SecretAsianMan

I thought I remembered seeing Pittsburgh for someone's location on the forums.

The PAX twitter accounts are useful, but I would caution against relying on them too much. Like I said above, internet connections will probably be consistently slow in the area due to the huge amount of traffic. One thing I've learned that can help out a little bit is turning off 3G/4G data. You'll obviously get a slower speed than normal but I've personally had better luck getting any kind of stable connection at all.

pkirkner has some good tips. I'll add a few more. -If this is your first PAX, the show floor is going to be a huge draw and with good reason. Lots of bright lights, game demos, colorful booths, etc. But be careful not to spend too much time in it. Pretty much everything you see there will eventually be released so unless you absolutely HAVE to play a certain demo maybe think about just walking around and not waiting hours in line. -I CANNOT emphasize how much fun the panels are. The first time I went to PAX I didn't really go to any and that was a big mistake. Every PAX I've gone to since then has been mostly going to panels. Whether you're there to learn something, see something, or just be entertained, I think they're easily one of the best parts of PAX. -If you want to get into the big panels, such as Gearbox or Giantbomb, you'll have to show up several hours in advance and be prepared to wait in line. They usually fill capacity fairly quickly and the Enforcers will start turning people away. -Be prepared to have little to no functional internet while in the convention center. Thousands of people are competing for bandwidth which will make everything slow to a crawl. If you can, bringing a mobile hotspot might not be the worst idea. -The Omegathon is usually a lot of fun to watch. In case you're not familiar with this, the Omegathon is where they take (I think 10) people and have them compete in a series of games, both of the video and board type. Each round one is eliminated until the very end, which is the closing event of the show. All of the rounds are announced in advance except for the last one which is kept as a secret. The winner will get a trip somewhere, usually Gamescom or the Tokyo Game Show. PAX East Omegathons are slightly different than PAX Prime because at East they're in teams while at Prime they're solo. If you don't mind Mike and Jerry, I suggest going to the final round of the Omegathon in the main theatre. -Lastly, if you see a hard working Enforcer around, thank them! The Enforcers are the volunteer army (who I think technically get minimum wage now) who actually run the show. Everything is possible because of their hard work. I know several Enforcers in real life and they're some of the best people. Don't be afraid to ask them for help if you need.

I was lazy and just used SAM instead of my full name.

The marriage proposal in case anyone doesn't feel like watching the entire Mischief Makers run looking for it (there's a bit of an emotional lead-up to it, skip to 1:15 for the actual proposal) http://youtu.be/4FFFDjwYjfQ Also most (if not all) of the videos can (eventually) be found either here or here. I prefer the first link because they usually include a time code for the actual start of the run in the description but the second link seems to be a little faster with the uploads.

The ending to the Super Metroid race/solo run was unique this year in that save the animals won thanks to a pretty spectacular last second anonymous $10,000 donation. A live marriage proposal occurred during Mischief Makers. You don't need to watch the whole run if that game doesn't interest you but the proposal itself was pretty sweet. The BattleBlock Theatre run is one of my personal highlights. The run itself doesn't contain any really notable gameplay, it's just incredibly entertaining because of runner/couch commentary, and the fact that 2 of the developers were in on a call. I Wanna be the Boshy is also pretty entertaining because of runner commentary. I haven't watched most of it but the Dark Forces II run was pretty talked about. I was rather impressed by the Rogue Legacy run. I think he completed it in 3 generations, which is apparently the optimal number for a speedrun. While I don't personally care for Shovel Knight, the run was pretty good and also had developers there on a call. Alex Navarro from GiantBomb played the terrible Big Rigs game. I haven't seen it but the Awful games block is usually pretty entertaining. The Vanquish run met the incentive for playing with one hand. I think he held hands with someone the entire time. The Ocarina of Time blindfolded child dungeon run was very impressive, but also kind of tedious at times. There's a lot of restarting because he loses his position and has to restart from a known spot in order to progress. I missed a bunch of the marathon myself and plan to catch up on the archives. I'll post again if I find anything else of note.

Nintendo picking confusing names for things? I find this hard to believe from the creators of the Wii and 3DS. I mean Wii U and New 3DS. I mean... what was my point again?

