Author - Ripper71

Las Vegas Toy and Comic Convention 2018 Postmortem

2018/03/06

The Las Vegas Toy and Comic Convention is a nice little con that can be counted on to have some decent names in a fairly intimate setting. Last year, it took place at the Orleans Arena and, though a bit less intimate, it enabled them to invite a lot more vendors and celebrities. This year, the convention went in the other direction with a smaller venue at the Circus Circus Hotel & Casino in, as one would guess from the name, Las Vegas, NV.

Despite being a little smaller than last year, I had a wonderful conversation and with horror legend and animal rights proponent Linda Blair! I got to chat quite a while with Thomas Estrada of Disney Animation fame and, if you wanted, you could get the autographs of Jango Fett, young Boba Fett, and adult Boba Fett all in one room! That’s a lot of Fett! “Booker T” of wrestling fame was hard to catch but made appearances and Mike Quinn, who did puppeteer work on multiple Star Wars movies, was seen regularly talking with fans. Two of my favorite local charity groups Viva Wonder Woman and Critical Care Comics were there too getting some good word out about helping others. I got some issues of Garbage Pail Kids the comic signed and some of my Garbage Pail Kids figures signed. I also bought Joe Simko’s The Sweet Rot kids book series to give a read when I get a chance.

I highly recommend going to the Las Vegas Toy And Comic Convention no matter where it is held it is an absolutely great time and insanely reasonable door cost (psst buy in advance, you won’t regret it).

Photo Gallery

Micro Player Arcade: Karate Champ Review

2018/03/06

Ripper71

Geek News, News, Reviews, Tech Review

Back in the days when coin-op arcades reigned supreme, I could be found spending quarters at the Karate Champ arcade machine. Compared to Defender or the ever-frustrating Dragon’s Lair, I looked calm and serene as I occasionally looked around the arcade between rounds. Sometimes another player would come up and challenge me, then walk away a few minute later with a frown or say “why do you keep doing that same combo?” to which I told them “It works best for me, heck I have turned over the game with it.” Which was completely true, I only played the game when I had plenty of time because I would always wind up with a high score that generally took all night. I was never great at the bonus rounds, I had to rely on the matches to earn me my points so I would do what is now commonly known as “grinding”, earning my points doing usually the same combo over and over, it was the one game I was always best at. So I was thrilled when I say that My Arcade had brought the game back in one of their nifty Micro Player Arcade cabinets!

My Arcade has done an exceptional job with their Micro Player Arcade line. The small cabinets are beautiful and stand a mere 6 inches in height! Thankfully, My Arcade has updated the arcade cabinet design with a very modern, crystal clear display. They have even replicated the artwork on the small cabinet shell. It has all the looks of the classic cab but without the need to put quarters in the system! As far as power goes, the Micro Player Arcade runs on 4 AA batteries or a micro-USB cable in the back. You can also find a volume control back there along with a headset port in case you want to play and not disturb anyone around you. The on and off button is cleverly disguised as the coin insert door in the case, with the two red insert coin squares!

In the original arcade cabinet, Karate Champ used a joystick control, but on the Nintendo version it used a d-pad. On the Micro Player Arcade, the little joystick unscrews to make it a thumb-sized d-pad instead. Playing through Karate Champ on the Micro Player Arcade, I could immediately tell that this build of the game wasn’t from the original arcade version, which I was under the impression it would be. It even feels somewhat different from the Nintendo version of the game. The controls felt unique to whatever this version of Karate Champ was. I didn’t find that to be too big of a problem and found my groove pretty quick. I also realized that if I don’t stick my favorite combo off the top my chance of winning drops heavily. As previously-stated, the nice thing about owning Karate Champ means that you aren’t out a quarter if you lose – you just start again!

Game Over:

My Arcade’s Micro Player Arcade: Karate Champ was described in our household as cute and awesome upon first glance. Since first getting it, the Micro Player Arcade has become a popular addition to my retro system display. Additionally, My Arcade has priced each of their Micro Player Arcade units (they have several all with their own arcade game from history) at a very reasonable $29.99!

Subnautica Review

2018/03/06

Ripper71

News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Subnautica is an interesting take on the survival game genre in that it takes players into the depths of an alien ocean. Players begin as astronauts of some kind but, after a violent crash, will find themselves hunting and gathering whatever they can to survive. My first recommendation when playing Subnautica is to put on a headset and kill the ambient lights and distractions. Immerse yourself as much as possible in this amazing, dangerous, and very alien world. Yes, doing so will cause you to get startled from time to time, but that’s part of the fun. Subnautica is a very easy game to lose yourself in for hours at a time. Once you leave the “comfort”, and I use that term VERY loosely, of your broken escape pod, it’s time to start working on survival. You hunt and mine for everything in Subnautica, so get fishing!

