I guess I should start with what went well. During the marathon itself, Silver and I raised about $150 from people who were not me. This is actually not an insignificant figure, although I was hoping to raise quite a bit more. Luckily, Andy Goth (Who had donated to various SDA marathons in the past) stepped in after my final plea at Closing Ceremonies and donated a very generous $100, which combined with the spare change Silver and I had saved throughout the year, plus a few dollars raised from telling people about what I had done when striking up random conversation (“Hey, are the lines for panels always this bad?” “I don’t know, I haven’t been to a panel yet.” “Well why not?!” “Well, I spent 21 and a half hours Friday-into-Saturday playing Mega Man games for charity…”), brought the final total in our lockbox to $300.28. Like I said, I was actually hoping for more, but was reassured by Mike after the SDA marathon that I had actually done really well (As he put it, “We raised a grand total of $7 onsite at MAGFest 8!”).

Speaking of doing really well, the mere fact that I got through all of the games I had planned with 2 and a half hours to spare was amazing and gratifying to me. That included letting most of the endings play, and even taking a bathroom break in the middle of X5. I would’ve like to fill out the rest of the time by either playing some of the games a second time, or play the Mega Man fighting games (Yes, really) included on Mega Man Anniversary Collection, but Silver (Who gamely stayed by my side for pretty much the entire marathon, getting the much-less-fun task of manning the lock box, timing me, and generally keeping me sane when stuff wasn’t going so well) and I were completely wiped out. As I texted MercuryZelda later (Ignore what her site says as of this writing, she’s not currently taking commissions. But check out her awesome plushies anyway, so that when she does open up for commissions again, you will be ready to order!), “I’m making like Samuel L. Jackson and going the (*^$ to sleep.” Which I did.

I managed to set new personal bests in 5 of the 15 games I played. Mega Man 1, 2, and 3 weren’t a huge surprise, since those came right at the beginning of the marathon when I was fresh and enthusiastic. X3 and X5 were a bit more shocking when I got new personal bests on those, especially with the context of losing several minutes to my bladder in X5. I guess the fact that, relative to the SDA times, my times on those two games were the worst by far meant I didn’t have much choice other than to improve, but those games came at the end of the marathon (X4 was after most of the “classic” Mega Man games, and the second playthrough of X4 took place immediately after the first after people donated for it) when I was completely exhausted. I guess I also did pretty well in at least the rest of the NES games, as I had people watching me say that I was “crazy good” at the games. Which I’m really not, although luckily I was the main SDA presence at MAGFest this year, so I managed to fake it well enough.

It was also surprising to see just which games people liked and didn’t like. Being on SDA and “the internet”, you get an idea of the general public opinion on certain games, but even the games generally regarded as “bad” have their followers. The best example is Savannah staying with me for the entirety of Mega Man 8, generally regarded as one of the worst in the series (I enjoy it, but it does feel to me more like a vaguely Mega Man-like product than a proper Mega Man game per se). And my fellow Shizzies came by throughout the night, which was a big help, even if the way the game order fell meant I didn’t have to go through the nighttime “lull” while simultaneously playing games I didn’t like that much.

There was, of course, stuff that didn’t go so well, too. The main one occurred before the marathon even started, when I realized I would have to cut Mega Man X6 from the list of games due to it being a terrible, awful, no good, very bad game. There was a part of me that regarded the whole thing as a failure just due to that fact, as I really had wanted to do all the X games on the X Collection–the idea being people might donate to watch me play some of the less illustrious games in the series earlier rather than later. Instead, though, I did X4 with both characters, which was probably more entertaining to watch (Mike Uyama told me later that X6 was one of the worst-received games at AGDQ2012), as well as a lot more fun for me (I’m about the only person on the planet who actually likes playing X4 as X, if SDA’s opinions are reflective of the general public). There was also the fact that Adam, who ran console gaming this year, had a bunch of additional duties to attend to at MAGFest as well–and apparently didn’t relay what I had planned to any of the rest of console staff. The result of this was a scramble for the projector, then a scramble to locate a power cord for the projector, which ended in me starting a half hour later than I had planned.

If I’m being totally honest, there was a point around 3 or 4 hours in, when I had raised a total of $9 that wasn’t our own money, and the thought running through my mind was “The fact I have already paid significant money to go the end of the marathon/bonus streaming is the only thing stopping me from driving directly home in shame after MAGFest.” This was a thought that was only amplified as I would periodically check on the SDA marathon and see that they were raising mind-blowing amounts of money–the rate through the marathon was roughly $1000 an hour. Even my most optimistic goals would have been a drop in the bucket, but the fact that I had raised almost no money to that point…in the end, it worked out okay, and seeing how happy Silver was even with the money we ended up raising stopped me from complaining too much.

From a gameplay perspective, I generally showed I knew what I was doing throughout the series, but there were two games I wish could have gone different, and both were directly my fault. First, I forgot to buy E-Tanks before starting Wily’s castle in Mega Man 9. This resulted in me having to do basically the entire castle over again once I realized my mistake. The second, ironically, came in what I consider to be my best game, Mega Man X. After getting the early-E-Tank on Flame Mammoth for the first time in an actual run, I couldn’t switch back to the X-Buster for the Hadouken on Vile, and hit Start in my sleep-deprived state.

Anyone who is a top-tier player of Mega Man X just facepalmed on “hit Start”.

