My apologies to the mods for drudging up an old topic, but I don't get a chance to visit forums very often any longer.
Thank you to all of you for both making the Midwest Gaming Classic so great every year and of course coming out and being a part of the community there! It sounds like all of you had a great time so I'm really glad to see that.
Anyway, official attendance was 10,000 attendees over two days, +/- a few people as an exact count is pretty tough to nail down. That's the first time the show hit 10k and one of the biggest jumps we've seen year-over-year. The weather was overall perfect for an indoor convention and fortunately the monsoon held off this year for the sake of those in the giant tent.
This year the show tried a few new things including live music, some table games like air hockey, additional 'table-top' games like Magic, and we also brought in a few pay-to-play games which personally I'm a bit iffy about, but it gives us a chance to bring in a few newer arcades to the show that wouldn't normally have been there. Loosen would also have you know this included crane games for candy and plushy prizes... Umm... yippee? :p
Tournaments were a bit scaled back again this year because of the Wisconsin laws that prohibit prizes for a "game of chance". The law is currently (or maybe at this point already has been?) being rewritten at least in part on account of one of our own organizers bringing up the point that the PGA stuff going on in Wisconsin could also be considered a game of chance. The hope is that by next year if we're still doing the MGC the tournaments will make a full recovery.
The museum and museum-themed rooms like the Turbo Fest were outstanding. Again, a big THANK YOU to the many of you from this forum that help us every year put these areas together. A special thanks as well to those of you that hung around late Friday night getting the Planet Harriers setup working. I know that getting the chance to play that for the first time was a highlight of many that attended the show this year.
The arcade hall was great again this year. I personally got a chance to play Killer Queen (
http://killerqueenarcade.com/video/) for the first time at the show this year and that was a lot of fun. I only wish I had the floor space to bring some of these cabinets home with me every year, hehe.
Again, thank you to everyone for coming out and making the show such an event every year. Having gone to the very first 'MGC' as and attendee and going to every show since as an organizer, all of you continue to impress me with your help and dedication to make the Midwest Gaming Classic better every year.
Later.