The developers took their time creating things loaded with intrinsic beauty, in colors, lights, and general design, and they made things that let out low roars in the darkness. Subnautica is a feast for the eyes and sharp-eyed gamers will do well in visually locating minerals, fish, and more in the varied and detailed depths.

Of course, there is an actual storyline in the game and that can be completed in around 50 hours. If you want to take in all the haunting scenery, see all the amazing creatures and what they can do, you could easily play for hundreds of hours. Some creatures have abilities that are amazing to behold, others are vicious beasts that have you frantically swimming back to your home base before running out of air or health.

I did have one complaint with my time in Subnautica – objects and elements seemed to just “pop” into view. I checked with other players and found I wasn’t alone with the issue, so hopefully it can be patched out of existence. At the time of posting this article, I am not at the end of the game – nowhere near, actually. Subnautica is a game that I play in bursts as it is so immersive and, in many instances, intense.

Subnautica is also compatible with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR systems and, after playing it for a brief time, can say the experience takes on a whole new level of immersion. Seriously, the game is one of the best VR titles I have yet to experience – albeit with a sort of wonky movement system in moments.

Subnautica is going to be one of those games I go back to time and again. The downsides are minimal, the gameplay can border on infinite, and the cost is about half the price of most games. In liquid space can they hear you scream? Probably especially after you hear a Leviathan roar…

World of Warships Blitz Review

2018/02/15

Ripper71

Mobile News, Mobile Review, News, Reviews

Wargaming.net knows how to make an entrance. During one of their first E3 conventions, when World of Tanks was catching on like wild fire in the multiplayer community, they parked a full size tank outside the convention center. Inside, they had a huge booth with over a dozen computers for gamers to play the game against each other. Even then when they were first blasting us with tanks they were more than hinting around at a World of Warplanes and a World of Warships, the last really catching my interest since, were it not for an injury, the Navy had planned for me to become a nuclear engineer! Now, World of Tanks Blitz for mobile devices has hit the scene hard, and I recently got the chance to review it!

World of Warships for the PC platform is incredible and I loved it almost as soon as I put hands to keyboard and mouse. As you might guess, it plays similar to World of Tanks, but with mighty warships. The controls and tech tree are very much like World of Tanks Blitz, with ships that start simple. These are a lot of fun to play and help gamers get used to steering a ship while shooting so you don’t accidentally kill your buddy or scuttle your ship on an island! Then you get ships with torpedoes and it adds an additional level of complexity to the game. You need good targeting skills, a feeling of how much to lead your targets, and an awareness of your teammate locations. A loose torpedo will hit anything, regardless of friend-or-foe. The flip-side to this complexity? They do a ton of damage!

In playing the PC version of World of Warships, my favorite class is the battleship. I love the class because of its ability to take so much damage and dish so much out. Maneuvering these large ships can be really tough during battle as it turns like a dog. In World of Warships Blitz, it seems that ships have even slower maneuverability, which helps the flow of the game on smaller screens. I absolutely loves the aircraft carrier class vessel. Often limited to a certain number in a battle, carriers serve multiple functions and do so mostly from a different screen/view. First thing I always do is start my carrier steaming into another position on the map, generally as far back from the action as possible but at the same time behind your team so they can protect you and you protect them. Once my ship has started off in a direction, I go to my air control map. From there the player can choose where to send fighters and bombers. My biggest tip is to send some aircraft out first-thing to act as scouts. Your team will thank you!

You start with a few basic ships and you earn in-game currency so you can improve the ship or, if you aren’t very impressed with it, you can pick up a whole new ship by selling off your old one and put that currency towards a new one. It’s important to know that each day you are given a 100% bonus to whatever you earn on the first win on each ship so more ships = more bonuses!

There is nothing wrong with using real world money to buy in-game stuff, I have over the years without regret. The key is to decide how much would you spend to buy this game if you bought it at a game store. $10? $25? If you don’t spend more than what you feel you would be comfortable paying for it then you shouldn’t have buyer’s remorse. That also makes it so that if you get tired of the game you can walk away.