If you don’t know, I take advantage of a bug to get through text in a cutscene a lot quicker than you’re meant to. The one thing you absolutely do not want to do when you use this method is hit Start during the cutscene, because this can freeze the game. Sure enough, I crashed the game for the first time. Thinking quickly, I managed to load a previous save which meant all I had to re-do was getting the Hadouken, but that was enough to completely derail my momentum. I actually told Silver that I felt like crying through most of the rest of the run, because I did.

In all, though, it’s an experience that I’m glad I did, once. I don’t really know if I would do it again, because as you can probably tell, I went through a whole roller coaster of emotions during the whole thing, culminating in my being extremely happy and relieved when I finished with two and a half hours to spare. If I were to do it again, I would definitely advertise it this time. Because I was trying to keep the fact that I was going to AGDQ a secret, by default, it meant I couldn’t tell people what I was doing at MAGFest either–including most of MAGFest. Now that I’ve pulled off the secret attendance thing once, I won’t try it again, which will hopefully get more people aware of what I’m doing and thus, more donations. If I do do something like this again, I’ll also make sure to practice more than two months in advance (Which was when I found out I was approved to do this at MAGFest) too.

-EE

Wednesday, the 4th
Thursday, the 5th
Friday, the 6th
Saturday, the 7th
Sunday, the 8th
Monday, the 9th
Tuesday, the 10th
Wednesday, the 11th
Thursday, the 12th
Friday, the 13th
Saturday, the 14th
Sunday, the 15th

Wednesday
This time, we decided to try something that was a new experience for Mrs. Emptyeye, but that I had done a couple times before actually having to drive myself to MAGFest: Driving down during an evening/night instead of at around 8 in the morning (I had previously ridden down to MAGFest with some people). It quickly became obvious that this was a mistake. First, it turns out we forgot a sign and realized it about a half hour in, setting our trip back about an hour, all told. Sending a text message letting people know about this fact got us one particularly funny reply that was also sound packing advice. In addition, though, this setback, combined with our initial decision to leave right after I got home from work, meant that we ended up driving through Delaware in a bit of a snowstorm. And by “we” I mean “me, after I was supposed to have already switched out of driving”. For various reasons, I handle snow driving better than Jess does, so while it made sense, it meant we got to the MAGFest Hotel at about 1:30AM. The one good thing about this was that we were able to pick up our pre-registration just about immediately. At about 3AM, I finally passed out, while Jess watched the SDA marathon for a bit.

Thursday
On Thursday, I did something that I hadn’t done since MAGFest 4–attend opening ceremonies (Or, more accurately, the second half of opening ceremonies). Thanks to rapidly evolving technology, MAGFest made the decision to not print paper programs this year, instead electing to hold them on a cell phone app people can download. One reason for this was to be able to make on-the-fly schedule updates, which is nice, although I miss the “souvenir” aspect of the program book. The good thing about this decision was that people in various departments got to talk about what their departments were up to, as opposed to “we read you the program book because we presume you’re too stupid to read”. Other than that, I attended the first of two Temp Sound Solutions shows, where they mainly played new material. It was cool to see the evolution from M4, which was basically Shawn Phase playing guitar over NSFs, into a full-fledged live band. Other than that, I mainly finalized my plans for a secret (To the people I was helping) project: The Mega Man Mini Marathon. Back in June, I came up with the idea to play through as many Mega Man games as I could for charity in the span of 24 hours. I would play through Mega Man 1 through 10, and Mega Man X through X6. It turns out that X6 is a terrible game, and so I cut it, instead electing to play X4 twice, once as each character. There will probably be a separate post about what I did well and badly from this marathon, but in any event, after some time hanging out in The Shizz suite, it was time to sleep and get ready for it.

Friday
On Friday morning, I went down to the game room, and found I didn’t have a projector. Then I found I didn’t have a projector cable. We eventually got that squared away, and a half hour later than planned (12:30PM), sat down and played 24 hours of Mega Man.

Or more accurately, 21 and a half hours of Mega Man. Because despite having to start Mega Man 10 with Chill Man thanks to a donation, beating the final Wily boss of MM10 default weapon-only (Again thanks to a donation), and getting all the items in Mega Man 4, 5, 6, 7, X, X2, X3 and X4 (Both loops), I finished with two and a half hours to spare. And overall, throughout the entire weekend, managed to raise a little over $300 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Not bad! Some of the highlights included a nice young lady hanging out with me for the entirety of Mega Man 8 (Hi Savannah, if you’re reading this), and someone dressed as Dr. Wily (Possibly of The Megas) taunting me at some point during the evening/night. I did make sure to compliment him on Aqua Man, who is without a doubt the manliest boss Dr. Wily has ever made.

Saturday
Most of Saturday was spent recuperating from the marathon. Around 5PM, I got up and once again went to The Shizz suite, throwing matsunami a couple bucks for the copious amounts of alcohol I drank while up in that room. At just before 7PM, I headed down to the music room to check out my second concert of the weekend: Bit Brigade! Bit Brigade was an amazing show, and I say this as someone who should have been about nine hours removed from never wanting to so much as look at another Mega Man game again. Basically, Bit Brigade are a live band playing music from a game while another person plays through that same game, live on stage. Their game this year was Mega Man 2, and Noah McCarthy, the player, did it about as well as it could be done without being a “speed run”. They were go good that I bought their Contraband DVD (Bit Brigade actually started out as “Contraband”, then changed their name as they branched out to other games) despite the fact that I really should have been saving my money. After that was more Shizz Suite-ry, although I wandered down during the end of the Earthbound Papas set and listened to Dancing Mad from outside the room. As you’d expect, they knocked it out of the park. Then it was time for more sleep.

