So the plan for Sunday was to get there early and hit the booths that had eluded me so far (mostly because I wasn’t willing to wait several hours in line).
Booths that I wanted to see were Duke Nukem Forever, Portal 2 and perhaps Dragon Age 2. Duke Nukem had proven to be the worst of the bunch on previous days.
Photo by Fabian Doehla (SEGA)
On the way to my car, after being turned away from the Will Wheaton panel, I passed by GameWorks.
There was a line forming outside and a bouncer type fellow was standing in front of the door. On the door was a sign stating that GameWorks was closed for a private event (left).
I asked someone in line what was up and was informed that SEGA was having an after-party. They then told me that they had pre-registered. 🙁
Photo by Andrew Wong
Apparently I was short on sleep because I seriously slept in Saturday morning.
I originally planned on getting to the show early so that I could get to a few of the booths that were a little busy on Friday (namely Duke Nukem, Portal 2 & Dragon Age 2).
I ended up getting to the show at noon. The first thing I did was meet up with a girl who was buying my Sunday pass for her sister.
After that I headed into the expo expecting perhaps a few more people than the day before.
Prior to going to PAX, it was suggested to me to try and get myself to some of the after parties that take place Friday and Saturday night.
During the day on the expo floor, I found out about a couple of after parties that looked pretty good. The most interesting one was the Aion: Assault on Balaurea Launch Party featuring the Wonder Girls. Although, honestly, I had never heard of the game or the Wonder Girls. I also had the option of several evening panels and the ever popular PC freeplay area.
I didn’t end up sitting in on any panels during the day on Friday so I made an effort to catch one of the evening panels once the expo floor was closed.
Sucker Punch was scheduled to host a panel at 7 PM regarding inFAMOUS 2 called “inFAMOUS 2: An Inside Glimpse into Creating the Superpowered Franchise”. I really enjoyed the first inFAMOUS and the inFAMOUS 2 demo on the show floor was very cool, so I was all over it.
While driving to Seattle the night before, my wife was kind enough to text me to let me know that I forgot my Digital Camera.
“FRAK!!”
I don’t have a fancy DSLR or anything, but my trusty Canon Powershot SD1000 can sometimes take some pretty good pics.
Without a decent camera, I would have to rely on my 5 Mpixel LG GW825 camera phone. It has a LED flash, but overall it sucks as a camera, as it is with most smart phones.
So, come Friday morning with my 3 day PAX badge around my neck and camera phone in hand, I arrived at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center at around 9 AM.
Because I didn’t plan ahead, I had to get a hotel far, far away from the Washington State Convention Center, the location of PAX Prime 2010. Techinically, there were still rooms available in walking distance to the convention center, but the least expensive was around $190/night and I’m way too cheap to pay that much. This meant that I would have to drive to Seattle so that I would have a vehicle to get me from my Hotel to the expo and back.
The drive down from Vancouver is not too bad. The border wait was only 30 minutes going south and once I was on the other side I stopped at an AT&T store and picked up a pre-paid SIM card so that I would have data and cellular use while in Seattle at a reasonable rate.
Sega Hoodie
Probably one the coolest aspects of PAX is scoring SWAG, and there was SWAG-A-Plenty a this years PAX.
Over the 3 days I was able to score 23 t-shirts (2 doubles) and one hoodie.
My prize possession of the lot is definitely the Sega Hoodie (shown here). This bad boy was given out as a parting gift at the Sega after party (PAX day 2 – Gameworks). Notice the 4 images on the front? Those are images of the controllers from the 4 main console systems that Sega once produced (Sega Master System, Genesis, Saturn & Dreamcast). My inner Sega fan-boy was very grateful.
I’ve posted pictures of all the t-shirts I was able to score after the jump….