Ah-ha! I finally am able to talk about the fun events I was prepping to go to for months and document it! Decided to try something a little different with how I discuss events; in the past I’d usually make an Unscripted Memories episode on my youtube channel to ramble about good times at whatever event I went to, but with the retirement of my Youtube for the time being, I decided to try another format of showing off the cool things I did and sharing thoughts on an event; as a Bonus Article Impressions piece! Consider this my way of doing a “travel blog” of sorts.

So yes. April 5-7 was Midwest Gaming Classic, a rather big gaming convention not too far from where I am, so thus I was able to take some time out of my busy schedule to head down and check it out with a friend of mine, and also visit the state of Wisconsin briefly with family while I was at it. Unfortunately, due to uncertainty about how I’d like the event and being busy with my usual full time routine, I only went for the day of Saturday April 6th, and skipped the Fri Night show and the Sun Family Day. Still, was this brief trip and checking out old game vendors worth it? How was the state of WI? Anything I did fun before or after the event? How did it help or hurt a really stupid fear I’m stuck with?

Well, before I try to ramble all of that at you, I want to just mention another thanks to my readers. If it wasn’t for the stuff I learned over the last decade of writing on SFG, I likely wouldn’t even have the means to be doing what I’m doing now or have the means to go to an event like this to begin with. Bear in mind, I am insanely shy IRL and not one to speak up much in general, but running a site where you have to contact game people often is uh, yeah, a pretty handy way at socializing more in general. Definitely came in handy a few times here, along with letting me meet my friend who tagged along with me for the event! So thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this fun little travel journal of sorts.

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FRIDAY

Getting into WI was pretty simple, and upon arriving at a relative’s house, I didn’t do much besides unpack and play with her animals at first. She has a lot of wonderful pets and some fun cats that cuddled up with us while me and family stayed over. Definitely better than any hotel could have been!

Later that night I decided that while I wanted to get a review done, (the Hebereke Enjoy review that finally went up a while days ago) with the big con being the next day, I wouldn’t be able to publish such a thing so fast, especially after a long car ride. So, I just relaxed with my Super Pocket for a bit, before me and relatives decided to all watch The Fox and the Hound, the Disney Classic. Yes, being a fox fanatic, I had never seen the movie, (though having read snippets of the book in the past uh, do not read that book if you like this movie, it’ll crush your soul) and I definitely had a fun time watching the classic film.

It’s weird. I grew up with Disney Channel during my pre-adoption era, and saw a few modernish movies like Toy Story 1/2, but outside of Disney Channel original movies and stuff like Lilo and Stitch, I barely watched any of the Disney catalog until after I got adopted; moreso lack of interest, really. Whatever was on TV is what I saw. I started getting really into Pixar stuff post adoption and started going to movies as they were new, and a bunch of the 2006-2014 stuff I saw pretty regularly, especially once Disney XD kicked off. I caught up on a few classics my grandma really liked, such as Bambi and Dumbo, and found stuff like Aristocats decently enjoyable, (if a bit problematic for my tastes) but never really got around to watching a lot of the older stuff; their newer stuff I fell off on too, especially with their push to streaming.

But alas, Fox and the Hound was definitely a worthy watch and still holds up just as well today as it did back then. Even as a newcomer to the movie version, I really found it to be a sad, somber movie, and it ended up being the first movie in ten years to make me cry quite a bit. (The last movie to do that to me, was The Adventures of Chatran, the Japanese Milo and Otis; not due to the murky allegations around that movie, but rather due to the outright depressing soundtrack that would make the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon ending themes blush!) Definitely a great way to spend my night and now I have it and the sequel on bluray to watch and enjoy the bonus features of later (though considering how the Direct to Video stuff’s reputation is, maybe watching the sequel will be a mistake when I eventually get around to it.)

With a good cry and family fun time over with, it was time to head to bed and prep for the big big day… Then meet a friend who decided to join my trip recently, and see how the huge Baird Center stood up against my Acrophobia!