Sunday
Sunday was a pack-up and hang-out day as far as MAGFest went. We packed everything up, and on Sunday morning, I went to the end of the Loading Ready Run panel. Loading Ready Run are the people behind Desert Bus For Hope, who along with The Speed Gamers were really one of the pioneers of the concept of streaming video games for charity. After that, I briefly attended the Channel Awesome Open Rock Band stage, then headed to what turned out to be the end of the Child’s Play Charity auction before Closing Ceremonies, where I would basically make one last pitch for donations before I surprised everyone at the SDA marathon with my presence.

It quickly became apparent that trying to follow the charity auction would be a terrible idea. The final item, a signed-by-Nobuo-Uematsu, sealed copy of the original Final Fantasy on Famicom, went for over $1500.

No, that is not a typo. Toward the end, it turned into one guy bidding against what amounted to an impromptu team, all giving money toward another person. But in the end, the single person won out. After that, at Closing Ceremonies (The second closing ceremony I’ve ever attended at a festival/convention, after the pseudo-closing ceremony of Gobble-Con 2011.), I managed to somehow follow that up with a final plea for donations, which actually netted one from Andy Goth, a familiar name to SDA Marathon people. I also met Pablo “DJ Mike Haggar” Burt, the guy who originally obsoleted my Battletoads runs on SDA, which was pretty cool. Then it was time to head out to the marathon.

I had tried to decide how I would make my entrance at AGDQ, since only a few people knew I was actually going to be there. In the end, though, I decided to just walk to the entrance of the room and yell “GUYS!” in my trademark loud voice. The reaction from the room was amusing, as it collectively took them a second to realize that it was me, and that I hadn’t been there the whole time. Ultimately, though, people were glad to see me, which was awesome. After kind of settling in, I presented the group with my $300 donation, which they seemed to appreciate. Honestly, they had already raised so much money (I had been occasionally checking in at MAGFest, and my mind was blown every single time) that I felt like the money I gave would be nothing more than a drop in the ocean of donations, but they honestly seemed impressed that I managed to raise that much more or less by myself, and with no real publicity beforehand. Then it was time to watch Earthbound, which was a lot of fun. I should really play through it again sometime, since I think I might like it now more than I did when I was 12 or 13.

Also, I got my cape back, which I was honestly not expecting, and I was so surprised that everyone demanded I take it that I just did, even though I had no intention of doing so. Still, I had to admit that it felt good to be reunited with it (And certain Connecticon staff members will no doubt be happy to see me in it next year). I then watched Super Mario 64, which was a great run, then, after watching most of Super Mario Luigi Galaxy, took a bit of a nap before the Magicka run.

Magicka was hilarious, because only one of the four runners actually bothered with proper practicing. Two of the other three, LagDotCom and romscout, decided messing with the other two (Moooh and ShadowWraith) was preferable to actually advancing forward in the run. Eventually, Magicka itself said “screw this, I’m out” and refused to let Moooh complete the game. At this point, I finally went to bed, a bit more properly this time.

Monday
Monday was the final day of the marathon “proper”, and the first thing I watched was Uranium Anchor playing the SNES version of Prince of Persia. He did far better than I ever would, and after that was some Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I only watched parts of this, although I forget why now–I think Jess, The DotComs, Arran and I made a CVS run around this time. After some Shadow of the Colossus (Which, again, I only watched parts of, having never played the game myself), I showed a video from Jon St. John that I got him to take after his late-night panel Saturday into Sunday. Then it was time for the finale, the second half of Final Fantasy VII. Watching the game speed run is an interesting experience, in that the run comes down to “Tifa wrecks everything” for most of it, when I personally didn’t have a lot of use for her when playing normally (Despite liking the character). It was also interesting thanks to us reaching a donation goal to have the room sing “One-Winged Angel” during the finale.

For those of you who don’t know, except for “SEPHIROTH!”, the entirely of “One-Winged Angel” is in Latin. This brought up a Something Something Leonard Bernstein situation, as you had about 50 people in a room mumbling along with the melody before “SEPHIROTH!” came in crystal-clear. Funny stuff, even if it did ruin a winter marathon tradition of being really quiet during the final boss.

In any event, it turned out we had raised in the neighborhood of $145000 to this point, almost enough to fund two whole two-year research grants. For some perspective, the initial “public” goal for this marathon was $50000, but internally, the administration had hoped to raised $80000, enough for one grant…which we (And I use “we” here very loosely, myself having almost nothing to do with the efforts outside of giving Ryan North a link to the marathon) did about halfway through. I think our collective minds are still blown at this. Although this is something of a running theme with most of the marathons–Mike Uyama makes a goal that we all feel is overly optimistic, then we proceed to smash it out of the water–it’s never something you really get used to.

Anyway, after that, it was time for a post-marathon victory IHOP run. I had some delicious cheesecake pancakes, and along with Mrs. Emptyeye, got to talk to Dragondarch, Kariohki, and…someone else I’ve tragically forgotten, sorry. It was a fun time, and some nice conversation before we headed back to play some games without worrying about streaming. Finally, at way-too-late-o-clock, I headed off to bed.

From here, my memory gets a bit hazy. I know pretty much what I did and watched, but not necessarily the exact days it happened. If I screw something up, feel free to correct me.

