Geeks on the GoGeeks on the Go
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Well it’s that time of year again here at IGT, New York City Comic Con has come and gone once again and here are some of my thoughts on the event.
Maybe because it was the first day for Press, Pros, and VIPs, but some of the bigger names had pretty lame booths. Both DC and Marvel did not really have much going on. Marvel had the cool shield set going for them, but as of yesterday they were not utilizing it for much. The Transformers MMO had a great looking setup, but they were experiencing technical difficulties so there was not any real action, by the end they had some pre-rendered animations of some of the characters playing on their screen.
There were still some pretty good offerings this year. Square Enix had a number of consoles available to demo some of their new games like Deus Ex Human Revolution and Final Fantasy XIII-2. Sprint, like last year, had a number of video games to try out in their booths, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Uncharted 3 among them. Star Wars: The Old Republic had a playable demo, which I did not try this day because the line was so long. Believe it or not, 5 Gum had a great booth before entering the Con proper, they had a bed of ball bearings under 3 large speakers you could lay on and had some fun video games you could try out.
Panels opened at noon for professionals, but I do not think many people attended them. They were about comic books and video games in libraries, fairly dry stuff. I have not been impressed with the overall panel offerings this year. There are some good ones we will attend today and tomorrow.
The two panels we attended this year were very good. The first was the Felcia day spotlight which was moderated by Chris Hardwick. Sandeep Parikh was along for the ride and the interaction between all three was hilarious.
The second panel was about Star Wars: The Old Republic. The presenters could not say much as there is still an NDA in place. Originally, they planned on announcing the release date at the panel, but decided to the week before in London. Instead, they rendered a brand new cinematic trailer for us, and it was great.
I think Comic Con is suffering from a case of confused identity. As cool as it was, 5 Gum does not really belong, neither does Chevy or the Microscope/Telescope company. Last year Intel seemed a bit out of place, but at least they had a place to play video games and had a cool stage for it. So far, not impressed.
Bellow is some of the pictures I took during the weekend.
http://www.itsgeektime.com/gallery/index.php/2011-NYC-Comic-Con
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Last night it was our privilege to interview the one and only MC Frontalot, the godfather of Nerdcore hip hop, in Albany, NY. He was sick as a dog with flu-like symptoms but he still made time to sit down with us and perform a full set. Our hats are off to you MC Frontalot.
IGT: What was your reaction when Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade first asked you to play PAX?
Frontalot: I was excited and nervous at the same time. At the time, I did not have a band so I called up some friends from Song Fight! and put together a pickup band of sorts. This was the first time I had done more than 6 songs on stage. Since it was the first PAX I did not know what to expect. I had no idea it would be such a huge deal. Playing this show is what inspired me to start the live musician thing.
IGT: Since Nerdcore Rising was filmed have you found being a touring musician is a viable career for you?
Frontalot: Totally. I have been going full steam since we shot the movie in 2006. I make enough from touring to pay the band and enough from selling CDs and tshirts to cover my expenses; of course I sell more merchandise on tour.
IGT: Where do you get your inspiration from for your music?
Frontalot: I used to get it over the counter but that became cost-prohibitive so now I get it from disreputable Russian pharmacists.
IGT: Is there more in store for MC Frontalot other than Music?
Frontalot: I would love to do TV or a movie. You should see Crafts services, they are amazing. Like most rappers, I am a bad actor, the ones with acting careers were pretty much given them. Being on The Big Bang Theory would be a logical fit. Whenever I see Will Wheaton posting on Twitter that he is on set I text him asking him to set me up with the music director; he ignores me like probably does all of his other friends sending him text messages while he is on set.
IGT: What are your thoughts on the current state of Nerdcore?
Frontalot: I am excited that there are all these new young rappers putting out amazing material and taking the genre seriously. Right now artists like Doctor Awkward and Beefy are rocking my iPod.
IGT: Do you have any favorite cartoons?
Frontalot: When I was a kid I loved the Fantastic Four Saturday morning cartoon, even with the dumbass flying robot. I also loved Thundarr, I thought He-Man was a shallow rendition of Thundarr. These days I love Invader Zimm, Flapjack, Squid Billies, Adventure Time, and Aqua Teen Hungerforce.
IGT: Do you play any video games? If so, which ones?
Frontalot: I recently played the Angry Birds beta for Android. I was home for about 72 hours recently and just about 40 hours of that was spent playing Civilization 5. That game is epic, i think i was still on my first game. I just secured a foothold on the opposing continent.
