Usually when I write these PAX articles, I’ll talk about my favorite companies first, like Capcom and Nintendo.  But this year I decided to change things up and save them for last, and let other companies have the spotlight first.  So for my final PAX West 2017 article, let’s take a look at what some of my other favorite game companies had at the show.

Before I go any further, though, I wanted to say that there was WAY more at PAX than what I’m going over here.  It’s just that I’m only one person and couldn’t cover the whole show by myself.  I just looked at what I was interested in and what I had time for.  For instance, Ubisoft was showing mostly stuff like FarCry and Assassin’s Creed, two franchises I’m not as familiar with, so I didn’t take any pictures of what they had.  If they had shown off the Mario + Rabbids game at PAX, I would’ve set up a meeting with them.  They said they didn’t show it off because it had already been released. Yeah, like two days before the show started!  I’m sure people would’ve still been interested in playing it at PAX.  Anyway, just remember that PAX West was bigger than what I am making it out to be here.

Bandai Namco

Namco is my favorite video game company, mainly for their classics like Pac-Man, so I’m always happy to see them make a presence at PAX.  Unfortunately they were only showing off two games at the show: Project Cars 2 and a new Dragon Ball Z fighting game.  I was hoping they’d at least show Ni no Kuni 2, as I enjoyed the first game and wanted to see if the sequel would be worth my time.  But oh well.  I got pretty far in the first game, but I never beat it in the end anyway.

Capcom

Another one of my favorite game companies is Capcom, and they had a really big presence at PAX!   They had a lot of games at their booth, but the one that garnered the most attention was Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite.  I didn’t play it because the lines were too long, but it only comes out in a few weeks anyway so I can wait.  They did have this neat display that I did take a picture of, though.  In the game, the evil robot Ultron from the Marvel universe and the evil robot Sigma from Capcom’s Mega Man X team up and become Ultron Sigma, and here they are sitting in their favorite chair.  Unfortunately, you couldn’t sit in their lap and tell them what you wanted for Christmas, though.

One game I did get to try at Capcom’s booth was a new Puzzle Fighter game!  I loved Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo in the arcades and on the PlayStation, and I got really good at it, too!  This new game is on mobile devices, and features 3-D graphics for the characters, but they are still in chibi form like in the first game.  You can play as characters like Ken and Ryu, Morrigan, someone from Resident Evil and Devil May Cry, and even Mega Man X!  Since it’s on mobile, you use touch screen controls to move the pieces around, which took a little getting used to.  It still plays the same, but with a few differences.  Like if your stack reaches the top, you don’t automatically lose, you’ll just lose some hit points.  And you only see your screen in the middle, the other players screen is really small and to the side.  I didn’t even notice it the first time I played.  But there a button at the bottom of the screen that you can push to unleash a super powerful attack.  I’m not sure about all the gameplay details since I didn’t know what I was doing most of the time.  But the guy manning that area told me it’ll probably be a free-to-start game, and you can pay for the full game later. But that might change. I hope it also comes to consoles later on as well, as that’s where I’d rather play it.

Capcom’s area at PAX was so big, they even had a separate section for Monster Hunter World!  I’ve never gotten into the Monster Hunter games, but I thought that part of the booth was cool, so I took a picture of it.

And speaking of Capcom, one of the only cosplay pictures I took this year was of someone dressed as Chun-Li.  At PAX and other game and comic conventions, sometimes people dress up as their favorite characters, and that practice is known as cosplay.  And it’s gotten more popular over the years.  Normally at PAX, I take a lot of pictures of cosplayers and show off my favorites in my final article.  But this year I wasn’t impressed with the cosplayers.  Most of them were dressed as things I had no idea who they were, and the other ones I knew were from Overwatch.  Lots and lots of Overwatch cosplay.  Even with this Chun-Li picture, there were two other Chun-Lis I saw at the show (this one was just the best one).  So yeah, a serious lack of originality in cosplay at this year’s PAX West.

