03.30.2026
While trying to figure about what I want to write for my weekly blog I ended up thinking about how I share online and what type of writing goes on what platform. I kind of use this and Tumblr as a journal of sorts but what I put on here is more conscious longform posting while Tumblr is kind of spur of the moment vibes posting. Also despite having a pretty large following on Tumblr (2200 followers last I checked lol) I feel much more comfortable posting personal things about my mental health or dating life for example on there... I think because of the anonymity factor. That being said I definitely am more likely to give someone I know in person a link to this blog than my Tumblr if they ever wanted to read my writing. So it is kinda nice to have multiple outlets and I can contain the crazy stuff to something that's not this lmao.
Anyway... PAX East was last weekend. I don't know if I've ever written about PAX on this blog but I didn't go. I went every single year from 2012 to 2020 but ever since they came back post covid it's just been aggressively mediocre. I used to do whole weekends but the two times I did go in the 2020s (2023 and 2024) I only did one day and felt that was enough. I get a little tempted when I hear friends going but when they tell me that there's less games every year and more vendors I don't feel like I'm missing anything. A shame because I think there's still a place for the video game convention. It's good to get like-minded people in the same place sharing hobbies. I think it just needs too be less corporate like PAX is and maybe better planned.
PAX weekend though means a lot of fun stuff happens in the city even if you don't go. Friday night Nathan and I hosted a bunch of friends over for a local multiplayer game night. We played our classic Halo 3 with 8 players and also some Virtua Tennis which IMO is the best local multiplayer game of all time because of how easy it is to learn and how hype the matches can get. My friend Scott who's also a big Dreamcast head saw I had Quake III though so we did a bunch of games on that too which was so fun despite having to relearn the insane controls... remember having to play FPS games on controllers with one analog stick?
Saturday I went down to Balance Patch for a fighting game PAX after party with a few friends. My first time going to a local in probably 3 years despite not actually playing with anyone I didn't already know lol (but did chat up a few cool people). I got asked if I could enter my controller in their custom stick art contest but I had to decline because I wouldn't be able to actually play anything sadly but I still would have lost to the Sabrina Carpenter fightstick that won. Played a bunch of SF6 with friends and my Sagat is getting better slowly. Jay and I decided we will start going to locals again but we will see when that actually happens.
Finally Sunday I went to a pinball tournament at a local candlepin bowling alley. The gimmick was that if you lost enough games that would knock you out of the tournament, you could bowl a redemption frame and getting a strike or spare would put you back in. Thankfully I didn't have to do that because I somehow came in third place which so far is my best "official" tournament placement in the "x amount of strikes and you're out" format. It felt really good! I played very well and had a lot of close games with friends. I've definitely really improved as a pinball player over the last couple years and now I'm finally starting to see the results. Now to do the same for Street Fighter...
Links for this week: