I was still feeling tired after playing Magic: The Gathering with some friends till 3 a.m. this morning so I was a bit sluggish getting up today. After meeting with my friends and picking up another person along the way, we got to the Convention Center around 1:00 p.m.

The Convention seemed to be just as busy as the previous day, however, the mood seemed to be a bit calmer and relaxed. Today’s mission was to look for deals at the different booths, since many of the vendors will usually drop the prices of their goods so they won’t have to transport too many things back home. Everything from comics, manga, anime, toys, and games were sold at discounted prices and a lot of the Con patrons were bargaining over prices. What I failed to mentioned in earlier posts was that one of the most popular products being sold at the cold was Pocky, thin little buscuits that are covered in chocolate, created by a company called Glico (which are VERY popular in Asia). Even I was swept up in the craze so I bought a box of Strawberry covered Pocky and ate them afterwards.

My friends went around to buy some manga, figures and paint for a minature game series called, Warmachine by Privateer Press. It is basically a more inexpensive version of the popular minature game called Warhammer by Games Workshop. Though the concept seems interesting in a table-top strategy game, I don’t think I have the time nor patience to devote to painting each individual figure and building a terrain to play in. I was really intrigued by the Revoltech series by Kaiyodo (Japanese site). I was particularly interested in the Optimus Prime and Megatron figures because of the amount of articulation and poseability the Revoltech series provides. I caved in and bought the figures and now they are proudly displayed above my computer.

Afterwards, I thought I’d take a final look around and thinking that everything would be winding down on the last day of the Convention…I was wrong. There were still competitions going on in the gaming section and Intel was sponsoring a Lego building contest for children. There was a booth which was promoting the upcoming movies, Balls of Fury starring Christopher Walken and Shoot’Em Up starring Clive Owen. They had a game whereby a person had 3 tries to hit a ping pong ball with a paddle into a hole. The winner gets preview passes to the new Halloween movie or a free Shoot’Em Up T-shirt. I was able to get it in so I chose the shirt.

At the end, there was a huge gathering of people taking pictures of this amazing costume of a heavily armed hunter out of a Warhammer game. My friend Winson thought it would be cool to take a picture with him, so we asked and I took the above shot of the hunter about to kill my friend Winson..lol.

All in all, I think the Convention was a huge success…again it was another year of firsts, with the World Series of Video Games Tour, but it would’ve been nice if some of the promised guests could’ve made it and if there were more panels and shows for the anime and traditional gaming section. Now it’s time for me to relax and recuperate from a busy weekend.

-Stephen