GenCon. This weekend I’m at Terrificon (Mohegan Sun in CT), and next weekend I work Fan Expo Boston. Pretty exciting stuff.

Now as anything we are passionate about, this lifestyle isn’t for everyone. That’s ok. The outside world might not understand your excitement of these things. That’s ok. There are plenty of kindred spirits on the inside.

GenCon is a ginormous gaming convention held in Indianapolis, Indiana. This year was its 51st installment. Gencon is middle aged. I’ve attended a few years myself, working with Pearl Odyssey. While it’s true that we may miss some parts of the convention because of work, we did get to play some games. The neat thing about these gaming conventions is that the gaming halls are open later than the vendor hall so we were able to explore. My friends participated in a Transformers TCG tournament. They taught me how to play and it is enjoyable, but I wasn’t ready for tournament status.

Gencon had a huge food truck alley and side street. Complete with a beer tent. So while the guys engaged in the tournament, I sampled plenty of Indianapolis faire. This is a super fun game for Anna, one she always wins. I set myself up at one of those little community standing tables and chatted with people as they came to share the space. One thing I heartily maintain is my ability to talk shop with anyone about anything. And so I proceeded to network, making some cool connections that brought us sales and fuel for my own art. It’s super easy to start up a convo over food truck faire, and I am not shy at all.

Some games I did play…

So I did learn to play Transformers TCG. My buddy Erik also built me a deck to play with: The Insecticons! This game is fun because well it is, and also the nostalgic value for us 80’s/90’s kiddos playing our favorite characters. Except for Josh, who only had Ninja Turtles (which I’m sure that will be a deck building game sooner or later if it isn’t already.) What you do is build a deck of certain characters with their various attacks and then add the action cards that would best support these characters in the game battle situations. The action cards might be a weapon or some attribute to enhance an attack, or something to enhance defence. A bunch of the buddies are playing the game too. Kyle states “I like it because it’s a simple game and very intuitive at its core but there’s a ton of subtlety to it with the battle cards.” Well said, Kyle, well said.

You can tell a lot about a person by the cards they play with. (Is that a metaphor for life?) Erik very excitedly told me he built Dinobots and Insecticons decks for me to play, stating they were all power, just like the show. I asked if there was the Weird Al transformer, like from the 1984 movie. Sadly, there is not. (Where are we on that one Hasbro?!?!) Basically all the action/attribute cards for these bots are all kinds of offensive glory. “The best defense is a good offence” mentality. All orange (attack points), no blue (defense points). If you know me at all, these are my favorite kinds of characters in TV, Movies, Literature. All fire and passion, kind of cocky, big guns, loose canon, wreckless, get’s the job done. Gryffindor af. Well I guess you can tell a lot about a person by the characters they like. “My” Insecticon deck demolishes in one on one play.

We were at the booth and an attendee came up with an Autobots shirt on. I complimented her on it, naturally, and noticed she had a bunch of T-Formers pins on her backpack. I mentioned how we played the game and how I played with an Insecticons deck (also I’m a newb and a casual player lol). We chatted about various cards and she told me about a new comic called “More Than Meets the Eye,” which I have to check out. She told us how her husband was playing in the big Transformers tournament. They came back the next day to pick up a setting, and he looks at me and goes “are you the one who plays with an Insecticon deck?!” And I was like “yes, yes I am.” They were super fun! He gave us some extra character cards he had, including General Optimus Prime, a highly coveted prize in my group. We even hung out a little the next day after the vendor hall had closed. She showed me her sketchbook (which I always truly appreciate) where she had drawn several characters including some of her own original concepts. It was super cool.

As I wrote about in our Origins adventure, I like to gravitate towards games that spark my interest. I guess that’s true of everyone, but I’m not just trying something willy nilly! I saw one called Poetry Slam that piqued my interest but we didn’t get a chance to try. Something else I’m loving about the gaming conventions is the inclusion of all goodies H.P. Lovecraft. So much love for Cthulhu out there. And to be in the spirit, on the drive out we listened to some radio play of classic Lovecraft lore (I fell asleep for awhile though, as it was like 1am). So of course, we totally geeked out whenever we saw some Lovecraft reference or other.

One thing that caught my eye was the My Hero Academia game. There was a huge banner so how do you even miss it? And of course I was like “I love that show! I want to try the game!” Plus the guys running the demo were in MHA cosplay. How can you not love that?!?! The game was pretty new, as I recall, and so you could play as two characters; Deko or Bakugo. As I mentioned before (and keep seeing this pattern IRL), you can tell a lot about a person by the character they choose. Bakugo is my absolute favorite character on the show. So before the senpai even finished his sentence about choosing your player, I yelled “BAKUGO! I’M BAKUGO!”

For those of you who don’t watch the anime/read the manga (and you should), My Hero Academia is about a society of people that have super powers, called quirks. Most people are born with them, except for the main character, Izuku “Deku” Midoriya. He displays a lot of heart, causing the #1 Hero All Might to pass his quirk, One for All, onto Deku. The kids get into UA, the top hero school in the country, trying to be pro heros. There are also plenty of villains out there with quirks as well, leading to some excellent battles.

Bakugo is Deku’s best friend and number 1 rival. Their ideas of what it takes to be a top hero differ, and they both look up to All Might for different reasons. Bakugo is all about strength, Deku is more about heart. Interestingly enough, “Deku” is a nickname Bakugo gave young Midoriya, riffing off of “baka,” meaning idiot or stupid. But Midoriya adopts it as his own hero name so that shows you how he respects Bakugo and treasures his friends.

Bakugo, on the other hand, is all fire and rage (just how I like them). His quirk is Explosion. Basically his palms secrete nitroglicerin and, well, he causes explosions. He’s super angry, and always irritated. Total polar opposite of Deku. The card game plays a lot like their quirks in the show. Bakugo is all fire, all offense, not as much defending. His defense is his attacks. There were more action steps per turn on this one, and by the amount of tequila I had it was a little hard for me to follow. But Erik helped and I claimed victory! And we all got free demo packs! So that was super cool!

Finding Billy Mitchell…

Another cool aspect of GenCon was having classic video game legend Billy Mitchell as a guest. He had a console set up where he was working toward the high score redemption of that fan favorite PacMan. Some people are born to be doctors or writers or soldiers or paleontologists. Some people are born to dominate the OG video games. According to his wikipedia page, he is also a businessman and restauranter. Which, we can attest that as he has his very own hot sauce! (Erik got three bottles.)

Billy Mitchell was recognized as a high score record holder by the Guinness World Records and Twin Galaxies on several of the “golden age” classic arcade games. However, scandal rocked the gaming world when Twin Galaxies declared his scores at Donkey Kong invalid. This claim was due to the finding that he had not played on an original arcade circuit board, a requirement of regulation rules. Twin Galaxies conducted an extensive review of this issue, just back in 2018, and the result was that Mitchell’s scores were erased from all world records, and he is totally blackballed from submitting scores in the future.

Other than this disgrace, Billy Mitchell is widely known for the first person to obtain the perfect high score on PacMan; 3,333, 360 points. This was performed on an original (allegedly) PacMan arcade cabinet in New Hampshire on July 3, 1999. Which is fairly recent in my mind. He was featured in several video gaming documentaries including Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007),The King of Arcades (2014),and Man vs Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler (2015). Mitchell was also the subject of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007).

To sum up, games are fun, there’s something for everyone, and legends walk among us. Mark your calendars kids, cause GenCon 2020 will be held July 30-August 2.