Oh yes. I do have that. Rather badly. It’s a detail I never needed or wanted to disclose on the site before, but I kinda do feel the need to talk about it and what I feel the event could have done better in that regards, but we’ll save that for a bit later in the Saturday Recap. Speaking of…

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SATURDAY

Saturday came, and after waking up early and having my relative drop me off at the convention center, I met my trusted friend as we headed to the line for pre-registration folk. Right away, the convention center was huge, and lots of scary balconies aplenty were spotted above me. First things first was to find out where all the vendor goodies were laid out, and that was after a rather long line. As we headed to the back of said line, we quickly realize one of the two elevators is completely out of order.

That ain’t good for a big convention.

Still, we asked a staff member after completion of registration where to find the vendors, and he helpfully escorted us to a third floor via the other elevator. Thankfully, this elevator was closer to the vendor and gaming halls anyhow, and despite those balconies being pretty intimidating on the third floor and causing my head pressure to go insane at first, looking away from them and hugging the wall is what kept me sane as we made our way to the vendor hall. With big thanks given, me and my friend would soon start a trek around the gargantuan room, and my first purchase was an immediate sighting of Turbografx classic The Legendary Axe, neat! This vendor also had a lot of rather rare stuff, and I had two pretty highly rare games in mind (one cheap, one expensive) to aim for during the convention: Nightmare of Druaga for PS2, and Torneko: The Last Hope for PS1. Alas, they weren’t in this case, but a lot of very rare stuff almost nobody probably bought there was.

Next, we came across another vendor with some pretty cheap stuff. I liked a copy of Super Star Force I saw, so I bought it. They also had the El Viento Retrobit reissue, but despite nearly pulling out my apple pay and just being ready to buy it, I resisted due to realizing I don’t need that game this minute and already have other ways of playing it. I also see a copy of Shiren 2 on N64, but it isn’t complete so I can easily skip it.

Next was a guy selling a bunch of NES/GBA homebrew, which I later realized was John Riggs. I didn’t recognize him at first because believe it or not, people are people and when you aren’t really paying attention to them as poputuber stars, you’d be surprised how nice they are as ordinary individuals! I almost bought one of these NES homebrews for support, but again, being a bit tight and hoping for those two MD games, I had to hold off on impulse buying.

Continuing the path, I noticed a certain old YTer was right there, which made my friend very happy. I didn’t know much about them (but enjoyed other people from their network) so I left my friend for a bit to game hunt nearby as he chatted with the critic. I nearly impulse bought some sports games before realizing I could just get them later at my local store, and turning around I see Jon St. John was right there at a desk. Being a bit shy I decided to say hello and got a nice shotglass and a cool photo! I wish I also brought my Evercade carts to sign, but alas, I left them at home as I only brought one thing to sign for someone else.

Next, me and my friend toured around some more, finding various more rare game vendors, lots of expensive stuff, and tons and tons of imports. So many I can’t even begin to get into them all. There were so many options, it was easy to get overwhelmed. I later spotted Solatorobo CIB for around $400 in one of these vendors, and I was rather relieved I only spent half that on my cart only copy a few years ago. I love you Opera Kranz, but your game ain’t worth even that much money, yet alone $400; would much prefer to buy Summer Carnival 92 with that instead (Sadly, no RECCA at MGC.)

Lots, lots, and LOTS more touring. I cannot even begin to fully detail how gargantuan this hecking room was. It truly was big! But we looked for a while, my friend found a few things he liked quite a bit, bought some, and eventually we hit a motherlode of obscure goodness, and damn, I REALLY wish I kept this vendor’s name in some capacity. Just, look at this all!

So, so many SFC games. Loose and complete. Off screen, there was many, many more. Then famicom games, then Wonderswan Games, then Turbografx CD games? I happily bought tons here, including Salamander and Ys III. I almost bought more when I came around to the other side, and my friend nearly went on a Rockman EXE buying spree. Just one of many outstanding vendors here, but this one had pretty good prices and very clean games; when I got home I was surprised by how everything just worked and seemed pre-cleaned! (barring one very, very dirty baseball game) Needless to say if I wasn’t careful, I could have gone bankrupt at this vendor alone.

Next up was more and more browsing! Up and down we went, with no MD in sight for me, but lots of other small retro goodies along the way; of course, you also get the inevitable, very overpriced booths too, with not much to offer. I saw one booth that sold Super Chinese Land for $20, and that’s a $5 GB import right there, so that should give you an indicator of how weird that is.