World of Warships Blitz looks beautiful and as someone who worked through high school on a net fishing boat I can tell you the water looks like water should. So nice, so peaceful, it’s calming until that first volley flies and scares the heck out of you! You can do random battles where you and a couple of your friends get together and tear things up as a group, or you can do random group battles where they add a couple some others and both teams are strangers fighting together. This has its advantages because sometimes you might find that the person you are grouped with is great or they might be the death of the team like when I had a fellow who was confused and only shot his teammates… Co-Op takes you and a bunch of other players and pits you against the AI, this one is good for comradery and I have made a couple friends in this style of game that even went over to other games I play. Eventually there will be Ranked Battles and it will be just as it says, players will fight each other and possibly complete challenges to find out who it the topped ranked.

Anchors Away:

I had high expectations for World of Warships Blitz and it readily exceeded them. I actually took a break in the middle of this review to stretch… and wound up playing the game some more so I would have it fresh on my mind. Wargaming.net has crafted another great game and I can’t wait to see what other wonders they might have up their creative sleeves.

World of Warships Blitz Review Score

[mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#1e73be” type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#1e73be” type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#1e73be” type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#1e73be” type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#1e73be” type=”fa”] (5 out of 5 Stars)

Hunt: Showdown Alpha Preview

2018/02/15

Ripper71

News, Previews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

Hunt: Showdown is Crytek’s upcoming competitive multiplayer monster hunting game. The idea is intriguing: Four teams of two hunters get randomly populated in the game area. The players are monster bounty hunters, sent to kill evil, send its dark soul to oblivion, and collect bounties! There is a big boss creature on each map that requires locating by finding pieces of the map around the game area. Thankfully, you and your partner have a bit of supernatural blood running through your collective veins and you can tap into it in order see a blue shimmer marking any map pieces you might be near or any exits that the creature may take. There is a hitch in this plan: The other hunters. They are out to kill the evil too and will not hesitate to eliminate you if you get in their way. If you get killed, you can buy another bounty hunter but the level progression your last one had is lost and you lose 1/2 your XP for all your kills! You also lose all the weapons the hunter was carrying – talk about a death penalty. As you level up, you unlock weapons you can purchase but in the beginning of your hunt.

It may seem like I am going on a lot about how you die but that is because there are so many ways to die and not many to survive except STAY CLOSE TO YOUR PARTNER! The game emphasizes it by saying “Survive Together, Die Alone” but it really can’t be stressed enough. There are all kinds of boogeymen spread across the map as well as three other pairs of bounty hunters. The key is to stay quiet for as long as possible and fight on your terms. Staying quiet can be challenging, as there are chains, cans, birds, dying horses, feigning death zombies, fires, and light bulbs that can give away your position! If you think the scary swamp lands are bad at night, there are daytime maps too where you don’t have the deep shadows to try to hopefully fight the boss and try to fend off the other bounty hunters.

The game is still in Alpha but it doesn’t feel like it except in little details like the monster behavioral patterns to make him easier to kill. Right now there are only two big bosses, each one having night and day maps. The game is absolutely gorgeous, with amazing visual details. I was playing with someone who lives in Louisiana and he was gobsmacked at how much the game environments felt like real swampland.

The weapons are, for the most part, sort of Western/Steampunk in style, with a base weapon that looks like a Colt Cavalry pistol but then winds up with a heavily engraved ammunition belt system giving you a chain firing handgun (something like this really existed)! Or a weapon that looks like a sticky bomb with barbed wire on it which when it explodes lays out a barb wire blockade. You really don’t get a lot of time to look at your weapons because you are usually using it to try to kill something or reload it but the detail is exceptional. Great job to Crytek, as one would expect!

All this beauty in this game, the amazing details in everything, can push a gamer’s system to the limit, creating nasty lag spikes, and FPS drops – especially if they are using something like Discord at the same time. Personally I think Discord detracts from the game since sound direction is so very important, but I digress. I can also understand not wanting to let people lighten up the game so they can see clearly in the dark but if there was the ability to maybe ease back the graphics a bit so that people with good machines can take in all the splendor but those with just OK systems can still experience the gameplay if not all the wonder the details have to offer.

So Far, So Amazing:

Crytek’s Hunt: Showdown is already a beautiful-looking, amazing-sounding, and all around a terrific multiplayer title. It will be nice to, hopefully, have more maps, as well as, perhaps, a Co-Op system against AI for those who get too salty ranking? I am pushing myself to come up with some suggestions because it is already such a good game. Crytek’s Hunt: Showdown is set for release sometime this year and is currently in Early Access on Steam.