Nintendo

I was hoping Nintendo would have a bigger presence at this year’s PAX.  Their booth was half the size of both Sony’s and Microsoft’s booth.  But I guess it doesn’t matter because Nintendo’s booth was always crowded and impossible to get anywhere near it.  From the look of their booth, you could tell they were all about Super Mario Odyssey, but they did show off other games at their booth and had contests for Pokken Tournament DX.  Even though I didn’t get to see much of what Nintendo had, their booth was still pretty cool looking, so I took some pictures of it anyway.

Here’s a side view of their booth.  I just like the street sign with the question block.

There was also a neat Mario statue you could take pictures of.

“That’s the second biggest Switch I’ve ever seen!”  On the back of Nintendo’s booth wall was a painting of a giant Switch.

I did manage to take a picture of something inside their booth, though.  I WANT THIS SO BADLY!  My birthday is in a week.  Will somebody get this for me for my birthday?  Pretty please?

At the show I did find out that Nintendo had another area, a room where you could play some of their indie titles.  But the wait to do that was two hours long.  And there was really only one game I wanted to play in there if they had it.  It’s called Yono and the Celestial Elephants, and it’s an isometric Zelda-like game where you play as an adorable baby elephant.  And I didn’t even HAVE to play it.  All I really wanted to do was give m business card to the developers and let them know I would be interested in reviewing it.  I could’ve just been in and out of there in a flash.  I do wish that Nintendo could make things a little more accessible to the media at PAX.  I think with some minor tweaks on how they run things, they could do that.  Square-Enix has them beat on that!

Nintendo did have an interesting way to help people not have to wait in lines to play games, and it kind of reminded me of those FastPass tickets you can get at amusement parks.  What you could do is open up the MyNintendo site on your phone, and if you’re a MyNintendo member (it’s their rewards program), you could open up a QR code for them to scan at PAX and set you up a time to play a certain game.  I tried this to get into the indie room, but it didn’t work out for me.  They only had it open to do that at noon, and then you had to wait in a line to get your QR code scanned, and they’d fill up after 30 minutes.  So yeah, kind of defeats the purpose.  But they did scan my QR code and gave me a free MyNintendo pin, so it wasn’t a TOTAL loss.  Better luck next time, Nintendo!

Conclusions

And that’s all I did at PAX!  Before I go, I do have some final observations I’d like to point out.

At this year’s PAX, I was especially surprised with how many people remembered me.  Whether it was PR professionals, developers, or even other gamers, they would recognize me long before I could recognize them.  I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years, but it just surprised me since I don’t see these people more than once a year.  It just really made me feel special.  It’s nice to be remembered.

And now a couple of negative things.  At PAX there are helpers called PAX Enforcers who volunteer to help out and make sure everything runs smoothly and safely.  In years past I’ve found them to be very nice and helpful, but this year many of them were rather rude.  When I want to take a picture of something at the show, I’ll try and look around and find a spot out of everyone’s way, then I’ll quickly get out my camera and take a picture.  It takes only about two seconds.  Well, multiple times when I tried that this show, a PAX Enforcer would yell at me to stop taking pictures and move along and get out of the way.  Seriously?  I understand they’re just trying to do their job, but I think they could’ve stood to be more polite about it.

The only other bad thing about this trip is that on the way home, American Airlines lost my luggage!  Luckily they found it the next day, but that’s the second time that American (or one of the airlines they own) has lost my bags!  How does that happen?  Next time I may be a little hesitant to use American Airlines, or at least I may look into alternatives to keeping track of my luggage.  Maybe.

But aside from those minor quibbles, this was still a pretty fun PAX trip. I always bring a family member along to help me get around places better since I’ve been blind in my left eye since birth, and this year I took my dad again.  So it was great to spend time with him, too.  In the comments section, let me know what you think of my PAX coverage, and if you have any questions, too, just ask!  Later!  –Cary

Tags: Misc