Tuesday
Tuesday was the first real day of bonus streaming, with priority given to people who A. Hadn’t yet played a game, and B. Had to leave soon. Before that though, was Korean food at Woomi. Yes, your humble webmaster ventured to a Korean restaurant, and even used chopsticks to eat his food. While I wasn’t particularly adventurous with my food choices, sticking to chicken, ribs, and fruit, I’m pretty sure I nonetheless shocked Mike Uyama, as well as most of the people who know my food habits, with my mere presence. Suffice to say that I know I would have regretted not going, and I’m certainly glad I did go.

Back at the 4H Center, some of the high-quality games streamed included Quest 64, which of course has a full real-time day-night system, which Final Fantasy VII lacks. This was also the day that MercuryDotCom, ShadowWraith, Moooh, Mike89 and I played Yahtzee, or rather “Yatzy!”, which has a slightly different scoring system than regular Yahtzee, being Swedish and all. Mike89 would no doubt use slightly stronger language to describe the scoring differences, despite the fact he actually won the game he played. We SDA kids and our Yatzy, such ruffians and miscreants we are. Apparently LagDotCom, big grumpy-pants that he is, joined in after I left to go watch Quest 64.

Wednesday
Wednesday was another bonus stream day, and the last one to take place at the 4H Center. After watching JMan and Houser play Goof Troop (Which ended in heartbreak on the final boss), my main activity Wednesday was essentially getting revenge on a game that went…not all that well at Japan Relief Done Quick, Magician. Suffice to say that I actually broadcasted the entire game this time, and while I had forgotten most of the stuff about the game as it related to speed running, such as the menu manipulation, I did remember what to do to actually get through the game and acquire everything, and even got some good Unknown Spell luck.

After that, I watched Uyama, and then JMan, play Deadly Premonition…and was stunned to hear J unironically praising the game. Every time I had watched him stream it, he was practically laughing out loud at the absurdity of what was supposed to be an action adventure survival horror type of game. Apparently, though, around halfway through, it switched to suddenly being a legitimately really good game…so long as you’re not spoiled beforehand (Portal is another game where your experience is very much determined by whether you know what’s coming or not, and I speak from experience on this.). At that point, I just stopped watching.

Thursday
Thursday was move out day. This was complicated by the fact that we had quite a few people to move, and not a lot of cars to do so in. This was honestly the most stressful day for me, despite my personally doing very little. First, there were more people left at the center than anyone realized. Then, while I was trying to relay this fact to people with cars, everyone who was left apparently decided to order pizza while I was outside. After I got in touch with the person who was supposed to be taking the DotComs to Mike’s house, it turned out that he would be arriving a lot quicker than anyone expected. Eventually, though, pizza was eaten, stuff was straightened out (I felt bad for forcing Mike to make a third trip to the center, but as it turned out, I was correct in my thought that people didn’t realize there were another five people besides the DotComs who needed rides), and we went on our way to Mike’s house. Which took about a half hour longer than it should, thanks to wacky DC roads that are either one or two-way depending on the time of day. After I finally made it to Mike’s house, the day had taken its toll on me, and I snapped a bit at the crowd that had assembled to walk to a Mexican restaurant not far from the house. After that, much alcohol was consumed, to the point that I became aware that I was slurring my own words, and I watched people stream various games (This will henceforth be known as “Awesome Games Commentated Drunk”). As I started to sober up, I did a challenge of sorts that people donated for at MAGFest, but never got to see: Playing Mega Man 4 while starting at Dive Man. After that, I finally crashed and went to sleep.

Friday
Friday was a sad day, as I had to say goodbye to both The DotComs and JMan, as well as Puwexil (All of whom slept in the upstairs bedroom in Mike’s house) and other cool people. Like I said, at this point the entirety of bonus streaming in particular is kind of a blur. I do know that Carcinogen played a lot of various Resident Evil games. I also know that I rode with TJ and a couple other people to a game store called EStarland, not far from Mike’s house. EStarland used to have more of a physical presence, but converted to, for the most part, online-only sales except for their warehouse (And make no mistake, the store is very much in an industrial park type of district). Luck was on my side here, as I managed to track down a copy of The Adventures of Cookie and Cream, AKA the official “couples
game” of SDA. Cookie and Cream is a game where two rabbits work together to go through various worlds and restore their moon to the sky. It also has a very unique mode whereby both players use the same controller. As Friday was my first anniversary, you can probably guess where this ended up.

Well, except that Mrs. Emptyeye flatly vetoed the “Two Players One Controller” mode (This mode of play was something of an SDA fad this year, even on games that weren’t designed for it. If nothing else, I guess I can’t accuse her of easily succumbing to peer pressure.), which was a bit disappointing. We did manage to make it through the first two worlds before I decided to stop, fearing that continuing would result in the oft-joked about “Divorce Done Quick”. I guess it played off better on camera than I felt like it was going though, which is nice.

Other fun stuff included Sinister1 and JProphet showing up, and Sinister1 successfully 1-rounding Mike Tyson, one of the hardest feats in NES gaming. The big highlight, though, was undoubtedly Drunkterrania. I also played Mega Man 3 later that night, which got me a bunch of new followers on Twitch TV. Apparently there’s still room for dry but informative commentary on a game, even when that person is flying solo commentary-wise. Who knew? Once again, I ended up crashing into bed way later than I should have.

Saturday
We had originally planned to leave sometime Saturday, but put simply, we were having way too much fun. I went out for Mexican food with Sinister, JProphet and Withhelde, to a place called Rio Grande. Their enchiladas were delicious, and kept me filled up for quite awhile. Saturday was also the day we truly delved into a lesser known Swery (The guy who directed Deadly Premonition) game, Spy Fiction. After swearing that a voice sounded familiar, a quick check of IMDb seemed to confirm my suspicions–none other than The guy who manned the iPod at my wedding was in the game. After that came Withhelde playing Incredible Crisis, a kind of proto-Wario Ware that’s composed of a bunch of mini-games. It was nice to see Withhelde kind of come out of his shell a bit here and talk about the game. Then it was Mrs. Emptyeye and I’s turn to play LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean. I felt like this went better than most of our usual plays of a LEGO game, probably because we were too tired to argue with one another. Then we finally went to sleep.

Sunday
At this point, we couldn’t delay it any longer, it was the day we had to leave. I did watch Mike play some more Spy Fiction, which led to an amusing bit of awkwardness as his (female) character dressed up as a stripper and…did what strippers do. In Mike’s words, Mrs. Emptyeye would have to punish me for what I saw on Sunday. but at 3PM or so, we finally said our goodbyes to the remaining people (Mike Uyama, Mike89, Withhelde and theseawolf1) and headed back to Connecticut. We made it there without any issues like snowstorms this time, too, which was quite nice.

In summation, this was a great week and a half, and one that it’ll be hard to forget and come back to “reality” after. These marathons and festivals are a lot of fun, but they really are like a whole other world, especially in terms of destroying your sleep schedule. Despite that, though, I already can’t wait for next year’s.

-EE

After stopping at the “Wedge Inn” (A wedge, in Stamford, sounds like what I know as a “grinder”) for some chicken tenders and curly fries, I attempted to navigate my way back to the hotel. Essentially, I knew I had to take a left off of Summer Street, then another left until I was going back the way I came. Luckily for me, I found a street name that looked familiar–the other option when leaving the hotel’s parking lot. I pull in said lot right as the epic part of Yes’s “Close to the Edge” kicked in, which struck me as fitting.

Returning to the hotel, I decided to use my laptop for a bit before I went off to the Opening Ceremonies. This lasted all of about 10 minutes before the battery gave out. No joke. And my room still wasn’t ready yet (It was between 1:30 and 2:00 PM on Friday at this point). Back in the car the computer went, and off to opening Ceremonies I went. Generally speaking, I’m not big on Opening Ceremonies at conventions, ever since MAGFest 4, where I felt vaguely talked down to by the fact that the ceremonies consisted mostly of “MAGFest staff read most of the program to you, apparently under the impression that you’re too stupid to do this yourself”. But it’s not like I was doing anything else–I went on my own, a lot of my friends wouldn’t be arriving until Saturday, and my room wasn’t ready.

Fortunately, this opening ceremonies wasn’t as patronizing, due in part to the fact that, being a second-year convention on a shoestring budget (More on this a bit later), there was no program to speak of to read from. I learned about the convention’s special guests, Robert Axelrod (Best known, James Earl Jones-as-Darth Vader-style, as the voice of Lord Zedd in various early Power Rangers incarnations) and Tiffany Grant (Best known as the voice of Asuka in Neon Genesis Evangelion).

After finally checking into my room a little after 3PM (I couldn’t be too mad, as that’s when the official check-in time was), the rest of my Friday consisted mainly of going to halves of a couple panels, including the second half of the Cosplaying on a Budget panel, as well as the Gobble Tonight Show panel, a convention-related spoof of the late show (Think Letterman, etc) paradigm. This featured the alter-egos of two of the main characters of Gobble-Con, Cobra Commander and A Count Named Slickbrass. Or more accurately, Toga Commander and A Count Named Silkbrass. This was funny stuff, and the person who ran the panel wants to do it more “properly” at other conventions, which is something I’d like to see.

Other things I did on Friday included going to the dealers’ room/artist alley, where I bought a Mega Man X perler, and a How to Draw Manga book. I’m an interesting case in the convention fandom in that, while I really like the art style of manga/anime, I don’t actually watch or read a lot of it. My knowledge of Sailor Moon, for instance, is based pretty much entirely on the binging of The Abridged Series I did for the last month or so (Although it was weird to watch The Abridged Series and somehow recall random fragments of the “proper” episodes, since I hadn’t seen them in about 15 years, and even then only bits and pieces.).

Saturday came around, and I went down to purchase a couple more pieces of art from the dealer’s room. One was a piece of art showing a dark angel in the moonlight, and the other depicts Link shouting “HEY LISTEN!” at Navi…whom he’s taped to a lit bomb, which is something pretty much everyone who has played Ocarina of Time has wanted to do at some time.

Also Saturday, I went down to registration to find out that my panel’s time had been moved again, from 4:30 to 6:30PM. In theory, this was good, as a later start time would mean a bigger audience. In theory. In practice, I looked at the schedule…and saw I was now competing directly with the second half of the Cosplay Masquerade.

If you’ve never been to a pop-culture convention before, the Cosplay Masquerade is almost invariably one of the biggest events. In other words, pretty much everyone would be there.

I felt like shouting DOOOOOOOOOON!! William Shatner-style at this point.

The good news was that the panel had now been expanded by a half hour, to an hour and a half. With the hour I had been given, I was more or less going to put what I did in the panel up to popular vote (Option 1: lecture Power-Point style like I did at Gobble-Con 2010. Option 2: Attempt to talk about speedrunning in general while running live through Mega Man X); with the extra half-hour, I was fairly sure I could fit both parts in under the wire (Turning the MMX section into talking speedrunning strategies on the game specifically) if I did the lecture part quickly enough, knowing how long it look me to run through MMX (Generally 43-45 minutes). The first part was going to be the question mark, since I’ll admit I wasn’t nearly as prepared this year as I was last year.