GameSir F1 Joystick Grip Review

2018/01/31

Ripper71

Geek News, News, Peripheral Review, Peripherals News, Reviews

I have a very large smartphone, which makes using it for games sometimes difficult. On-screen “virtual” buttons and analog sticks are hard to distinguish with no haptic or physical feedback and it is easy to get so focused on the action they get lost entirely. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the benefits of a game controller on your smartphone? The GameSir F1 Joystick Grip may just be the answer to your geeky prayers. Read on!

The GameSir F1 Joystick Grip is a pretty straight forward concept – take a game controller and hollow it out to allow a smartphone to embed itself inside. With my particular phone, I had a big protective case on the phone. This needed to removed first as it simply wouldn’t fit correctly. That’s okay, as the GameSir F1 holds the phone well and offers some protection for it. To embed your phone into the GameSir F1, you put the left side of the phone in the left holder then pull the right end of the F1 far enough to slip the phone into the right side. Once in the GameSir F1, you fold the joystick arm over and on top of wherever your game’s virtual joystick is located. There are light rubber pads where the phone slips in to help prevent the phone from slipping out and a soft padding lines the back of the GameSir F1 so that the phone doesn’t get scratched and helps it stay snug. This is a brilliant design point as not ever game has its virtual controls in the same spot.

After installation, you just hold the phone and GameSir F1 like you would a standard game controller. The physical joystick control is so much more accurate than its on-screen counterpart, and it’s hard to go back to playing those games without the GameSir F1 Joystick Grip. When I am ready to take a break from gaming and just watch some streaming video I can move the joystick arm off to the side and reach to the back of the controller. There I will find a kickstand that can be left flat nearly straight up by moving a kickstand into six possible locations! This means it is great to set on a table or desk to watch movies or you can just use the controller design to carry it around and watch it – whichever you prefer. The GameSir F1 Joystick Grip has a fairly low profile when the phone is removed, it wouldn’t be too comfortable in a pocket, but it would do a lot better in a purse, pouch, or messenger bag. The only thing I might change in a future GameSir F1 Joystick Grip design would be to add a joystick on the right side of the controller as well – just in case a game might warrant such usage.

The GameSir F1 Joystick Grip is a handy little device, especially for large-handed fellas like me and games which rely heavily on direction control. Being the lightweight low-tech entry in the GameSir line, you can pick it up easily for under $20 and with its versatility and that price tag you can’t go wrong.

GameSir F1 Joystick Grip Review Score

[mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#dd3333″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#dd3333″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#dd3333″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#dd3333″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star-o” color=”#dd3333″ type=”fa”] (4 out of 5 Stars)

Aflac: Helping Cancer Victims One Duck At A Time

2018/01/30

Ripper71

CES, Geek News, News, Tech News

We’ve all seen the commercials with the duck that instead of saying “Quack” says “Aflac” and does such things as plugging the hole in a boat or just trying to get the attention of two people talking about insurance like that is an everyday thing. They are entertaining and I have known people who swear by it as a great insurance company though they only do so when they happen to see a particularly good Aflac commercial, which is an argument definitely in favor of the commercials are working. This is generally where my stories about the subject would begin and end since I no longer watch regular TV and my wife handles our insurance.

This year at CES, Aflac had a booth and their mascot duck on display. That amazing duck stays so still and calm that at first I mistook it for being stuffed but its eyes slowly shifted toward me letting me know that it was a living, breathing creature. I could have pet it all night but there was a line of people hoping to get selfies with it so I moved over to where there appeared to be a kid’s toy Aflac duck just a little smaller than the real thing. People wearing Aflac shirts were walking around carrying them and most had a sad, bittersweet look on their face. So I had to go find out why.

The smaller one is a robot called My Special Aflac Duck. These ones we were seeing would not be in adults hands for long because all of them are to be sent to children in cancer wards to be with them when they are scared and companions when they aren’t. The ducks are designed to be an understanding pet that will be around as long as there is fresh set of batteries to keep him going.

“For 22 years, Aflac, our employees and our independent sales agents have demonstrated a commitment to help families facing childhood cancer, including contributing more than $120 million to this cause,” Aflac Chairman and CEO Dan Amos said. “We are taking this commitment to a new level, lending our iconic Aflac Duck to this mission in an innovative way like we have never done before. Our goal is to put a My Special Aflac Duck in the hands of the nearly 16,000 children in the U.S. who are newly diagnosed with cancers each year, free of charge, so that no child ever has to face cancer alone.”

