Well, it’s been three days since Blip Fest 09 wrapped up and only now am I getting back up to speed. That’s precisely how massive and exhaustive the show was, though a bunch of other things also made the past couple of days particularity jam-packed: the snow storm that hit NYC at the festival’s tail end, getting sick because of lack sleep, assorted holiday parties, and simply hanging with buds before Christmas sends everyone off on their merry way.
I’m also still waiting for responses from a few folks behind the event, hence why my rundown for GameSetWatch is still not done. Sorry about that Simon and Eric. So in the meantime, figured I’d pass along a quick and dirty hit list of my personal highlights from the festival:
- First off, the discovery that Japanese chiptunes maestro Hally is a regular reader of this site! That fact alone, along with this pic, made this past Blip the best one evar:
- I now have a new favorite drink: dark velvet. What’s that you ask? It’s Guinness mixed with either champaign or cider. At the Bell House they utilized the latter and it basically became EVERYONE’s favorite.
- Including Joe Salina, who I had to drag to a diner late Friday night (early Saturday morning to be exact) to sober his ass up before hitting the road. Which meant a trip to Daisy’s, which I hadn’t been to in years; since when did it become the hot spot for Puerto Rican biker gangs?
- Also got to hang with Phil Fish and that was pretty rad. I loved totally amazed he was over our command and understanding of the New York City subway system. And it is pretty damn confusing. Unfortunately, it’s also why Phil never made it out to Greenpoint that Saturday afternoon; Dave Mauro and I wanted him to check out Astro City.
- In addition to reconnecting with Phil, ran into plenty of other pals at the show that I hadn’t seen in ages, like Raph, whom I last spotted over the summer at a screening of House. BTW, his doodle blog is pretty much the greatest thing ever. Dude’s also gonna make me a robot! Can’t wait.
- Also made plenty of new friends, like Kunal from Babycastles and Chris from Gaijin Games, who we see here striking a pose with Phil in an unfortunately blurry shot…
- BTW, one of the biggest disappointments from the festival was not being able to test drive that thing Gaijin and Robotube were making on site and which was supposed to be playable. According to Chris, that was the original plan, till they realized that putting their laptops in the hands of drunken show-goers, specifically the ones that they use to do all their work back home, was not such a bright idea after-all.
- Back to the blurry quality of the picture above, easily the biggest headache of the entire weekend was dealing with the camera I borrowed from Vince. It clearly works, I’ve seen pics that he’s taken with the thing, but I just have ZERO luck with mechanical devices in general, especially if it’s a Sony.
- And my biggest regret? Not kissing Phil while he was being interviewed on camera by Bytejacker. Can’t blame Chris for getting me sh*t about dropping the ball afterward. Oh, and sup Anthony.
- The biggest “oh my god” moment had to be the entire crowd singing along to one of Bit Shifter’s songs. Mind you, this particular one has no lyrics, they were just humming along to all the beats! You simply had to be there.
- Heard the greatest mash-up ever: Jazy-Z and Battletoads. Again, you just have to hear it for yourself. If anyone has a copy, PLEASE EMAIL ME.
- Then there was the chiptunes cover of a-ha’s Take On Me. Seriously, that sh*t was haunting.
- Discovered that a friend (who shall remain anonymous) had a conversation with the creator of 4chan that Friday afternoon, and he/she passed along my site! Sup moot.
- As much fun as it was to see the performers do their magic on stage, it was equally enjoyable watching the Bell House’s bouncer deal with all the annoying crowd surfers. I know that my constant bitching about them gets on the nerves of certain performers, and as flattering it is to have people go ape-sh*t to your music, it’s a totally different thing when you’re trying to enjoy said music in the audience and have to worry about some douchebag kicking you in the back of the head literally every 15 seconds (never mind if your glasses tend to fly off like mine).
- Not only got to see David Sugar live yet again, but also got to shake his hands after his amazing performance. I’m SO gay for the man that it ain’t even funny.
- I won the raffle! Got a mess load of stuff, including the Blip Fest 06 DVD, a CD from Little Scale (that awesome Genesis chiptuner I met at Babycastles thing), some software (Chipsounds from Plogue), original artwork from Minusbaby, and best of all, an actual LSDJ cart!
- The after-party simply defies description. Was gonna mention this in my report (am still going to actually), but I can’t help but share the following pic this very second; the Babycastles guys were sporting wearable video games, and here we have Hally playing Fractal Fighters…
- Afterwards I took the long way back to the subways, mostly to soak in the heavy snowfall. As much as I rag on Brooklyn, Manhattan pretty much blows when it comes to freshly fallen snow, where the white powder becomes a black, gooey mess almost instantly.
- Oh, and as for good purchased at Blip Fest, check out Nullsleep’s latest and greatest tee, as well as Starscream’s…
… Also got some Bit.Trip stickers and buttons, a sheet featuring Bryan’s CommanderVideo paperfoldable so everyone can create their own, plus a $5 download token good for some Bit.Trip music, though it was only for Beat’s soundtrack. Which is hawt and all, but I thought it was for all three games (plus Void has far and away the best sounds).
That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll have a proper report up at GSW by week’s end. In the meantime, be sure to stop on by Heavy where my aforementioned top ten lists are finally going up! Thus far they’ve posted my ten most important games of the decade and ten hottest video game chicks of the decade, with a few more yet to come.
Alright, back to work…