A more local-to-me vendor was near the back of the left side of the room, and he was another favorite! Selling a bunch of old carts, but with damaged labels; some people don’t like em, but I find it cool plus the game’s still the game after all, so hey, a Pokemon Puzzle League cart for $10 with only a printed plain text label on it? Sure! I also got a decent looking Bomberman Hero for $15, which was another want of mine for the N64. A cracked/taped together Cruisin World was another $10 buy, which I found fair for the condition, and it works great on my system regardless.

By the time we finished our ups and downs and started getting a little tired of endless games, we had done only a quarter of the full vendor hall; thus, it was time for a break and to head to the game room on the other side of the third floor! This was where we had the most fun of the day by far, and where a lot of my cooler photos and fun interactions came about. Right away, we saw a messy sight: Faceball 2000 DX, linked with many, many gamecubes. Just look at this nightmare setup.

Wow! That’s a lot of cable. Needless to say my friend and I would play against each other, using the inactive bots as a method to gain extra kills, before more people showed up. Before I realized it, one of those people who joined was Derek from Stop Skeletons from Fighting, who ended up being the guy to set up all this stuff! Very neat indeed.

…And hey, I won a few games too! Very fun time. We got rather hooked into this to the point I almost lost track of time, but me and my friend eventually moved on, though before we went I did give Derek my recommendation of checking out Shiren Monsters NETSAL for his Punching Weight series, and I do hope he gives Tomie-San’s hidden GBA 3D gem a good look someday.

Next we went to the side of the room with the video game museum and some NESMaker stuff. A little later than this (on our second visit back to this part of the room here) I played a few things for NES Maker and hoped maybe to do a quick interview or play a game to preview for SFG, but nothing really stood out there unfortunately; a lot of the NESMaker stuff was pretty rudimentary to me and nothing clicked. Neat program showcase, but not much for interesting, detailed games. A few finished games were on demo though, including the adorable Skate Cat. Luckily by the time this finally goes live, I got the thing on evercade to play but that one I’d have loved to buy on NES Cart (along with an interesting looking bluray documentary i noticed) if the seller wasn’t away from the booth to attend some showcase on the other side of the room.

Before I looked at those games later in the day though, during the first trip we did pass by the booth, and this kid asked if I wanted to buy his weird FNAF comic. It seemed homemade and was an admirable effort, but I gotta say it would still feel weird to buy a home made comic, mainly for the silly/selfish reason of me being a guy who made my own wild homemade comics I’d give to friends and teachers. For the record, it was a comic where Pokemon Mystery Dungeon crossed over with Chalkzone because I had no idea how to draw many pokemon, but could draw Snap with perfect accuracy. Still, I think the man he was with may have been involved in the Skate Cat game and I’d have loved to buy that at least, but maybe another time I can nab it for my NES.

But hey, a good chunk of this side of the room was the Gaming museum! And boy, there was just a lot of it so I’ll post some random cool things I photographed before summing up my general thoughts on it.

Cartridge fun!

Rad computers!

Rikki and Vikki, the Fox-themed Atari game! I really want a console port of this…

A bunch of cool collections including a Mappy cat who must be freed…

An ad and several more consoles and collections! For the Virtual Boy set, I looked to see if they had Virtual Lab, and they did not… All the US games and a few JP exclusives, but not the unicorn JP exclusives. Still neat to see though! (I also got to play on a real VB here via the real kiosk used back in the 90s, and yes, the thing really does hurt your eyes, it is nowhere near as soft on them as the 3DS’s 3D effect would be.)

An Evercade VS on display! This Bubble Seahorse game is part of Indie Heroes 3 and it seemed semi-popular with the kids. One kid I saw got really frustrated and ragequit upon death…

And lastly as part of highlights from this museum… Hotel Mario. We saw the intro in full on a real CDI from a real disc and it was absolutely glorious. The true peak of memery.

So with all that cool museum stuff outta the way, what else did we do in that room? Well there were tons of big pinball machines, but none that interested me. Lots of rad arcade games! But little time to play them. I looked around back and found this stupid piece of crap, though.

The thing got recalled weeks after this event.

