Last year's CGE was a horrible experience, and we're never going back, ever.

...

Well maybe if they move it back to Vegas we will, but as it stands now, the fatties can shove their worthless Atari crap up their Californian assholes as far as I'm concerned. I call for an official NES Fatty boycott of CGE until the issue of its non-Vegasness is resolved.

The last CGE can basically be summed up by the fact that I didn't even get drunk while I was there. That's really all you need to know. The trip there was hell. One of Spinner's tires exploded in the middle of the west Texas desert, leaving us stranded for many many hours. This got resolved, somehow, but it set a bad tone for the rest of the trip.

We saw THE THING? though, and it was everything we expected it to be and more. You totally need to drive out there and see it for yourself. It's so worth it. Really.

We won't talk about the rest of the trip, though.

Seriously, you can't imagine how disappointing most of it was.

By the time we got to Vegas, TheRedEye's preshow party had come and gone, and everyone was already drunker than any of us could ever hope to be. Like say, kap, for example.

<kap> are you sardius?
<Sardius> yeah?
<kap> you're a PUSSY

He was completely drunk and remembers none of this, of course, but I was instantly impressed with the man regardless. Maybe it was just because I could relate to him throwing up all over the bathroom, but getting to hang out with him for the rest of the show was really cool.

I was significantly less impressed with many of the other people I met, but you know how that goes.

The rest of the first day at CGE remains a blur. A box of wine was thrust into my hands at one point, but there just wasn't enough time to catch up with everyone in terms of drunkenness. There was absolutely no way I could have bested TheRedEye, anyway. He was drunk, he was angry, and he was...dressed like a pirate. The best part of the entire show was that night, when we followed him to McDonald's. For eating.

Remember, now, that he was drunk, and still dressed in full pirate regalia.

<Clerk> May I help you?
<TheRedEye> HOW OLD ARE YOU

The guy looked fairly young, granted, but he probably wasn't expecting to be interrogated about his age by a drunken pirate. Like, ever.

<Clerk> Um...eighteen, sir.
<TheRedEye> NO YOU'RE NOT YOU'RE UNDERAGE YOU CAN'T WORK HERE
<Clerk> Well haha I
<TheRedEye> DON'T LIE TO ME...I'M A FUCKING PIRATE

The poor kid was shaking by the time Red finished ordering and I walked up.

<Clerk> S...so are you g-guys here for that...you know, video game, thing?
<Sardius> yeah, we are.
<Sardius> some of us are more into it than the rest of us, though. eheh.
<Clerk> That's, yeah, that's cool. You know I have Playstation 2 and...and I like it and play it and stuff.
<Sardius> dude, it's okay. he's gone now.
<Clerk> Is...is he?

The next day, CGE started. The picture above sums the entire show up pretty well, I think. You don't know true terror until you've been trapped next to a sweaty, 400-pound bearded man playing Pac-Mania and singing along to its music. Seriously, the music would get to this certain part every time it looped, and he'd just bust out and scream DOOO DOO DO DEE DO DAAAAH at the top of his lungs. It was the most terrible thing I've ever been witness to, and that guy alone is reason enough for anyone to stay away from CGE forever.

I tried to make the best of the situation, though, and ended up with some nice personal accomplishments to show for it. I managed to finish Cliff Hanger on a single credit (I would've done it on one life if the disc hadn't skipped and messed me up at one part), and I actually got first fucking place in the Feet of Fury tournament, of all things. It was satisfying enough watching that dick Kitsune get eliminated in the first round, but I had no idea that I'd be able to reach the finals and actually win the whole thing. I got a shitty bootleg Dreamcast dancemat and a copy of Feet of Fury as the grand prize.

But even now, speaking as the game's official grand champion and spokesperson, I still say it plays like a moldy, half-eaten dick sandwich.

Funny thing though, after winning the tournament, I turned around and the first thing I saw -- I'm totally not shitting you here -- was a guy wearing a Johnny Turbo t-shirt. It's like that entire thing was specially planned to be the greatest single moment of my life. He seemed like a cool guy, too, even though I forgot his name and never saw him again afterward.

Later on, though, I got the chance to meet real, honest-to-god Sardius Fanboys, which was creepy as shit. I was working behind the Lost Levels table when one of them approached and asked "Hey guys, has Sardius showed up yet?" Note that he stated this in such a way as to imply that he had asked this before, perhaps many times. Grabbing a plastic sword as a precautionary measure, I told the guy that yeah, he has. I'm Sardius.

And man, you should've seen the look on his face.

"We're going to follow you around like the option ships from Gradius," one of them said. "Yeah," said the other, "We should like, hack the game and call it Sardius instead."

They giggled.

I spent the rest of the show trying to ditch them.

In fact, I spent most of the expo trying to avoid people, specifically the half a dozen or so thugs who wanted to beat me up because of things I wrote about them last time. I took special care to always walk behind the OlderGames table for example, because damn, wouldn't you? At one point during the show -- as I was told later -- R.W. started talking with TheRedEye about how much he hated me ("seriously, if I knew there was a dicksucking clown in Citizen X, I would've taken it out before releasing it"). Their conversation was somehow overheard by the Video Game Bible guy as he passed by, who then walked up to the both of them and said "Hey, let me know if you see that guy around here. I'd like to have a word with him."

The next thing Red says he remembers thinking was "Wow, Sardius is awesome."

You know what? The Virtual Boy really fucking sucks. It plays a mean game of Space Invaders, but that's about it. This shot is of Red and me playing the world's only two-player Virtual Boy game on the world's only linkable pair of Virtual Boys. It looks more like Red's saying something like "what bullshit is THIS" while I'm vomiting on the floor from Virtual Boy-induced nausea, though. The game we were playing had us drawing red lines across the screen...COMPETITIVELY. Compared to being stranded in the desert the day before, it was pretty damned gripping.

Then again, this picture wouldn't be the same without the Virtual Boy, so I guess it was good for something after all. Note the beer bottle and pretzels all over the floor, indicating the awesome party that we were NOT A PART OF.

Fucking Fools War. We're convinced that this stupid thing was the cause of all our misery on this trip. We left it behind in the hotel room, and hopefully it's at the bottom of a landfill now. Or maybe one of the maids picked it up and is wondering why the tires on her car are now constantly exploding. Whatever. It's not our problem anymore.

Dinner at Carrow's was entirely awesome, unlike the rest of the trip. The food was great, and really, you can't go wrong with something that results in Red drawing Inner Bunny. After eating, we hung around the lobby for a little bit. There was a five-year-old boy nearby who was trying to win stuffed toys from one of those crane grabbing machine things. He must've won a killer whale doll before we came in, because at one point, he announced to no one in particular:

<Kid> I WISH SHAMU HAD A FRIEND

...which I can guarantee was the absolute last thing any of us expected to hear. While we were laughing, though, the kid tried the game again and lost. He was apparently disappointed with the claw not wrapping itself tightly enough around the toy he wanted, so he screamed:

<Kid> I WISH IT WAS TIGHTER

...which completely killed everyone, as I'm sure you'll understand. kap's reply of "You'll be hearing that a lot in prison, kid!" was just icing on the cake.

So the trip sucked, but I got a pretty nice haul, all things considered.

I also learned how to make love to a man.

Next time, though, I think we're better off taking a vacation to Picacho instead.

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