Last year was my first time doing a panel for a convention, and this year would bring another first–my first time cosplaying. As I wrote on a Facebook update,
“I’m pretty sure there are very few places on Earth where a quest to procure batteries for a Rock Band 2 drum kit can end in agreeing to be Tuxedo Mask as part of a Sailor Moon cosplay group….ladies and gentlemen, my October 2011 Connecticon Member Appreciation Day.”
That’s the short story of how I got roped into it. Basically, I got asked, figured “I have most of the parts already, how hard can it really be?” and said “Okay, sure.”

As it turns out, the answer to “How hard can it be?” is “Actually, pretty hard”. There’s a lot of detail that goes into making a costume that you don’t tend to think about. The gold buttons on Tuxedo Mask’s suit were something that I had to add myself. Additionally, while I owned a cape, I didn’t own one with red lining, so I had to head to Joann Fabric, buy two sheets of fabric (One black, one red), and make the cape myself using fabric glue, allowing me to cheat the process of stitching them together. Further, I had to attach the cape to the suit by poking a couple holes in it and pushing the shoulder buttons through the holes. While this actually worked, I was convinced that it looked terrible–compared to how he looks in the anime, the cape was way too wide at the shoulders, or so I thought. It was probably also a bit short, but honestly, this was a relief after a year-plus of going to events wearing a cape that hit the ground with four inches to spare.

My friend Katie, who was one of the ringleaders of the whole thing (And, I’m pretty sure, the person who originally asked “Are you going to Gobble-Con?” and kicked the train into motion), and everyone else in the group was supposed to get there at about 12:30PM Saturday, which was actually the original, original time for my panel. As 12:30 became 1:00, which became 1:30, which became 2:00, I was becoming vaguely concerned that the whole thing was some elaborate practical joke played on me to get me to dress up as Tuxedo Mask for no particular reason…in which case, I would’ve had to applaud everyone for the sheer scope of it (This, if it had been a practical joke, would’ve involved multiple pictures posted to Facebook of the cohorts sewing stuff, plus my friend Cels actually bringing the bows for the Sailor Scout costumes to one of the Connecticon Member Appreciation Days.). But finally, at around 2:45, I looked down at the lobby from the third floor hallway and saw a huge group of Sailor Scouts. I headed down, minus the suit/cape (Because I was still convinced it looked awful.). After taking a few pictures, I went back to my room, basically waiting for Cels to come up and make the alterations to the cape that I thought were necessary. While I knew on a theoretical level what I thought was wrong, I was afraid to actually make the alterations myself, knowing that I didn’t have another chance or a plan B if I screwed up and cut off more than I meant to. Cels, on the other hand, basically does costume stuff for a living, so I expected her to look at it and cut off the excess perfectly in about three seconds.

At 4:30, I more or less got impatient and said “forget it” and went down with the cape and suit. And…Cels thought it looked fine, as did everyone else. Had I known that was going to be the outcome, I wouldn’t have hid in my room for an hour-plus before coming down with it. Either way, though, after about a half hour of picture-taking, I headed back to my room to get ready for my 6:30 panel. Packing up stuff and heading down to the panel room, my worst fear attendance-wise was realized: I was, at that point, the only person besides one volunteer in the room. One person eventually showed up. To spin this into a positive, it was a very intimate, low-pressure environment in which to do the panel. And I got through both parts of it with about five minutes to spare. The people who did watch it seemed to like it, and the volunteer did his best to try and get the few people not at the masquerade into the panel room, largely without success. The Mega Man X run went fine, as I finished in 44:01. There was a time when I would have killed for that time, but now I can pull off a sub-45 run pretty consistently, which is nice.

At some point early afternoon Saturday, I also went to most of the Best of Robert Axelrod panel, where he showed some of his favorite clips from various voice-acting he’s done, discussed behind-the-scenes stuff (The reason for three of the original Power Rangers leaving the show boiled down to “They wanted more money”.), talked about some techniques he used in achieving voices (Lord Zedd is a lot of diaphragm), and so on. Pretty good stuff, worth my time despite my honestly not being interested in the guests specifically beforehand.

Late on Saturday, after not-insignificant quantities of rum, I went down to the 18+ Cosplay Court Case, where (amongst other things) Sailor Saturn was accused of being a prostitute, and a Vocaloid was accused of ear rape. Also, I was a bailiff, which basically meant I stood around and looked cool up front. This was fun, and a little chaotic (For the Vocaloid case, the prosecution and defense had to switch, because neither one played their appointed role very well), probably helped by the fact that I was far from the only inebriated person there.

On Sunday morning, I got up, checked out of my room, and went down to the registration desk, where to my surprise, there was a “Pre-Reg for Gobble-Con 2012″ sign out. The reason this was a surprise is that, long story short, attendance for Gobble-Con 2011 was not what was expected, and large quantities were owed to the hotel to the point that the convention was actually extended with some impromptu panels, from 1PM to 6PM. Sunday highlights included a panel run by Robert Axelrod concerning doing voice-overs for commercials. I actually tried my hand at a Chili’s commercial circa 2000, and I guess I did okay. This, too, is fun stuff, and something I could see myself doing part-time, if I could figure out how to get into it. There are apparently some sites out there dedicated to this, but I’d be spending a lot more than I think I’d stand to make were I to join one of those sites.

