I'm almost back from Wizard World Chicago. Right now, I'm posting from my cousin's computer (she went with us to WWC, and we had to bring her back to Iowa; we stayed at her house overnight), which uses AOL, but I'm not too concerned about that fact.
Now, stuff about Wizard World:
* I bought some MtG booster packs (4 from Planar Chaos and 8 from Time Spiral; I also got a free Dissention booster and a free Coldsnap booster). Among other things, I pulled a [darn]ation, a Lotus Bloom, and a holographic Angel's Grace. Since I didn't bring my Magic cards with me to the convention (I definitely will bring them all next year), I ended up having to make decks out of the 14 boosters I got and red, blue, and green Tenth Edition starter decks. They initially didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but Jeremy Smith, one of the editors of InQuest magazine, helped me get the decks I made (a red/green deck that's been working really well for me, and a blue deck into which I need to put seven Islands when I get home) into playable condition.
* I was very unimpressed with "The Eye of Judgment," a new game from Wizards of the Coast. It's a PS3 game that uses the new version of the EyeToy to scan cards. The things on the cards appear onscreen. Basically, it seemed like a combination of EyeToy, e-Reader, and the Shadow Game from Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I liked those a lot more when they weren't combined. Also, the graphics looked like PS2 quality (possibly due to the fact that it uses the EyeToy).
* SingStar, on the other hand, is a really fun game. For those who don't know, it's a karaoke game for the PS2 where you can sing songs such as (on the Pop version) Take Me Out, Steady As She Goes, Vertigo, Kryptonite, and Take On Me (which is a lot more fun when my throat isn't dry, because then I can hit the note with ease). They were doing contests on all four days of the convention, and on the third day, they gave out a copy of SingStar Rocks!. They also had SingStar Amped on display, which I played for a little while, as it had (Don't Fear) The Reaper.
* Unfortunately, there was no Nintendo booth. However, while walking through the vendor's area, I saw a HUGE amount of Nintendo things for sale, which included big plush Mega Mushrooms, those pixel art things (I saw Fire Luigi and Dig Dug sets, which I didn't buy because I was still looking for MtG cards), that Mario mouse that Lizard Dude has (I also saw the Starman mouse), plenty of big Kirby dolls, plenty of Master Swords, a vendor that was actually selling Game Boy and DS games (I could've bought Pokémon Trozei!, but I was still looking for MtG cards), and a vendor that was selling Jungle and Fossil boosters and Fossil theme decks (as much as I wanted to have some more classic Pokémon cards, I was still looking for slivers and other MtG cards).
* There was a vendor selling Guy Fawkes masks. There were quite a few people walking around the convention center wearing those...I have a pretty good guess of who's to blame, and it's not V...
* As usual, there were plenty of vendors selling video game weaponry and clothing.
* Paul Jenkins is a really good pool player.
* Artist's Alley was awesome, as usual. My favorite thing was my girlfriend getting a drawing of a baby punching a nurse on her arm, and me getting a drawing of a turtle smoking a cigarette on my arm. Unfortunately, mine has almost completely faded, but when I get home, if the guy that did the drawings has uploaded the pictures (the deal was that if we let him draw on our body, he would photograph it and upload it to his MySpace; he might be making a Google page soon thanks to me), I can show them to you guys, along with the baby punching the nurse.
* I won 3 Naruto headbands from the Mattel booth. They aren't very high-quality (the plate is plastic), but hey, they were free.
* I spun the Wizard Wheel of Doom on all four days of the convention. The categories I picked were "Free Online Stick-Figure RPGs (they didn't know anything about the category)," Dance Dance Revolution (they asked me to name three songs from the most recent version, and I purposefully interpreted that as the most recent arcade version and picked Chaos, Fascination (eternal love mix), and Fascination MAXX), Fruits Basket (for the last two days, I went with categories that they knew, which ended up in me getting ridiculously easy questions), and Kingdom Hearts 2 (it would've been Chain of Memories, but the guy with the Kingdom Hearts knowledge hadn't played Chain of Memories; I was originally going to pick NetHack as my category on the final day, but I figured they wouldn't know anything at all about that). Overall, I got some comics and a doll from spinning the wheel. I also got a Superman action figure, but I traded it with my dad for another Naruto headband.