Anyhow in the end I figured that in the room there wasn’t much on the floor to play… but the museum let you play the games on the machines! Thus, I went to the silly Capcom Arcade stick and tried to 1CC the easy mode of Puzzle Fighter II. I did so rather nicely, but did notice audio errors with the emulation, which seem par for the course with a device like this, sadly.

Meanwhile my friend was just going wild at this strange, jumbo Tetris game from Sega. Of all things in this room, believe it or not? I think this is what we spent the most time on. The control panel wasn’t perfect and had some issues but we worked a very, very good while at trying to climb the local leaderboards of this thing. It was just crazy addictive and neither of us could get enough of it (My friend moreso)

That was all we did in this game room though, and for the rest of the day, we pretty much had a few plans on our mind: for me, I wanted to see a VA who was doing autographs in the afternoon. Being that I left twitter and said VA only used twitter for status updates, getting status updates without an account was pretty tough. I managed to find the time he’d be signing though, and we had a hour to go, so onto the second floor to check out the stuff there, right?

Well… Here’s where my Acrophobia came into play, and where I felt there could have been a few things done better with MGC about it, though none of this is particularly their fault. We took the lone working elevator from 3rd floor to 2nd floor, assuming it would just be around the corner on the second floor ala the third… Only for me and my friend to be dumped very, very close to a balcony. We realized we were nowhere near the room we wanted to go to (World of Nintendo), and tried to go back via the elevator.

Three damn minutes. That’s how long it took for the elevator to open. When only one elevator works at your massive gaming event, it gets crowded. This is understandable. But boy, being someone with extreme fear of heights caused by someone leaning them over a balcony as a child, being very close to one as you desperately pound that button hoping for the fucking elevator to open so you can get in before your panic attack kicks in is just really, really not fun at all. Every second, felt like an eternity. Finally, the door opened, I rushed in, and my friend helped me get to the first floor so I can take a breather and a water break.

Extreme anxiety… One look at the map of the con center later, and it seemed that indeed, I’d have to make a bit of a trek on floor 2 to get to the World of Nintendo exhibit, all while being way too close to a balcony for my liking. Considering how the lone elevator took forever the last time, my friend and I agreed to not try to go back. It was a bummer to miss out on such a cool exhibit, but we knew both rooms on the third floor were very doable, with lots of content to mess around with. Soon enough, it was late afternoon, and that was when the voice actor I had in mind was to be doing his autograph signings. I figured he’d be like Jon St John and in the main vendor hall (being that he did label the numbers of the hall as the location of his booth, this was an easy assumption), but nope! I tried for a good 20-25 minutes, wandering around on my lonesome looking for him, and while I did spot some fun game deals on the way, none of them clicked with me; still no Druaga or Torneko. I did see some cool PC Engine games, but bizarrely, the seller only took cash with nothing else as an option, so I had to put back the games I was almost about to buy.

That was also because every ATM in the building was broken. Good job… Still, I’d wander the gargantuan hall, losing sight of my friend, and after a bit of a reunion under one of the pillars, I begin to panic once again. My left knee decides to act up, probably sick of me hauling a backpack of increasing weight all day on my left shoulder. I sit for another rest, but then start to have another panic attack due to me being mad at my own fear of heights and extreme worry I would fail to get my autograph after going all that way from my home state to go to the event.

Nobody in the vendor hall knew what I was talking about, and of course, most of the big security folk were outside the vendor hall, near the balcony! I take off my N95 and drink some much needed water, but my anxiety was growing and my physical strength was thinning. Thankfully, my friend came to the rescue, got a staffer, and found the guy I was looking for; he was right outside the vendor hall, and while not in front of the balcony like some people, was decently far away from it that I could ignore it, thanks to the bigger gap on the third floor vs the second.

Then thanks to some outstanding event staff he traveled with plus a very helpful MGC guy, (shoutout to General Malice! You saved my skin) I managed to get to wait for the voice actor I had longed to see without having to stand near a balcony for an extended period of time. I finally got to see Bill Rogers.

Now I finally did it; both Pokepals, autographing my childhood PMD DVDs. I also just had fun talking with Bill in general, since he happened to be a Telenet fan too! He was definitely fascinated by how one of their programmers would later work on PMD, and was a particular fan of Cosmic Fantasy; here’s hoping that second collection gets a US release pretty soon!

My friend even was able to join in the fun and get a group photo with bill and I; I won’t disclose it due to not having his consent for sharing that photo, but needless to say, he’s been a longtime bestie of mine for good reason, and also helped save my skin to make this happen. Very, very good end to the day.

And yeah, I said end of the day, even though it was only nearing 3 PM! That walk around I did looking for Bill did a number on my feet, and I was getting pretty hungry too. I was already well spent at the convention and saw little need to spend more money, and with no Torneko or Druaga spotted, I’d have to hang up my hat on those two games for now. My friend got what he wanted for the most part, so that was good too. I will say I was nearly tempted to go back to that vendor with the wonderswan games and just buy them plus a console… But financial common sense prevailed.

Next up, we hit Dairyland! This was part of a cool mall in Milwaukee, and right near it were a bunch of other restaurants and a setup for people to just play an Nintendo Switch system. Someone was actually playing Side Pocket on the SNES online app, which might just mark the only time in my life I will witness another human playing that game without me initiating it.

I ordered french fries and since I didn’t eat much at all, a few chicken strips. Didn’t expect much, since hey, it was just three! Only, they were absurdly gargantuan, just look.

Yeah, pretty wild. Still, we ended it after eating a good meal, and my friend took me back home to my relative’s place. We decided to hang out there and play some multiplayer Switch online stuff, and had an absolute blast! The GB/GBA apps in particular are just so much fun with a friend in the same room as you. I managed to get my full haul out, and thus took this photo showing the majority of what I got outside of a few buried sports games.

Lots of the aforementioned goodies alongside other gems I nabbed here and there like Tombs & Treasure, Super Pang, Atomic Robo Kid, and others. Pretty fun haul if I must say, though the Sickle Weasel game lacks a manual, and to get a manual would basically just mean I might as well buy another CIB copy anyway, so…

Anyhow, that was our saturday. My friend departed for his home state, I went and took another much needed bath (Especially with how my foot ached!) And prepped for the next day, when I’d go home versus doing the full weekend.

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Sunday/Conclusion

Overall I had a great time at Midwest Gaming Classic, and it definitely is an event I’ll try to hit up next year. It’s a big shame it isn’t the best for an acrophobic like me, and the broken elevator/ATMs was just unacceptable in my book. Still, I got lots of games, had a wonderful time, met great people, and just had a blast with my friend. The jumbo Tetris game, Faceball DX, and finding that Legendary Axe right away were easily the highlights of the whole trip for me.

I knew I’d spend a lot here, and I’m happy I made the TG16 scores I did, but man, I didn’t expect to see the same amount of identical games over and over again: you can only see so many copies of Kuon and Rule of Rose before you get sick of it; let alone the many vendors trying to see whatever random mario games they can sell. The fact I only managed to cover roughly half of the entire vendor hall was a bit disappointing and I wish my leg didn’t wear out on me, but maybe next year I’ll be able to handle a full day.

Still, Sunday was the day I chose to go home, and even after how much I loved MGC, I don’t think I could handle a day 2. I’d be pretty much cooped up in the Arcade area on the third floor and I saw the most I needed to on the first day; spending more money would be pointless since I got my fill done on the prior day, so might as well go home, save some money, and reap the rewards right? I do wish I was able to properly try out an early indie game or buy a physical cart of one, or get one of those cool documentary blurays I saw, but alas. Maybe later I’ll be able to nab Skate Cat on NES, or the bluray the vendor sold. I wish I could remember what that bluray was named…

Well, in the end, I had tons of fun. My friend was a big lifesaver, especially with that second floor balcony incident, and I really hope next year MGC gets both elevators in proper working order before I go again. Lord knows the tragedy that would unfold if I was trapped on the third floor and the only elevator were to abruptly die; be thankful you don’t have Acrophobia, folks… Nevertheless, while it took me a month of chipping away to get this travel journal out, I am pleased with the results and consider this style of bloggin a suitable alternative to the old Unscripted Memories episodes I’d make for the Youtube channel whenever I went to a big event or to a special place; with me retired from videos, I figure I’d give this a shot and I’m super happy I did. Lemme know if you want to see more of this if I go to future events! I doubt I’ll make it to a PAX in my lifetime (again, Acrophobia) but hey, maybe something will let me get there safely by train.