Another Sunday highlight was seeing how much the convention meant to the attendees. Despite the pre-registration sign, there was no guarantee of a third Gobble-Con actually happening, the financial situation was so dire. Luckily, just before I left, there was confirmation that it’s taking place next year, and indeed, preliminary work on guests has already started. Also, I really could have used one of the extended panels on Saturday, as one of the things I learned about cosplay was essentially “Don’t halfass it, but it’s okay if you’re not 100% accurate to the character, and in fact, your own spin on it can actually improve the costume.” Still, it’s good to know for the future. I just consider the cape and mask my own personal spin on it now.

In short, it was a lot of fun, and the lack of size of the convention makes it easy to meet and talk with people. It’s a lot of fun, and you should check it out next time if you’re in the Connecticut area.

-EE

Links!

• My photos. Note that I commented in proper chronological order. For a “proper” narrative, start here and keep clicking “Previous” until you get back to the “first” picture. Otherwise, it’s going to be like watching Memento.
• Pre-register for 2012 here. Just click on the “order now” button (Make sure any script blockers are off). I already pre-registered, and you should too!
• Steam-Funk’s website. The aforementioned A Count Named Slickbrass, who basically got his start (So to speak) at Gobble 2010, runs the group.
• Royal Nerd’s site. They’re the people in the picture here.
• Eric LaCore Photography, who took a bunch of other pictures at the convention.

I’m currently sitting in the living room of my friend Emily, watching another one of my friends playing Final Fantasy VII. Considering what it took to get here (It took about three times as long as it should have), I’m quite glad to be here.

My writing career has begun the same way that of a lot of writers does, with a string of rejections. Right now I’m trying to decide whether to revise a story, do some further revisions on another story, or start writing yet something new. I also have three stories currently submitted–one to the Machine of Death anthology, one to The Spirit of Poe, and a third out to Comets and Criminals. With any luck, one of them will accept my submissions, and I’ll try and get more stories out there as well.

-EE

This time around, they’re playing for the Organization for Autism Research. So make sure to check it out and donate if you can.

-EE

This run finishes the game in a shade under 13 minutes and 45 seconds. If you happened to watch Japan Relief Done Quick, for reference, it took at least that long to realize I was streaming to the wrong place, at which point I was less than halfway through the game (Which is an excellent indication of just how terribly I played to that point. This contributed to my mood when I finally got streaming to the correct place.). Despite that, there’s still a tiny improvement to be made with a route change, or rather, when I grab food. There’s also some execution improvements to be made, most notably my needlessly going to the menu at the end of the Dungeon because I didn’t know casting Twin took almost no mana at all.

I suppose I should explain why I’ve uploaded this video to Screw Attack (Which is not a porn site; its name comes from a powerup in the Metroid series) and not Youtube. Put simply, Youtube wanted me to link a Google account to use it anymore, and I flipped out and refused to do it for awhile. I’ve since capitulated, but I’m still not putting up any videos on it. Screw Attack is a more gaming-centered site anyway. Yeah, someone who shall remain nameless is correct when they say Screw Attack “is where tens of people will see your video!” But on the other hand, the way I see it, if you’re not willing to do some leg work and promote your video yourself, you don’t deserve to leech off the popularity (Or lack thereof) of the video hosting service you put it on.

Hence, Screw Attack it is. You’ll notice a link to my account on “Emptyeye Elsewhere On the Web” over to the right. Right now, it’s just Magician videos, but I want to eventually put my remaining Youtube videos on there as well.

-EE

My current main activity is preparing for the Connecticon Rock Band tournament. This being my first year running it, I’m trying to do a really good job of getting prizes and things for it, to the slight irritation of my “boss”, so to speak (In short: He loves the initiative I’m showing, but for the sake of reimbursing me, wishes I hadn’t gone and bought stuff right away. Truthfully, this was stuff I was buying even if I had to eat part or of all the cost of it. I’d rather spend a bit more money and have this be memorable.). But it’ll be worth it in the end, or at least I think it will be.

The other thing I’ve been up to lately is writing short stories. I’m in the process of revising several of them, and I’ll share the ideas behind them once I revise a couple more of them. Eventually, what I want to do is self-publish a collection of short stories, and possibly some novels as well. knowing my proclivity for not finishing projects, it’s admittedly unlikely this will get anywhere, but we’ll see.

My Magician speedrun continues to move along. I think I’m one more improvement away from submitting to SDA, which is now under new management. Frankly, I’m amazed Mike lasted as long as he did; as he mentions in the first post, he outlasted two people, one (Both?) of whom assumed site duties after he did. Still, he was the one who got the site where it is today, and he’s left it in good hands. Also, he’ll still be planning the marathons for the site, which is definitely a good thing.

Next time: More Substance?

Naturally, there was, and the solution presented itself when I took a second look. Then I was disheartened to find another execution-based puzzle awaiting me right after it. I got through it, though, and actually managed to skip one of the platforms along the way. My solution involved getting up to the platform, then portaling back to the beginning of the chamber using that one portal, and basically doing this, one platform at a time, until my momentum allowed me to see and shoot at the “ramp” type platform to get me through.

Now at this point, please consider that I knew the storyline of the game going in, and I knew I would get to wreck GlaDOS at some point. Having this knowledge in advance, combined with just wanting to get the job done already, probably influenced my opinion on the end of the game.