Details:
• Vibrational speaker simulates heartbeats and purring
• 3-motor animatronic system for lifelike movement (e.g., nuzzling and dancing)
• 5 capacitive touch sensors
• Bluetooth Low Energy connects to an app (iOS and Android)
• Embedded microphone detects music
• Light and dark modes: Photosensor detects ambient light in room, adjusting duck behavior for children who are light sensitive
• Form-fitting removable, washable fabric (patent pending)
• RFID reader – enabling tactile play with feeling cards, port-acath accessory and Soundscapes spaceship
• Medical play and communicating feelings via mixed-reality app and accessories (users feed, bathe, mimic administering cancer treatments and calm their social robot)
• Calm mode: Enables guided breathing
• Quack-back: Talk to My Special Aflac Duck and it provides a conversational quack-to-voice response
• Duck-to-duck communication (quacking)
• RFID-enabled port-a-cath accessory to enable medical play
• 7 RFID-enabled feeling cards direct My Special Aflac Duck to act out the chosen feeling
• 1 Soundscapes card connects to user-controlled ambient sounds
• Backpack
• Bandana

Aflac is planning to expand out and help children in other ways. Sadly children go through so much that scars their lives at a young age and as a result it is hard to live a normal life after. Heck, I’m an adult with PTSD and there have been many times I held a pillow I wish it had a heart beat that would react to my touch and be a comfort. Aflac doesn’t ask for recognition for what they do, just recognition for the ducks to make sure they get them to kids who need them which in my opinion is the most important reason to acknowledge them.

Monster SuperStar S100 Speaker Review

2018/01/26

Ripper71

News, Reviews, Tech News, Tech Review

Monster has been a top name in audio for quite a few years now with “Head Monster” Noel Lee being a well known pitchman who surrounds himself with celebrities such as Joe Perry and Iggy Azalea. While at CES we were lucky enough to get a hold of the entry level Monster SuperStar S100 Bluetooth speaker, which had some excellent punch for its price point.

One of the better selling factors of the Monster SuperStar line is its water resistance. Most speakers take a little splash and short out but this one can handle a bit of submersion and be just fine. This is known as a IPX7 rating which means it could handle rain, snow, splashes, and showering. This last part is particularly nice because I can’t hear my phone when in the shower and I like to listen to music. I can just hang it on the shampoo rack and I’m good to go. Along those same lines I can use it when in the bath which could give it a decent splash and it should still be fine. Another feature on the Monster SuperStar S100 is that it also functions as a speaker phone! The microphone pickup and phone audio are both terrific and I have no provlem using the Monster S100 as a speakerphone in the future.

The Monster SuperStar S100 and, for that matter, the entire SuperStar line are shaped in a semi triangle form factor with the corners rounded off and covered in rubber. This shape and rubberized coating help the small speakers to take impacts in stride. It actually bounces a little like a ball when dropped and rolls until the impact is neutralized. Speaking of design, the Monster SuperStar S100 features a black and dark gray body with attractive silver accents making for a very stylish speaker.

Of course, all of this means squat if the speaker can’t output a wide range of sound. Thankfully, it has an exceptional sound punch for such a small speaker. The SuperStar S100 has bass that doesn’t turn muddy and treble that doesn’t go tinny. If someone didn’t actually see the SuperStar S100, they might have thought it was coming from a much bigger model. Additionally, while the speaker battery is rated to last 6 hours, my tests showed it lasting more like 7. Whether this was a fluke or just Monster being conservative, I don’t know, but I like it!

I will most often use the Monster SuperStar S100 with my iPad. The built-in speakers on those tablets are terrible and with the Monster SuperStar S100, my tablet becomes a real powerhouse of personal entertainment. Games, movies, and music all sound loud and crisp!

Last Blast:

The Monster SuperStar S100 made it through my review without any problems. Its price point of $59.99 is very reasonable – especially when you consider that you are buying a brand known for quality and reliability. I have gotten Monster products in the past and they are still working great – they make things to last. Thanks to these reasons, the Monster SuperStar S100 will now be my go-to travel speaker. If you are in the market for a portable Bluetooth speaker, you should go get one, you won’t regret it.

