Frezyman

at December 28th I left for MAGfest 8. Its a videogaming festival in Washington DC that should take place January 1-4th. The highlight of This trip should have been meeting people from Speeddemosarchive.com and having a speedrun Marathon that we were supposed to send live over internet for about 50 hours. Simply playing trough 72 classic video game titles mostly from the NES, SNES and Genesis(Mega Drive) consoles. We had two screens that was streaming online. One showing the game screen and one showing the gamer trough a webcam and we were also comentating the gameplay along the way. another screen was a chat channel and everything including chat, two screens and commentaries was recorded. and we will post a highlight video later.

Other then the festival we just had a couple of days before and after MAGfest when we could just spending time with eachother chatting about anything. at 6th. I left for a couple of days of Backpacking in New York.

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We had problem getting internet connection at the festival but thankfuly Mike Uyama lives 10 minutes away so we connected everything and started doing our marathon in his place instead. Finally we got everything to work even if we were four hours behind the schedule. We also had a goal for people donating money for Charity during the marathon. We had a goal set as high as 5000 USD.

I was hoping that this would be really fun but in turned out to be more like a success. we had around 700 and 1500 people watching all the time during the marathon and we raised more then 10 000 USD during the marathon. Next time we hope for a lots of improvements and even more people watching and donating and an even better show.

I guess about 30 people was involved in this show. 4-5 people organized the show and it was about 20 different runners.

To bad I did not have a lots of time attending the actual MAGfest this year but the marathon lived up for it.

After the marathon we relaxed for a day and then I went on a 16 US dollar China bus which I had almost for myself. When I dropped of the bus in manhattan it was like an adventure to (By subway) make it from the downtown west to upptown east side were my Hostel was located. I had to pay for the ticket twice and I had to switch tram three times. I couldn't find the Hostel at the actual adress but I found my way top an internet café where I googled the hostel to find the actual adress three blocks away.

During MAGfest I met a lots of people. One of them was Mike Mckenzie from Australia and he had some time for traveling after MAGfest to. After paying a visit to Delaware we met eachother at the hostel. I knew he was kind of tired but we made a tourist bus trip trough downtown manhattan the second day because we didn't have a lots of time. we were also at the top of rockefeller center because we heard that the view from there was better then the Empire state building. We also went on a trip to see the statue of liberty.

I also did met a Brazilian guy at the hostel which joined us on our trip. Later that night we went to broadway to see the famous Mamma Mia musical. It was a nice view to see Time square at night too. I have to say that New York is kinda fantastic and cold this time of the year.

Back in 2007 I heard that they had a Nintendo museum on Manhattan. The Museum was not that impressive but its a must if you put your feet on the manhattan island if you are a Nintendo fan.

The day I left me a Mike Mckenzie payed a fast 40 minute visit to the Museum of natural history. They had a bunch of  interesting things to chack out. I would like to spend three days there but I just got 40 minutes. This is nice suit.

And Rockefeller centre was one of the highlight. Behind me is central park and to the right of central park is east side were my hostel was located.

This is how the screen looked like. we recorded everything and it will be possible to look at it afterwards. we got 100 USD from a fund if I was playing the game called "Contra" shirtless.