Because the last test chamber (And here I’m referring to everything up to and including the destruction of GlaDOS) was, to me, not as fun as the rest of the game, but more on that in a bit. I kept playing it, and I ran into “LOADING….” three times. Nothing in it really stumped me for more than a minute or two…nothing in it came close to stumping me like chamber 18 did (The problem with the structure of the game is, again, that shock where you think the end isn’t really the end. While the last chamber was certainly creepy as you crawled around behind-the-scenes, the fact remains that chamber 18 was really the “final exam” chamber, and while the behind-the-scenes stuff introduced some action elements, there wasn’t anything new puzzle-wise. Once the creepiness wore off, I very much felt like “Okay do I get to wreck GlaDOS yet? How about now? How about now?”), which kept me from getting frustrated and all, but Portal is, to me, a puzzle game at its core. Having seen everything it could throw at me from that perspective, I kept waiting for the point where I got to wreck GlaDOS, and it kept not coming until I finally gave up and went to bed, three hours after I had started playing for the day (Part of this was spent in Chamber 18, yes).

Naturally, I picked the game up the next night to discover that I would have, in fact, found GlaDOS had I continued down the hallway I was in when I stopped. The endgame was here! I’ll admit that the final “battle” took me a couple tries, although I figured out what I had to do pretty quickly (One time I stupidly got missiled; another time, I stupidly stepped forward a bit too far and incinerated myself). I’ll also admit that I was nervous as I dropped the Anger Sphere into the incinerator, because I knew I didn’t have enough time to drop another piece in there. Luckily, that was the end of the game.

So what do I think? My opinion is honestly the exact opposite of pretty much everyone else who played the game. The game started out absolutely brilliant, and stayed that way until the post-test chambers, where it started to wear out its welcome with me (Who knows if I’d feel like this had I not stopped right before GlaDOS). Now, part of this was probably being semi-spoiled about what happens at the end, combined with everyone from the Skype chat I mentioned earlier to Ben “Yahtzee” Crenshaw Croshaw saying “The game is perfect, its only flaw is that it’s too short!”. But the other part is that the game set certain expectations for how long each level was going to be throughout it. They gradually ramp up the length, then in the “post” chamber section yank the knob off. I encountered three “LOADING…” screens just in the post-chamber part, after encountering them only in the elevator sections before that. So yes, that’s my sacrilegious opinion: Portal is not too short; if anything, its endgame is too long. And yes, the memes are irritating and the weakest part of the game. I went over the Companion Cube in a previous entry, but “The cake is a lie” had no impact on me whatsoever as well. For one, it may have been creepier had it been written in blood like the “HELP” in Chamber 16. For another, the cake was obviously a lie from the time GlaDOS flat out stated, “You will be baked, and then there will be cake.” You escape the baking, hence, no cake for you. You don’t need the message after that telling you such. I could go into various logical things here too, but I get the feeling the rebuttal is “GlaDOS really wanted you to get that far and destroy her”, which the lyrics of “Still Alive” seem to support.

Still, it’s a fun game, worth playing if you haven’t had the gameplay spoiled for you already. The gameplay is really really good, even brilliant. I can also appreciate the technical achievement of the gameplay, both in the “place portals that teleport you from one to the other” concept, as well as being able to see what’s on the other side of the portals. That goes double for when you can see both Portals and you get this infinity effect from looking at yourself through the portals.

Is it a great game? Yes. Do I understand why it’s as popular as it is? Honestly, not really. Yeah, its great, and quirky and different, but those things are usually the kiss of sales death for a game–the game I’m working on speedrunning right now, Magician, was the last game Taxan ever published, presumably due to poor sales (Although Eurocom, its developer, is still around). And yeah, it had a big company behind it, but even that isn’t enough sometimes–Nightshade had no less than Ultra Games, a subsidiary of Konami behind it, and had you ever heard of it before now?

In talking to some of the other people on Skype, the answer we arrived at was “It piggybacked off of the popularity of two established franchises.” See, Portal debuted in The Orange Box, which also heralded the debut of two highly-anticipated sequels: Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2. Portal is a fun game and all, but without that initial “Oh yeah here’s this other game in this big collection you may like it” push it got from that, it’s almost a guarantee that I’m not sitting here writing about it, my resistance to it, or my being flat-out wrong about how it is in relation to its reputation.

Of course, maybe I was trying too hard. Generally, I’ve done my best to not let my prejudices for the game’s memes influence what I thought about the experience of actually playing the game, but I’m not sure I could’ve helped it in this case. After solving the three main puzzles in the test chamber, I had an experience that Valve Software probably didn’t expect: Probably succumbing to Hype Backlash, I actually tried to incinerate the Companion Cube too quickly, ignoring the button on the floor (Which opened the door that would, in turn, open the incinerator) and choosing to place the cube directly on the incinerator, then wondering why it didn’t open. GlaDOS’s subsequently informing me that I had incinerated the cube quickly than anyone on record was supposed to make me feel like a heartless bastard, I guess. Instead, I felt mocked, because ironically, I probably would have done it quicker than anyone who ever played through the game for the first time if I were a little less eager to accomplish the task.

The next test chamber is the first point where I was well and truly stumped. I tried to do what I thought the game wanted me to do for a good half an hour or so, and then thought back to the conversation I had when I first played the game:

“You should have tried putting all the objects in the room on the switch.”

And I realized that there were a bunch of tiny objects at the start of the level. If this actually worked, then I would give up and admit that the game was every bit as brilliant as the meme-reciters claimed it was.

So I’m still moving along, and it’s still really fun. We’ll see if that lasts.