Monster SuperStar S100 Review Score

[mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#81d742″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#81d742″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#81d742″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#81d742″ type=”fa”][mks_icon icon=”fa-star” color=”#81d742″ type=”fa”] (5 out of 5 Stars)

CES 2018 Post-Mortem

2018/01/18

Ripper71

CES, Geek News, News, Screenshots / Photos

It’s January and that means that we have once again paced up and down the halls of Consumer Electronics Show, CES, in Las Vegas. I have often thought that the show should be named the “Consumer Electronics Marathon” because you have to put in the miles of a marathon to get even the smallest glimpse of the show. One day at CES, I walked nine and a half miles and I didn’t cover even a third of the space. It is an amazing and massive show, one that truly should last more than one week but would cause so much pain that even the most able body would be suffering after much more time. It is even more so when you consider there are nightly parties which make it so that you hope for 5 or 6 hours a night and caffeine or energy drinks are on the limps of just about everyone who works a company. This year’s event saw Iggy Azalea walking the Monster Booth, Neil Patrick Harris speaking of childhood friends, and Joe Perry Of Aerosmith designing his own line of portables that are all about the treble for old school rock and roll.

The companies presenting at CES came by land, sea, and air as self-driving cars spun doughnuts in the parking lot, giant speed boats filled booths like chrome-covered beached whales, and drones designed to do everything from carry a camera to patrol your houses like a guard dog hovered about. In pevious years, a great amount of the North Hall was dedicated to camera cases but now it was taken over by tons of vehicles and vehicle additions. South Hall became mostly the place for drone tech. VR/AR tech wasn’t even kept in one location but was in two different casinos on the strip. TV tech wasn’t kept in the same place as well, with LG dominating a great space at LVCC and TiVo located next to C-Space, the speaking session stage. Health and beauty tech was always kept in the same hall at the Sands but this year they spread out among the casinos. I’m not complaining but rather pointing out that the show really should be lengthened and more care taken to make sure they are grouped more like previous years, it felt a lot more scattered this time.

Google had the most popular booth by far, with a giant pinball machine and just about everything Google has or makes was possible when the ball showed up and was cracked open. The line was easily 90 minutes at times, which when you think about how little time you actually have at the convention is a remarkable amount of time and they had two that I knew of, I tried standing in one line but it was well beyond my disability to spend that much time in one spot.

The beast that really seemed to take the show was a gaming laptop from Razer called Project Linda, and it won a heck of a lot of awards. The most altruistic item I came across was from AFLAC of all places and deserves a write-up all its own. I got to pet their mascot duck and wow it was so soft and sweet!

I enjoy it every year even though my disability slows down my chances of seeing as much as I would like. CES only gets more amazing every year and I can’t wait to go back in 2019.

Photo Gallery

HunnieCon 2017 Post-Mortem

2018/01/18

Ripper71

Geek News, News, Screenshots / Photos

If you haven’t heard of HunnieCon before, don’t feel bad. I am constantly keeping an eye out for new conventions and, when this one appeared, I think my EIC might have been a bit skeptical because of the name sounding a lot like some sort of adult-oriented event. However, the name actually derived from one of the largest League of Legends groups: the League of Hunnie, which still sounds a bit naughty. Next year, it will be re-branded Gamerscon and most of the confusion will be clarified.

One room of the convention was solely for the LAN PCs setup for competitions. Between rounds, players were welcome to challenge each other to different games games but the wiser ones seemed to just keep practicing the games waiting for their turn in randomly selected order. Those who couldn’t make it to the event were able to watch and listen to the play-by-play, which were well-produced and I know at least a few people who watched the Twitch streams all day. For those who weren’t there to challenge each other to League of Legends or Hearthstone battles, there was an opportunity to ask questions at a panel on cosplay costume-making Do’s and Dont’s featuring body positive cosplayer Momokun cosplay veteran Vamplette. As is always a plus there were different costumes from one day to the next and people who were too shy to do it the first day stepped up and made it out on group courage the second day.

If this all wasn’t enough for you, there was k-pop tournaments all day where plenty of dancers walked away exhausted and with war wounds before the competitive parts even began. Everyone had their favorites to root for and there was lots of cheering, hooting, and hollering and no boos yelled in the entire room.

At one point it got so laid back a giant game of Uno broke out on the floor and cosplayers traded in festive fineries for comfort clothes be cause no one wants to pop a top yelling Uno! There was trivia as well and I wanted ALL the prizes. Maybe I’ll get one next year.

Next year, calling the event Gamerscon should help get more people to the event, it was a lot of fun!

Photos