I'd say you're doing a pretty good job of it around here. I certainly enjoy your LEGO stories and look forward to more.

After the marathons are over, highlight/outtake compilations are usually put together. Because of the number of glitches and exploits that speedrunning usually requires, the chances of softlocking or crashing the game are fairly high. Most of the time this doesn't happen because the runners are skilled enough to avoid them, but it has happened on occasion. During a lot of runs you'll hear them say they're using marathon safe strats like Korax said. You'll also hear them refer to marathon luck a lot and will often hear the phrase "That's never happened before". And of course sometimes real life decides to interfere, such as when the fire alarm goes off.

Holy crap, save the animals just won because of a $10,000 last second donation.

Kill/save the animals alone has raised over $200,000 and it's not even done yet. This is crazy/great.

Following up on the previous LEGO Lady Scientist set, a second set has reached the 10,000 supporter mark. This means the next step is the official review by LEGO which, if approved, would lead to a set to be sold in stores.

I only watched part of the Arkham City run for a few reasons. One: it was late. Two: watching runs of games I own makes me want to play said games again and I've already beaten AC like 4 times. Three: I've seen AC runs at previous marathons. I'm bummed to hear this run wasn't a good watch because AC speedruns are actually really good in general. The game is so large and spread out that it's amazing how much optimization they do in order to minimize the traversal. In particular, I picked up several tricks regarding the fighting mechanics and can now breeze through fights in that game. It's part of the reason I found Shadow of Mordor too easy. Watching AC speedruns made me too good at the combat mechanics.

I don't remember when or why I first got a Steam account, but I do know that this is technically my second Steam account. I had to create a second one after my first one got locked for reasons I don't remember anymore (nothing illicit, some stupid thing) but luckily I didn't own that many games so it wasn't any real loss at the time.

Crossy Road is now on the Google Play Store proper, in case you didn't want it through Amazon

That would be this thread

I've seen a couple Let's Plays of it and I actually knew the correct answer to a significant number of the questions so none of them really seemed that goofy. It was very apparent to me what the fake answers were, but that also depends so much on who's playing it. I might be able to pick the right answer a lot, but I doubt I'd fool anyone with my own answers. Plus I feel that getting the "correct" answer isn't really the point of the game.

I believe the Tuba is the most metal of instruments, at least by sheer amount of brass.

Female runners are something of a rarity unfortunately. I remember watching the Octodad race from SGDQ 2014 and the Twitch chat was full of unreadable garbage because one of the two runners was a lady. Pixel-perfect and frame-perfect are common speedrunning terms. Pixel-perfect means that there's exactly one pixel that the desired effect can be achieved on (like standing on a specific pixel of a spike block without dying). Frame-perfect means that there's exactly one frame in an animation to pull off the trick. Since many games run at 30-60 frames per second, you're talking about fractions of a second timing. These things are usually found with help from the TAS (tool assisted speedrun) community because they can slow down the game and advance frame by frame to discover which frame or pixel is needed, or even if it exists at all.

Whew. Of course I also own it on Blu-ray but Netflix is so much more convenient.

Does that mean that I won't be able to watch Sherlock? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Man, I owned a copy of that book for years and never read it. I think I sent it to Teg as part of a not-so-secret-Santa.

Fibbage is a hilarious looking game that I would be absolutely terrible at. I'm the kind of person who would try to take it seriously and answer the questions while providing completely boring fake answers. It seems like there would be this weird balance between trying to be entertaining by coming up with goofy answers and trying to win by coming up with plausible things and I would fail at both.

The "hype" thing gets on my nerves too but I'm more willing to ignore it for this. Tetris was pretty great, but I've seen videos of some of the Japanese players they were talking about so I was less blown away than I normally would have been. I'm not really a huge fan of Shovel Knight but I will admit that watching the speedrun made me want to play it again. Anytime they get the devs in to watch the runs its pretty great. I love hearing how they react to people destroying their games in both intended and unintended ways. The Battleblock Theatre run also had the devs on it and was stupidly entertaining throughout.

I refuse to change my avatar (unless Teg makes me another)