And there we have it for another year. A lot of preparation went into AVcon 2011. For the part we played it went something like this:
Thursday: Take all the consoles & games to Dave’s as he lives the closest to the Convention Centre. This involves:
- PAL SNES
- US SNES
- Super Famicom
- Super Famicom Jr
- PAL Megadrive 2
- Genesis 2
- JP Megadrive 2
- PAL Megadrive 1
- PC Engine
- Bandai Playdia
+ games for all of those systems. It was a LOT!!
Friday: In the morning take all the power cables to the convention centre for testing & tagging. Final last minute preparation on the presentations. Fox enjoyed the opening ceremony while Diz was involved in testing consoles. Got home at maybe midnight.
Saturday: Up at 6AM to pick up Dave & the consoles. Bringing along all the Super NES & Megadrives. Sitting at the registration desk for Ultimate Gamer signups. Panel at 1, finished it at 2:30. Got it filmed but realised we didn’t have enough tapes to record the next day’s panel. Run around trying to find someone who can rip DAT tapes NOW, found someone & dropped off the cameras. Dropped off all the days consoles at Dave’s & grabbed the SFC Jr with Super Bomberman 4 for the Games Night tournament.
FINALLY got back to the convention centre at 4PM. Back to signing up people for Ultimate Gamer. That was one damn hard quiz Diz put together. Games Night starts at 7PM. It’s quite a small affair. Super Bomberman 4 tournament was a flop, but we had 4 people play which is enough. The problem was that Ultimate Gamer Pairs was running at the same time & they had Bomberman Blast. Diz chose the wrong game, but in our defense we didn’t know what games were going to be in UG Pairs (as Ultimate Gamer games are supposed to be a secret until they’re on stage).
Back to Dave’s by 11:45. Left Fox behind & picked up the cameras for the next day. As mentioned earlier, for UG we had a quiz for entry. The top 32 people who scored highest in the quiz would be able to enter the tournament on the Sunday. Diz had marked all but 5 of the quizzes during the day, so most of that was done, but we had to rank them all. Fox fell asleep while Diz & Dave sorted out rankings. We drove home & got to bed at 2AM.
Sunday: Up at 6AM & off to Dave’s again. Got the consoles for Ultimate Gamer & the “Anime In Retrogames” panel. This included:
- Sega Genesis
- Super Famicom Jr
- US SNES
- PC Engine
- PAL SNES
- Bandai Playdia
+ Games of course.
Ultimate Gamer started at 11 & we proceeded to sign people up until that time. The highest score on the quiz was 11 out of 20. Diz made it a bit too hard, but everyone who entered appreciated the fact that it needed to be difficult. Ultimate Gamer ran until 2:45. Diz did all the hosting & announcing while Dave scored. Fox was around somewhere… We relaxed for about 15 minutes before running to the panel room to begin setting up for “Anime in Retrogames”. This was supposed to be Diz’s one man show & he was looking forward to it. But disaster struck.
We were put into a room that had 2 inputs for the projector: VGA &… VGA. We needed composite input for the consoles. Sadly it wasn’t to be, but another panelist bought in his PC with TV capture card & managed to save the day. Sadly with 4 hours sleep, almost 4 hours on stage & having to run 30 minutes late due to tech issues Diz was off his game. After the panel we rushed to take the consoles back & made it to the after party where much merriment was to be had.
Monday: Oh it doesn’t end there. We pick up all the consoles & take them home. Planning for AVcon 2012 begins.
Thursday: AVcon debrief meeting. We discuss how it all went & who is doing what for next year. Diz decided we should take control of the Retro Museum next year. We’ll see how that pans out. It’s all a work in progress.
So that’s a bit of insight into convention preparation. We certainly didn’t have the lionshare of the tasks, not by any stretch of the imagination. We did do a LOT however. Why do we do it? Would it be corny to say “community spirit”? Maybe… We just enjoy it & we enjoy putting on a show.
We hope everyone who came along enjoyed it. See you next year!!