* I made an extremely startling discovery while we were at the hotel: my dad's laptop, which is running Windows ME, can access my MP3 player without any delay whatsoever. I'm usually lucky if I can get my computer (running XP) to access it at all (though I never have a problem with charging, thankfully).
* My dad is a great GM. During the trip to the convention, the nights in the hotel, and the trip to Iowa (and the two and a half hours that we stayed awake for after we arrived), we played his roleplaying system, which he calls EBTKS (everything but the kitchen sink). I managed to convert ALL of my KoL character's abilities into something that would work in his system. I even narratively justified chat, and made it something I could use in his game (right now, we're calling ourselves the Clan of Dream, as the quest was given to us by Dream). So far, I'm also the only player who has gotten the whole "we're supposed to be a team" thing down. I also managed to make my character a Boozetafarian, and my dad found a way around it that let me eat food (ham doused in ridiculous amounts of Jack Daniels). So far, we've been to the Dreaming, an alternate version of Earth that has been overrun by the Borg (my cousin's character got the Witchblade there), heaven (before we talked to Jesus and got the Spear of Destiny, we visited Valhalla, and while my character was sitting there enjoying the ale of the gods, my brother's character was getting drunk, and my girlfriend's character (she's playing Rogue, without the Miss Marvel powers) got tanked pretty quickly), and my cousin's character's homeworld (where we found a blue police box and THERE WAS ONLY ONE TURTLE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET AND THERE WERE NO KIWI BIRDS AND WHEN I GOT TO AN ARCADE AND STARTED PLAYING THE NEW ZEALAND STORY WE GOT BEAMED BACK ONTO THE SHIP WAAAH). Now that we've found a TARDIS, we've got to stop my dad's character from stopping her daughter's death. Also, my dad started making up stuff while I was training in one of the holosuites, which I had a lot of fun dealing with (I was up against three Klingons; suddenly, I had a yellow stuffed bear tugging on my leg and asking if I had any honey, and then Zatanna appeared and distracted me further by changing my clothing into a ballerina outfit that was two sizes too small; she changed it back into my stuff, but blindfolded me; I told my penguin to go attack Zatanna, and suddenly he was dealing with a cymbal-playing monkey; the monkey was loud enough that I could hear where it was, so I threw Pooh at the monkey, which eliminated the bear, monkey, and Zatanna problems, as the cymbals killed her; I then threw my shield at the Klingon that was wielding a two-handed weapon, watched it bounce back, grabbed it in mid-air, and did an extremely powerful Shieldbutt right in his face; I then saw a cymbal whiz past my ear, and felt another one hit my pith helmet, and then finally had a dead body thrown at me; I threw the body at another one of the Klingons, and suddenly a green hand tapped me on the shoulders and asked me in an accent what I was doing; I used Shieldbutt on the remaining Klingon and twisted in the air so that when I landed, I was facing Shrek; I gave my penguin some money so that he'd stop attacking me, and then we all sat down and had a drink). When we leave to go back home, my cousin's character will be put in stasis. Also, while on the ship, if my dad's character's sister isn't on board, my character is the gunner, as he's the only player character who isn't going to do something stupid like mess with the weapons he doesn't have any idea how to use. My dad has also commented on the fact that I've been casting shells and Empathy on everyone before we go into ground-based combat, and said that I've got the teamwork aspect of this thing down better than any of the other players.
* I posted a picture a while back of me leaning against a tree, which elicited some unexpected responses ("Since when are you a cool-looking guy?"). Well, on the way up to Iowa after the convention finally ended, we stopped at the place where that picture was taken, and got some more pictures. However, I wasn't in the mood for photos at that point (considering it was past 1 in the morning), so there aren't too many of me, and none of them were as good as the one from before.
All in all, it was a really fun trip. My friend John bought a bunch of furry stuff (he's not actually a furry), plus some Final Fantasy character hats (a Moogle and a Cactuar). Right now, I'm wearing the Moogle one.
