After
posting in the HOPEFUL thread about this one year and having it end up being entirely pointless...I present one man's account of the Chicago Comic-Con & Video Game Expo (formerly known as Wizard World Chicago, and in fact still labeled as Wizard World Chicago in many places).
PrologueWhen did I stop believing in Santa Claus? In truth, this sort of silly question holds no real significance for me. However, if you were to ask me when I stopped believing that the old man wearing the red costume was Santa, then, I can confidently say, "I have never believed in Santa, ever." I knew that the Santa who appeared at mThe car ride to Iowa a week before the convention was largely uneventful and dull. After wasting a lot of time in Decatur buying some last supplies for the trip (which largely killed my netbook), we finally hit the road for real. I watched episodes of
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya until the laptop ran out of power (before we left, I copied every episode I downloaded over to the netbook so I'd finally be able to watch them), and played a lot of
Aria of Sorrow after that until we got there.
Our arrival and first day at my relatives' house in Iowa was, like the trip, uneventful. As everyone except me was cosplaying this year, I had a lot of time to sit on this computer and chat in #tmk. (The Internet connection here is dial-up, sadly.)
We spent almost a week in Iowa. During this time, I finished almost two runs of
Cave Story (the second run is still unfinished, as I'm stuck in Hell), got Kalee to start playing
Cave Story, proved to the denizens of #tmk that Kalee exists, played a lot of
Ketsui Death Label, acquired a few PC games, finished
Aria of Sorrow (good end, of course), and largely utilized much of the same sleep schedule I have at home.
I finished watching season one of Haruhi, and went to begin on season two - after watching the first episode, I discovered that for whatever reason, the newer version of Media Player Classic I was using didn't want to display subtitles on the rest of the episodes, and it wasn't until the night before we left that I downloaded the real version (and codecs) and found that I was able to watch them (more on that later).
Anyway, I did a lot of neat stuff here that week. I finally tried
G-TYPE, the fanmade
Gradius-
R-TYPE-
Darius mash-up game, and found that the idea works pretty well (not surprising, since those three series consist for the most part of horizontally-scrolling shmups). I painstakingly copy-pasted the first three fan-translated Haruhi light novels and preserved the formatting (for those who don't know, when I get into a series nowadays, I tend to get a bit obsessed for a while). I also saw a non-PBS television station sign off for the night and looked at some of the other "tame" 4chan boards I hadn't checked out in the past.
Chapter 1As with the ride to Iowa from home, the ride from Iowa to Chicago was largely uneventful. (I'm trying to think of a car ride this year that was particularly memorable and having great difficulty doing so.) We arrived at the hotel, checked in, and got into our rooms for about half an hour of rest before heading to the convention center for preview night. What we would find there would be horrifying and absolutely disgusting.
No DC.
No Marvel.
No Wizards of the Coast.
Autographs only.
Final Destination.
For those who don't want to fight with the meme, DC, Marvel, and Wizards of the Coast - easily the three largest companies that normally appear at the convention - had no floor presence whatsoever. Sure, DC and Marvel had a few panels, but those were of no importance whatsoever. Instead, a large chunk of the standard commercial floor space had been given to autograph sessions involving stars I don't give a rat's ass about.
Also something about Final Destination, I guess. Anyway, the point is, this convention set itself up to be garbage from the moment we entered the show. Preview night, for the most part, sucked - some vendors were just beginning to unpack, many of the tables in Artist's Alley were empty, and approximately none of the big booths were worth stopping at. However, what I saw of what was there ended up being good - though nothing can make up for the distinct lack of free Magic cards and DC Nation buttons, overall I had fun the first day. We later went shopping for a few items for my brother's costume and food for the hotel room. We discovered that the Wal-Mart was being converted into a SuperCenter, and were able to get all of the food items we needed there instead of having to then drive over to Meijer or Jewel Osco to do so. I also picked up five boxes of Pocky, because I knew I'd need snacks for the convention.
Later that night, I finally got around to watching episode two of season two (for those who have been following the anime, that's episode one of the Endless Eight arc). I then went to watch episode three, only to find that my netbook seemingly lacks the power necessary to play .mkv files of that quality. I won't be able to watch episodes three through eight (and so on, since there should be at least two more episodes for me to download) until I get home.
Chapter 2 and so on to come when I get to my house. Things to come: Purchases! Energy drinks! Raffles! Sketches! Walking! Pocky! Costumes! Stories of the failings of Wi-Fi!
