Post-PAX East 2018 Prattle

    I'm back from PAX, everyone! I was only there for one day, but it was quite a day. Even better, despite some post-con fatigue, I don't seem to have PAX Plague or Con Creep or whatever convention-based diseases were there. I've been accepted to do a video game writing internship at mxdwn.com, so I was also a bit slower this week, but I'll still try to get some stuff out here. Anyway, I know what you're here for:

A huge honking convention space filled with video games and demos.

     I plan to deliver. Here are some of my favorite and most interesting games of PAX East 2018, out of the many, many, many I saw. I'm obviously missing a ton, but these stuck out the most.

    Disclaimer: Trailers provided when available. I was not paid in any way to endorse these games.

Unless you consider pins, bookmarks, stickers, and business/website cards payment.

Minit Review: Minit T'Winit (PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One) plus some stuff on Anime Boston

Preface

    As many of you probably know by now, there was a shooting yesterday at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. From the sounds of it, there were only three injuries and the death of the shooter, who was angry with YouTube over some issues, including demonetization. While demonetization was a bit of a hot topic a little while ago, I don't want to delve into details. Instead, I want to wish the employees of YouTube a quick recovery, both physically and mentally.

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    So, everyone! How was your Easter Fool's weekend? It's not often we get two holidays on the same day. I mostly spent my weekend at Anime Boston enjoying the sights and buying some stuff. I'm not much of a picture taker, but I had a few choice ones to show off, like the serial killer from that one South Park episode where Cartman gets psychic powers (allegedly.) First off, among the many costumes that were either common choices or were things I didn't recognize, I found these two:

"CAAAARL!! Please tell me you didn't kill that blogger!"

    I also spent a good amount of time in the video game room. It's probably the only place I know where I can find games like Cho Chabudai Gaeshi, a Japanese arcade game about flipping a table to teach the idiots around your character a lesson and cause some destruction (Personal Note: The second of those games seems to have done a crossover with some baseball anime. Anyone know which one? It looks like an older one, judging by it's graphics.) Among the stages, I have to say my favorite one is the funeral stage, simply due to the sheer black comedy of being a ghost who's flipping his own coffin and corpse at the mourners and drunk priest. I also got to play the latest rendition of Konami/Bemani's Pop'n Music series of arcade rhythm games. This one had the lengthy subtitle of  "Usagi to neko to shounen no yume," roughly translated to "the rabbit and cat and boy's dream." I'm not that great at the game, mostly because the positioning of the nine buttons always throws me off when moving from one row to the next:

From left to right: Matt (the robot-thing, new to PnM) and series mainstays/mascots Nyami and Mimi.

    Anime Boston 2018 also marked the first time I checked out some of the special guests. On Friday, I saw Japanese singer/songwriter ASAKA, and she seemed like a pretty cool person. In the panel where I met her, she mentioned that she likes horror games, and I got the opportunity to suggest Lobotomy Corporation to her. I also saw the band FLOW at a fan meet-and-greet. They did some stuff in some animes, including Naruto, but I mostly know them from my favorite DS game, which had one of their songs (Okuru Kotoba, a surprisingly upbeat ska song about sad goodbyes.)

There was no photography allowed with ASAKA, but I could take a picture of FLOW.

    Finally, I spent Sunday at home, had some ribs and cornbread for dinner, and watched the Easter Fool's episode of Arcade Pit (8 PM Eastern on the Twitch channel 'Smight'.) I don't want to spoil much about this episode of the spiritual successor to Nick Arcade, but I will say that when that noir detective in the Mystery Game's intro said "Take me to hell," I don't think he meant it quite in that way. Also, I can show you a bit of art that debuted in that episode of Arcade Pit:

Arcade Pit Snail Devouring Bubsy (Any claims of Bubsy Bobcat being the Arcade Pit Snail's descendant are treason, and punishable by Feelin' Sad.)

    With the busy weekend I had, It might be a bit of a surprise to find that I still have a review. Luckily, I can spare a minute to talk about Minit, published by Devolver Digital and developed by the team of Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Jukio Kallio, and Dominik Johann.

(Version: Release version)