The good news is, PERRY IS BACK! The original PS3 owning 360 fanboy wakes up to join us for the cast. We cover a bit of comics, a bit of movies, and then it’s all gaming, sit back and enjoy!

Listen live below, get us on iTunes, Zune, or download the mp3 directly here

Show Notes | Topics | Related Links

Super God Damn Early E3 Predictions/Hopes

MegaCon coming soon!

Arkedo Studios wows Richard

NEWS:

-SEGA Announces Sonic the Hedgehog 4

-Erik Estavillo Drops All His Lawsuits

-Rumor Has It That Nintendo Will Announce New Hardware at GDC

-ESRB Gives Hilariously Inappropriate Rating Summary for Dead or Alive: Paradise

-THQ Announces Darksiders, Red Faction and Saints Row Sequels

-New Fallout: New Vegas Trailer Reveals Fall 2010 Release Date

-The Sims Turns Ten

-EA Sports lets fan choose who will be cursed!

-Sony Once Again Hints at Charging for PSN

-More Rumors: Sony Considering a PSPGo Relaunch?

-Sony Announces Premiere Date for The Tester

-Home…. The Magazine!

-Game Room Won’t Allow Teen or Mature Rated Games

-What… The… Fuck?!

Listen live below, get us on iTunes, or download the mp3 here

Show Notes | Topics | Related Links

We have been gaming on:
Batman Arkham Asylum (PS3), Red Faction (Xbox 360), Wolfenstein (Xbox 360)

YIP.. the Belly Dancing podcast!?

Selling ROMs: For SHAAAAAAAME

BG is Hiring

NEWS:

ISS DISNEY BAYBEE!

Gundam Creator sez… “Video Games are Evil”

Shadow Complex Homophobia

God of War, God of War II “Remastered” Coming to PS3

Download the G Force demo (yeah that game based on the hamster movie)

EA, for Some Reason, Sues John Dillinger’s Estate

Take-Two Settles ‘Hot Coffee’ Lawsuit

BioShock 2, Max Payne 3, Mafia II and Red Dead Redemption to be released between February and June

Okami Gets a Sequel — on Nintendo DS

PS3 3.0 Firmware is Breaking Shit

Wii Internet Channel is Free. At last.

OnLive Enters Closed Beta

IGN’s top 25 consoles

The following pics are now from the Photobucket of Latin_Rocker:

Over on the Projectfanboy.com Forums, userSebastianPiccione posted these pictures:

Last, but not least is some from cabridges who posts on the Cosplay.com Froums (his Flickr page)

Saturday started with walking through the fairly far away parking lot with my cousin, wondering if there will be a lot of cosplay or not. I figured, if there was, it will be Ghostbusters for sure, the hype surrounding the video game and another movie in the works made it the focus of costumes (much like Watchmen/Rorschach was the cosplay of choice last Con). I do not hate being right, as the first set we see even before we get into the show was the following group to the right. Right away my worries that there wouldn’t be a lot of cosplay were set aside before even walking in the con because of these ghost fighting nerds.

Entering the con itself felt perfect. Tables were set up so you can wade through the vendors and their mixed goods of comics, anime, manga, toys, clothing, and even something new.. tattooing. I remember FX Show sporting a few booths like this, so it was nice to see MegaCon making sure that they wouldn’t be left out on this, which is definitely it’s own form of art to be appreciated.

Going through the tables you can find a mixture of all the artists and writers, behind them were the independent and amateur tables pimping their products by having booths full of their art all around. Near the food area was fighting with big foam swords and Legos.. yes, there was a full section with Lego building. Getting as far away from geeks with foam violence and the building blocks were the “famous” people signing autographs. Here you could find media guests ranging from D-List to A-List, with people from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, all the way to wrestling divas like SoCalVal.

The focal point for myself at this event is… the comics. Where I brought many of my own comics to be signed by the likes of Greg Horn (Elektra), Alvin Lee (Street Fighter), Jim Cheung (New Avengers), Jimmy Palmiotti (he does EVERYTHING), and legend of comics Dick Giordano (known for his Batman work). Still drawing to this day, he blew me away by drawing myself a picture of Batman with five minutes (that I now need to find a frame for)

After getting a few things signed, it was time to check out the panel circuit. The first one I attended was “Art of Visual Storytelling”, which included Alvin Lee, Greg Land, and Billy Tan, very well known artists in the comic world. I stayed the full hour and listened in as they had prepared questions to answer as well as taking on audience questions. Check out youtube.com/user/BingeGamerDotNet within the next few days as I will have some video uploaded for any of you aspiring artists who want to hear advice from those already in the game.

