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What is MAGFest?
MAGFest (Music and Gaming Festival) is a video and computer gaming festival run by fans, for fans. It's similar to most fan-based (anime, scifi, etc) conventions, but aims to be more of a laid-back video game party atmosphere. No crowded show floors here, but rather lots of fan art, film and music, and room to relax. Our special guests fit right in and socialize with the rest of the crowd. Game movies and cartoons are shown weekend-long. In addition to our 10,000 square foot game room, lots of attendees set up games in their rooms and invite others inside.

Perhaps most importantly, MAGFest has a huge focus on game music -- multiple concerts' worth -- filled with video game music tributes, some even with the original composers! On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, multiple bands will perform on our main stage, and our JamSpace room is open 24 hours for collaborative music and special treats alike.

I went last year and it was pretty cool. In the game room they have a variety of games from almost every era of gaming. I was thinking of showing off my Vectrex this year.

As far as events, they have a movie room where they show movies based on games and fan films. Last year they did Flamefest 2009 where they showed all the Uwe Boll movies back to back and let people blurt out random comments MST3K style. OCRemix has a panel. There was also a panel for game music composers that included Tommy Tallarico (Earthworm Jim, MDK, Video Games Live), Howard Drossin (Sonic & Knuckles, Comix Zone, and the guy who composed the score from Civilization IV.

They have table top gaming, random contests, a LAN party room (which starts to stink around day 3), and vendors selling tshirts, Japanese imports, and vintage games (in case you never got around to beating Arcana for the SNES).

The downside is that there is *shiver* cosplay. If I see one more dude who looks like WRXWagon2112 dressed like Chun Li he's getting mauled with a monkey wrench.

Then there's the nightly concerts. Different bands who do rocked out a remixed versions of video game music. They even had an 8-bit Concert where people jam out to midi music composed on Gameboys.

It's going to be at the Mark Center Hilton in Alexandria. Preregistration began a while ago but ticket are, of course, still available.

Would you like to know more?

P.S. Yes, since it starts on the first, they do have a New Year's party. Last year I heard their party collided with a James Bond Convention (which was also in the hotel) and craziness ensued.

Libra Monkee wrote:If see one more dude who looks like WRXWagon2112 dressed like Chun Li he's getting mauled with a monkey wrench.

Hmm, I'd like to check this out, but I need to look at the calendar a little more closely tonight before plunking down the dough.

Thanks for posting it up, I really don't keep track of it

it was pretty neat last year. warning: be prepared to smell a lot of unwashed nerd b.o.

i will throw this in the consideration pile for teh new year.

doubtful the wife will be interested at all though.

complacent wrote:i will throw this in the consideration pile for teh new year.

doubtful the wife will be interested at all though.

she won't be. but that shouldn't stop you from attending if interested.

chicken n waffles wrote:

complacent wrote:i will throw this in the consideration pile for teh new year.

doubtful the wife will be interested at all though.

she won't be. but that shouldn't stop you from attending if interested.

agreed, for the most part. i was thinking mainly about a new year's party. prolly wanna spend that holiday together.

Libra Monkee wrote:The downside is that there is *shiver* cosplay. If I see one more dude who looks like WRXWagon2112 dressed like Chun Li he's getting mauled with a monkey wrench.

You mean I can't dress as Faye from Cowboy Bebop?



For reference, this is what the actual character looks like:



--Alan

Post that picture again, or anything like it, and you're banned.