Been a while hasn't it? Today I thought to dust off my old series of reviewing this for a convention that I went to recently. Funny story about this one though, I was not planning on going here until I won free tickets from a contest. So my expectations were low and my drive to get there was high since no one can turn down a free ticket to a convention right? Well if the title hasn't told you by now today I am going to look at Game Core.

I was here!

So when you normally think of a convention what is your first thoughts? PAX, Comic Con, Otakon, Tokyo Game Show, MAGfest? Well I should point out that more often then not, a con isn't like those. Sure big cons are awesome but the small ones tend to have more bang for your buck if you know what to do. This event was a single day gaming con. Normally when you see this you know from the start you are going to mainly have vendors...and that's about it.

Game Core knows its role as a gaming con, gamers come and buy games from vendors and want to have a good time to boot. The "extras" for cons this size are normally little to none, so going into this completely blind, expectations were not that high. I expected to come in, walk around the room, grab some retro goodness, and leave. However I have to admit this convention had me entertained much more then I would have imagined.

First off since I know most people will ask me this, yes the vendors were good. You would need to use your spidy sense of when you see something at one vendor that you want and then walk away to another that has the exact same thing for less money. Its an art form that few people know how to utilize, I got a DS with 12 games for $30 using this, I got skills. Also saw several Mint copies of Dragon Warrior 4, a good helping of import games, A vectrex or two, some plush series unreleased stateside, modded accessories, and the list goes on and on. Sure you might go for the Adventure of Lolo bundle, I went for the S video modified Atari 2600.

Yes those are all imports

Outside of that you also have your tournament options, sure there is your standards of Smash Bros and Goldeneye, however I was pleasantly surprised at the addition of your Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Crazy Taxi. Now I am not a tournament player myself, retired from that scene a long time ago, however the addition of having uncommon games and card games is a nice addition on what was mainly a video game con.

The biggest additions to this event was the fact there was live music playing all day. The range of artists with a 1 hour set from afternoon to evening is something that went above and beyond what I was expecting, and in addition to that they were nice enough to have panels going on as well. Granted they were not geared toward me but the thought of a single day event not dependent solely on vendors and console setups was a big plus.

The special event of singing happy birthday to the Dreamcast and giving out cupcakes was a really nice touch. A breather from the trading and buying to mingling with the various attendees for 10 minutes was...icing on the cupcake. Now it comes down to that all mighty question, should you go?

Yummy!

Well if your idea of a convention is dressing up in a costume, meeting celebrities, and watching things in a screening room this event will disappoint you. Cons have been getting treated as something that are more then what they really are as of late due to the popularity of the larger cons getting larger (PAX East anyone?). If you keep your expectations like mine and realize that this is a small one day event to mingle with vendors and people you normally don't interact with elsewhere, you will have a good time.

Until next time take care and let's hope my camera will not break on me again, forcing this into a text recap then an actual video one.