IGT: Who is your favorite superhero?
Frontalot: Sturgenius. Also Wolverine was a favorite while I was growing up. The origins movie was so horrible, but it did not ruin my childhood memories of Wolverine.
IGT: If you could have a super power, what would it be?
Frontalot: Again, Sturgenius. I would want the ability to transmute any object anywhere in the world to something else instantly. For instance, changing all bullets into sugar or all penises into giant penises.
For more information and tour dates visit MC Frontalot's website at http://frontalot.com/index.php/
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As many of you know, John and I went to New York City Comic Con as members of the press this past weekend. Overall, it was an amazing experience that I hope to do every year. I met some great people in the business and learned a lot from them. The whole weekend was a big sensory overload for me, but my goal in this post is to summarize some of the high points.
The Ultramarines movie
To me, this booth made my entire weekend worth the effort. I am a Warhammer 40k veteran of over 10 years so I immediately had an interest. This movie follows some soldiers of the Ultramarines Space Marine Chapter, which is one of my favorite armies in the game. The only problem I have with this movie is the website itself. I have tried twice now to pre-order the collector’s edition, and the website has failed me both times.
Warhammer 40k: Space Marine Video Game
For Games Workshop’s second trick, they are working on a first person shooter where you play as a space marine. There are plenty of reviews around the net for this game, and all seem positive so far. The cool thing about this booth was they had guys in full sized Ork and Space Marine costumes, so cool.
Capcom vs. Marvel 3
This game was everywhere it seemed. They had demos playing at the IGN booth, Capcom Booth, and the Marvel booth. It seems like a classic 2d fighting game with all of your favorite Capcom and Marvel characters. If you enjoy this type of game or fondly remember playing fighting games on your old SNES, its worth checking out.
DC Universe
This game looks fantastic! The trailer was pretty epic and the graphics were amazing. As part of the story you get to play as a sidekick to some of the more famous heroes such as Batman. We plan on checking this game out as soon as we can.
Intel
I am not sure what Intel was doing at a convention about comic books, but they had by far the biggest booth at the show; it was at least twice as big as Marvel plus DC combined. Intel was showing off their latest Core i7 extreme CPU by having machines set up running a number of popular games. They even had their own stage where they were commentating StarCraft 2 tournaments.
Marvel Superhero Squad Online
Originally we thought this game looked way too cheesy to be of any interest to us. Boy, were we proven wrong. First of all, this is a free to play game in which you can buy some things with micro-transactions, but you can find all of these items by playing the game for free. One of the cool features is that PvP is done through a card game. At another booth we were given some cards for free and we played it the next day. It is a simple game but fun. There will be a more in-depth posting on this later.
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We here at It’s Geektime are always trying to give you the next best thing in Geekdom. So, we thought it was our duty to go to Comic Con 2010 in NYC. I know, we torture ourselves. This being our first Con I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Let me tell you, after day 1, it did not disappoint.
Comic Con in NYC is fairly young. It was started in 2006 by Reed business. They are affiliated with the much larger San Diego Comic Con. During this first year, attendance was so out of control that so of the presenters and artists got locked out of the presentation.
I had to go to work for a portion of today so I was late to the party. When I go out of the subway and was curious which way to go a group of scantily clad girls dressed as anime characters walked past me. I made a leap of faith and decided to go in the direction they came.
In the two hours that I was there I didn’t come close to seeing everything. We ran into giant space marines from 40k, the car from the new Green Hornet movie, predators, face huggers on a stick and even Robocop.
Marvel and DC spent a ton of effort advertising the many, many new games that they are producing; most notably, X-Men Destiny and DC: Universe. It seemed like a different world in the Marvel and DC areas with soft plush carpets and tons of different displays.
As we know, another very important part of conventions are the booth babes. There was definitely not a shortage of them here. Between the hot classy IGN girls, to the girls of Marvel vs Capcom end at the awesome girl we talked to at the Poke my Voodoo booth and many more.
The thing that I loved about the first day was the people. This was the melting pot of New York City with one common goal, to celebrate all the things geek. Differences were left at the door and people were not afraid to be themselves. For me, it was just sensory overload of all the things that I like. This attitude is the very essence of It’s Geektime and we are excited to see what’s next
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It's Geektime will be at New York City Comic Con this weekend. We are excited to be attending our first convention as a member of the press. If you want to meet Allan or John drop us a line and we can work something out.