As a person who just draws for fun, listening to these guys and the process they go through making the comics was still really interesting. A good example is finding references for artwork, which all three agree they use Google Image search when necessary, but having an extra source of reference is Alvin Lee, who needs only to boot up any Street Fighter game to know what he needs to draw.

Another panel I attended was “Pen & Ink Panel: The Art of Drawing Comics”, which included Brandon Peterson, Sergio Cariello, and Mike Perkins. All three provided not only an informative panel, but Brandon a very amusing guy (next door they seemed to be blasting some random Lady Gaga song to which Brandon broke out in a little dance).

For the most part this panel ran different than the last, with full audience participation with questions and all three guys giving you the straight up info on how they get things done. It was interesting to hear how Photoshop has become basically a necessary tool for all the artists at some point of their drawing, and amusing to hear “get it anyway you can” (ie, piracy doesn’t seem to be frowned upon).

With that, I left the panel, walked about the grounds taking more random pictures of cosplayers, had a nice discussion with Brandon Peterson where my cousin started asking some direct questions regarding Greg Land, I ate a $6 hot dog and drank a $3 Pepsi (which was the cheapest food available, for comparison, a very small plate of chicken and rice was $9), and pretty much my feet were tired and it was time to relax and get ready for the Sunday show. While exiting, it was amusing to see a line full of cosplayers getting ready for some panel that I didn’t know of, so I snapped my last shot of the day.

Coming in on Sunday was a far different experience than the day before. I had to pick up a friend that lived 40 minutes away, I forgot my press pass so had to run home, I basically showed up later than I wanted to… but in the end, I found it didn’t really matter, as Sunday basically full of people who didn’t seem to be ‘feeling it’ anymore. There was very few people in costumes. Some artists had already abandoned their tables and went home. And even the vendors were packing up their comic book boxes for sale and taking them out to their cars.

I did find something for me and my friend to attend though, the Quick Draw Contest, which made the day all worth while. There was a room with around 20-30 people (though some of those people weren’t drawing, they were using a table to play Magic: The Gathering). There were three categories with the topics “Manly”, “Robot/Mech/Electric”, and the last being “Fantasy”. We were given 20 minutes to draw for each category, and basically those were the only rules. Being the bad ass that I am, and having a background in reading Maddox forever, I knew the most manly thing for me to draw was a Pirate Lumberjack. Which I won first prize!

The sad part about this, the prize was some Naruto poster and an anime dvd (despite being Japanese, I am not a fan of anime/manga/big eyes).

Other than the art contest, the day was a dud. The amount of people packing up and heading out set a somber mood in the convention hall. I hit up a few vendors, bought a couple of The Tick comics for a buck each, and ended the day early. Overall, the Saturday more than made up for Sunday. Being a part of the winning crowd during the art contest was also a ray of sunshine for Sunday. Thanks to all the people behind the MegaCon events, having a “Mini” version at a random time of the year is something I would be all for next year as well (just make stricter rules on the artists and vendors to stay until the end of the day, splitting early sucks!)

[ To see the Cosplay click here and also read my piece on comic artists stealing from other artists ]

How I picked who is getting what – Using the powers of Random.org’s “True Random Number Generator” I assigned numbers to each comment, seperated into four sets based on what item you picked. Easy and fair, so let’s get it on!

First up is the T-Shirt and Poster combo from rocketshoes and Matt Tichenor. Do people need “Officially Licensed” merchandise to be happy? The amount of entries for this poster says ‘no’, which is awesome that people still will give the independant artist a go if the quality is good.

G-Man with his pick of Wario from Day 2 grabs this fine set of a t-shirt and poster!

Second up is the “Nightgig” comic book (being a comic collector, I know the importance of keeping a comic in perfect shape, so I made sure not to read it.. which took all my power, seriously!) With only two entries, this was a layup for the True Random Number Generator.

Shane R. comes through with his pick of Bob Ross.

Third is my personal favorite, the Donkey Kong artwork by Kenny Durkin. All I ask is head to Wal-Mart and find yourself a small frame to keep this baby in, this drawing deserves it.

Jake Jenova, come on down! Nice pick with the Midna’s

Last, but in no way the least, the prize booty for the true collectors, a piece of Sega history with an original Sonic the Hedgehog comic book page by Tracy Yardley.

X3R0 9, who understandably could not decide between Team Fortress and Iron Man + Iron Kid.

Thanks again for entering peeps! Keep an eye out in a few weeks from now when I will attempt to grab more swag from FX Show!

