MAGFEST 2012 Jan 5-8, RGRUP will be there! National Harbor MD

[RetroGaming Roundup]

http://magfest.org/

As a member of the arcade dept staff we are busting with excitement to do this con again this year. We have moved to the much larger National Harbor venue and are expecting around 6,000 in attendance. The room sizes are massive, several are 30,000 sqft and house the dozen bands, marketplace of over 100 vendors, chip tune artists and DJs, table games, dozens of consoles, and of course our epic arcade which you have to see to believe. And for you LAN party guys, a 24 hour massive venue is all set up.

What makes MAGFEST so cool is that for four days it goes for 24 hours so there is never down time.

Come visit us at our booth in the arcade, we look forward to partying with everyone.

Some highlights include:

Nobuo Uematsu - Keyboards - Composer for most of the Final Fantasy Series
ARMCANNON
Bit Brigade
Descendants of Erdrick - Our buds from CGE, congrats on making it!
Dj CUTMAN
The Megas
Metroid Metal
The OneUps
Random Encounter
Temp Sound Solutions
This Place is Haunted
X-Hunters
Year 200X

And an equally massive list of guests; http://magfest.org/guests

[MrRoboto19XX]

I'll be there, pretty psyched to revisit the arcade area, where I spent most of my time last year. Any idea how many cabs there'll be this year?

[RetroGaming Roundup]

Were well over 100 again, and have more dance machines, japanese cabs, you name it were adding more. The arcade will also be allot more visual this year, we have projectors, lighting, lasers etc!

[Animaniac]

I'll be there, interviewing some guests for the website I work for.

[RetroGaming Roundup]

@ MrRoboto, were currently around 180 and counting

Tickets will still be available at the door, this will be a year not to be missed.

This is out current layout draft, please note that each block is not one for one a machine. And remember this is just the arcade.

[RetroGaming Roundup]

Day 1 wrap up..... The doors opened at around 2:00PM and fortunatly we were about 80% ready, there were still a few games to route power to in some out the outlaying areas, still some projectors and lights to do but for the most part it was ready. It is something watching a huge expo hall fill up with people in less than 2 min.

The arcade this year has grown amazingly since last year not just in machines (were close to 200) but in terms of the video and light gear we have added. We have projectors running videos, tournament scoring, event info and all sorts of other odds and ends. We also have rotoscope lights, spot lights, colored floods to light walls and pillars, you name it. All of it together adds and amazing effect to the arcade. On top of that is the scale of the thing. Once I get back home I will submit videos of the walk through so you can get a sense of the scale. One thing of mixed results is that while we have a row of about a dozen dance games and four player Xmen cabs the endless thundering from those things presents the usual challenge to recording. Other than that the behind the scenes is allot of running around to fix this or that throughout the day.

Pics to follow
What is crazy is the pinball attention this year as it was last year, each machine is almost 100% occupied from the moment we opened the door.

The first day for the arcade and consoles was a total mod scene, even with the massive space we have the number of people really fills it out. I hooked up with John of Video Masters TV who is here to get footage for his show and we played Halo for the Atari 2600 in our lounge for about an hour and it was amazing just how many people, and I would say 9 out of 10, instantly got that it was Halo. Some had heard of it but only as a ROM and never expected to see a cart in public, and many had never heard that it existed but instantly freaked out over Halo in 8 bit. And a few people were even self convinced (and a few we bullshited) that Halo actually went back to the 70's on the 2600.

We bailed from the arcade for a while to go catch our friends Descendants of Erdrick who really got a venue worthy of their sound. And I am sure they enjoyed playing on MAGFEST's massive sound system. If you have never heard these guys go pick up their CD so long as you like heavy metal renditions of 8bit - PS2 done just right. After the show I hit the arcade again until about 2am. And back at it around 9:00am.

A feature that we borrowed from our friends at CGE was the console lounge in the middle of the arcade. We have an Atari 2600, Intellivision couch, coffee table, and some goodies placed on a big square of blacklight carpet. It pretty much stays occupied the entire time.

[RetroGaming Roundup]

Descendants of Erdrick on stage;

[RetroGaming Roundup]

Our sweet booth;

[RetroGaming Roundup]

Some nice Japanese machines;



A row of consoles;



Dance and music games;

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Lots of in box Japanese consoles!

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They have a huge table game arena, how cool is this;

[RetroGaming Roundup]

I think I have told all 6,000 con goers about CGE at this point.

[RetroGaming Roundup]

Shot a video piece with the Angry video game nerd and his crew, they are really cool guys and have a genuine interest in gaming history.

[RetroGaming Roundup]

This is just how busy the console and arcade hall was!

[RetroGaming Roundup]

[RetroGaming Roundup]

[shawnphase]

such a killer event. this was my 8th magfest and it certainly didnt disappoint. if you'd like to hear my bands set from the mainstage, i have a recording of it that was put together, check it out:

http://tempsoundsolutions.arnoldasch...tx-1-05-12.mp3
and here's a flickr with pics from our 2nd set we did: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theninj...7628749296133/

we also have a 12th video game cover album we released there. information and mp3s are at http://tempsoundsolutions.com/ if you like what you hear. lots of great new bands there this year! best magfest yet!

[Aussie2B]

Hah, you caught a couple of my friends near the front of one of those pictures. Funny coincidence.

The game room was really nice this year. Definitely a step up, especially with all the room to breathe. The only bummer was how in a space like that all the sound just bounces off the walls and results in a consistent, overpowering roar. Anyway, the game room is kind of low on my list of Magfest priorities, but whenever I have time to kill, I like to play a few machines. I don't have any interest in the console gaming (I mean, I got 1200+ games I can play at home whenever I want), but I enjoy playing on some cabinets (wanted to play pinball too, but never got around to it). I played some Mappy, Dig Dug, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., etc.