Boo! We got a double post coming in this week!
During this weekend, I had the pleasure of going to Adelaide's Anime and Video game Convention! This is something that I go to every year and it's always a great event to go to! I'll be talking about what I did throughout the day! There was the option to go on both Saturday and Sunday, but I only went a single day.
Compared to last year's AVcon, the arrangement of everything was a whole lot better. Last year, everything was crammed into a single building at the Adelaide Showground. This didn't leave much in terms of space for both the artist alley and the workshop area. It was also incredibly loud, since there was a Baby Metal concert last year. It was particularly loud when I went to a drawing workshop last year, but noise cancelling headphones we're provided, which helped. This year, the artist alley, board games and merch vendors were placed in a building very close to the rest of the action. This let way more things to be active at the convention and I think was a good change overall. One of the first things that I did was check out how much friends were going at Hellbyte Studios, who are currently working on Blood Reaver! Which you should totally check out by the way! It's really good! The game is progressing really well! From what I heard, they whipped up a new demo version for AVcon, and it looks really snappy! I didn't get a chance to play since they were so packed, but it's really coming together. I first saw the game when I was at AIE, and it's so surreal to see something that I played in the very early stages get more and more polished with each iteration. If you like wave based horde games with a bloody twist, this will be the game for you!
Something that caught me by surprise was the exhibition of Mini4WD on display. It's what inspired the pocket circuit in Yakuza 0. It was really fun to watch a car go about a course and hope that it didn't fall off the course. I can see why Kiryu got so worked up when it fell off. The guy at the showcase was also very kind and obviously was super passionate about the hobby. He runs the Adelaide M4WD club and told me a plethora of information that I found super intriguing. I really want to get into it to be completely honest! From what I could find online, it's a basically non-existent hobby in Australia, but is popular in places like New Zealand and Hong Kong. One of the most enticing aspects of the hobby is how cheap it seems to be. Accord to the club owner, he's got a supplier friend that he can get parts from for super cheap. Meaning, if someone wants to get new parts for their car, they can go directly through him for a good discount. It turns out that a beginner kit is only around 20 dollars! I was honestly thinking that the barrier of entry would be around 50-60 dollars, considering how much has to be imported from Japan. I don't have a lot of money at the moment, so this is a really good aspect for me!
For the artist alley, I had a wander around and found some really great artists and got some really nice prints! My friend, who was the artist alley coordinator, introduced me to somebody who had animated on a some industry projects! Some big ones were that monkey Lego show and TMNT. It was a very insightful conversation. One of the most unexpected this was that I found out one of my good friends from my course was actually the person that I got my heavy and medic stickers from! It's crazy how small of a town Adelaide can be! I was very grateful that she gave me a generous discount on the prints that I got from her! I also got a blind bag full of random booster packs and card decks from a local card shop in the city. To be completely honest, it could have been worse, but it could have also been better. I'm happy with the boosters and deck that I got, but the other stuff was a bit underwhelming. The first was a set of Harry Potter card sleeves. I was into HP when I was younger, but I haven't read the books in ages because I don't really read as much as I used to and for very obvious other reasons. I think that the biggest disappointment was the Aquaman card box that I got. For starters, it's just really ugly. They wrap the face of the guy around the box and call it a day. It's just some dude! I don't care about him. I also just am not fond of much Marvel or DC stuff in general. Superheroes are really my main form of entertainment. The last part was the fact that the price tag was still on there, and showed that it was a whopping 40 dollars of value just for the box. This is already expensive for what amounts for some shaped hard plastic. The kicker, however, is that the bag is supposed to have a estimate value of 100 dollars. So this box that I'm going to cover up with tape anyway took up 40% of the value of the bag. I would have love another deck for a game! Or anything else really! Obviously, I'm grateful that I was able to get the stuff that I got, since I only paid 35 dollars for it, but I just wish it would have been something better. If I saw someone get a commander deck for Magic in their bag, I would have been pissed. I spent most of the latter half of the day watching one of my friends play Tekken for a tournament. He's really good at the game, but he always underplays how good he is at it since he compares himself to people who have been playing since the original game. He absolutely tore it up and was able to get 4th place out of 20-something competitors! That's real good! And he should be way more confident in his skills.
That's more or less how my weekend was! It was a great time being able to catch up with friends and get some really cool prints! I'm hoping that next year I'll be able to get a costume sorted. I've got a good idea for what I want to do. No spoilers, though!
Thank you and good-bye for today!