If you want more free stuff, always check back with Allison’s Weekly Contest Roundup, and don’t be surprised when you see my name entered on half those pages, because I like free stuff too!

Well Binge Gamer wants you to have a little taste of MegaCon by offering up some goods. Goods so good I am re-thinking this whole “give away stuff to people who are checking your site” idea. Here is what I have to offer you:

Now you know what the four packages are… what do you have to do to win?

First, pick what you want (you can only win one thing).

Second, tell me what your favorite cosplayer was from Megacon by commenting below (it does not have to be a video game related cosplayer).

An example comment:
“I want the dk art. The Fluttering Horde from day 2 was the best cosplay!”

Only one entry per person. Make sure you have a valid email. Odds of what you get are based on how many people try for whatever swag you are going for. I honestly don’t mind shipping outside of the United States, so foreigners are welcome to comment.

Need to see the cosplay pics? Here is Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.

Comments will close on March 15th at 11:59PM.

Sunday, the last day of MegaCon. To wrap up this weekend of nerds in costumes, I ended up browsing more booths/tables and got a few more gifts for you all you gamers who binge. Let’s start the pictures off with cosplay and then some brief coverage of what MegaCon was offering.

After that last picture, you could tell just about all the cosplay was done, so back to booths. One which I walked by caught my eye, a gentleman by the name of Kenny Durkin, you can see his table below.

To occupy my time, I attended a panel/presentation entitled “Year of the Fighting Game” that felt a little unorganized reminding me of VGXPO. Starting late by just minutes, the hosts “The MFK Legend” and “Luminous Kyo” open with Street Fighter IV talk. The audience, not full but still overall well attended, participated openly with the guys on stage, a little parry vs focus attack talk.

As unorganized as it felt at first, this was good presentation and amusing hearing so many people in one room talk badly about my precious first person shooters, even shit talking Left 4 Dead. No MK vs DC love. Lots of excitement over King of Fighters XII, GameTrailers videos were played on a big screen, even I have to admit the game is looking beautiful. Around the time the topic of Tekken got skipped over for Guilty Gear talk I headed out.

That is when I found one of my last cosplayer pictures. This character I had seen done about 10 times by now, and felt it amusing to see him playing Mario Kart.

Also going on in the gaming corner, a little surprise game called “Tatsunoko vs. Capcom” that I really don’t see hitting stateside soon, so keep modding your Wii’s people.

I noticed people playing card games, not unusual. Video games, also not unusual. However, the Lego’s being in full effect was weird.

Oddness was taken to another level when I see a sign claiming dodgeball when clearly people are just trying to kill each other with foam.

And thus ends MegaCon 2009.

Except for all that swag I have to give away…. including Kenny Durkin’s very iam8bit’ish bad ass Donkey Kong drawing..

How will I give it away. I’ll figure out something easy. (Like this)

I woke up late for today’s event (had a mini-Megacon-afterparty the night before), but I did still manage to snap a great amount of pictures (with a way better camera to boot, apologies for blurry pics from Day 1).

Video games were not the majority of cosplay going on Saturday, comics really took the cake, but first up is the gamer love:

Sometime during the day I passed by an independent artist table with a Nintendo all-star-Smash Bros inspired poster and a nerdy guy and gal at the table. I figured I hadn’t really grabbed any swag for you peeps, and hoped that I could smooth talk the fine lady into drawing something for a viewer here on Binge Gamer… no such luck, instead the duo of Mia “rocketshoes” Paluzzi and Matt Tichenor came through with poster that any Nintendo fan would appreciate big time plus a t-shirt to boot. To win that, click here.

(Click the above image to see that huge ass signed poster in it’s full glory)

Much like recent trips to EA’s Champions of Gaming and Otronicon events, I will post full thoughts on the day but I will leave it at the end so you can enjoy some good old video game cosplay first. Remember folks, they can’t all be winners (this is just Friday’s batch, I will be posting Saturday and Sunday asap, so look for those two posts coming up soon, as well as some sweet swag which I haven’t figured out how to give away just yet).

Now some quick notes about Megacon this year. Friday was far busier than I thought it would be, with a lot more costumed fans than I have noticed in the past. The big comic book names were doing what they do best, signing comics, talking to fans (between Friday and Saturday I must have talked with Brandon Peterson for at least a half hour). I did notice something different about this con than others I have gone to, straight up spam tables. I understand booths can be bought by any merchant, but when Sprint and “Happy Feet” get involved, it sort of sucks the geek right out of you.