PAX Prime 2012

Tickets in hand: check
Hotel booked for five days: check.
Store covered for five days: check (thanks again my super-awesome-amazing family!)
Friend picked up from the airport two days early: check
Full car of buddies ready for a long weekend of games and shenanigans: double check!

PAX Prime was just as much fun as we knew it would be. So much happened that we didn't plan, but isn't the unexpected part of the fun?

We were able to catch up with our friend Cody who drew us this SUPER adorable picture:

We also met up with our peeps from Press Pause Radio:

From left to right is: Sean, Ser (who composed the store's theme song~ he's soo super talented!!), George (who we picked up from SeaTac two days early so PAX weekend really started on Tuesday for us, lol!), Sean-dood (we had an adventure finding him at the train station~ a statue of Anubis ended up being the key to success), Cody, and me. Aaron was quite the photographer that weekend. Sadly, I didn't get to meet up with Eve~ hopefully next year!!

Another friend who we unexpectedly ran into was Darth Vader!!!

Seriously though, I know this dude. His name is Manny and he comes and shops at my store. At first, I wasn't sure it was him, but as soon as I saw him talking to one of his buddy's I know I ran and glomped him (hence the blurry picture). Now, I'm not one who normally "glomps" someone, but I was so excited to see Vader! xD Also the dude dressed up as Darth Revan in the back is one of my customers too, who sadly I don't know his name (sorry!). If you follow me on Instagram, you might remember this picture of me posing with both these dudes.

While we're on the subject of Star Wars, I ran into a SHADOW TROOPER! Out of all the various Star Wars characters I've ran into at PAX and at the store, I haven't seen a Shadow Trooper. I was psyched!

Look at that! I think he was just as excited for the picture as I was! ;D

Games were actually played in case you were wondering. Lots more than the previous two years in fact! Here are just a few of the many many we played (and remembered to take pictures of, lol).

Natural Selection 2. In high school my friends and I had a server for the first NS game. Back in the day it was a Half-Life 2 mod, but now it has grown into it's own deal. The game was playable and it was perfect! (Minus the overheating computers which would crash the games... poor computers).

I will be 100% honest with you here, so don't disown me as a blogging friend when I make this statement: I do not like the new Mario games. At all! I find the controls loose, the animation floaty, and the new game mechanics just aren't fun. That being said, I played the NEW new Mario game for WiiU. I'm not impressed.

The two games that I was MOST excited for, I didn't get pictures of. The first was an iOS game called Jack Lumber. You play as Jack and he's getting revenge on trees as one killed his Granny. You have to use your finger to move the magic axe and cut up the trees into pieces. It's only $1.99 but I would EASILY pay $4.99 for it! I had the opportunity to talk with one of the developers who was so nice and eager to talk to us about the game. We probably talked for about 15-20 minutes about his game, various outlets to release games, and our store. It was super great!

The second game is Go Home Dinosaurs. Think of it as Plants vs Zombies and Tetris. Totally a different concept but it works. And is a ton of fun! This is a free Chrome download and I have spent a lot of free time at the store playing *cough* I mean, researching games *cough*. ;D

ALSO! We met the guys at Gaijin Games, the awesome dudes behind the Bit Trip games. I cannot begin to explain how awesome Alex was when we talked with him. He took the time to talk to us about his company's game's, game production, and we were able to buy his games from the store there at the booth! Not to mention we rock their stickers and tiny pins here at the store. d*^__^*b

Sadly, Sega didn't throw a party this year at GameWorks so we threw our own there. It was super crowded there so we made friends with a couple who was super nice enough to share their table with us. After some games and a few drinks, we all took turns to see who could get the highest score on Aaron's Shooting Watch. The point is to see how many times you can press a button in 10 seconds. Silly? Not one bit! My previous score was 81. Then by a stroke of luck, I hit this:

It's all in the technique! Out of 10 of us, only a few were able to get above 100. While I haven't been able to replicate this personal victory, I'm pretty happy I set it. :D

Lastly, SquareEnix threw a neat little get together complete with every Final Fantasy game they've released complete with a family room set up from that era:

It was pretty darn neat. THEN! SquEnix had a photo area:

Look! It's like we're in the game! ♥ How fun!

I look forward to making so many more memories next year at PAX. It's going to be a four day event instead of the normal three, so I have high hopes for it's awesomeness!

Enough of my nerdiness! Have a great day everyone! *^_^*v