Recap: Everything Nintendo at PAX Aus 2016

Nearly the entire Vooks team headed to PAX Australia this year, funnily enough only one of us is actually from Melbourne. While Nintendo themselves, as a company have a lot new to show off there was a huge Nintendo presence everywhere outside of what was just in a booth. Retro Nintendo fun times, Pokemon Trading Card games, StreetPasses, Panels and more.

This was our experience at PAX Australia 2016.

Josh

Covering PAX this year for a Nintendo site was a bit awkward. Much like at EBX, their booth looked fantastic, but they didn’t have a huge amount to show. In between EBX and PAX, the game that had been shown pre-release there were now on store shelves, so there wasn’t much use in playing them. The exception being Breath of the Wild, of course, but unfortunately that wasn’t on show this time. There were plenty of photo opportunities, with a giant Pokeball and the Master Sword having their own assigned areas of the booth, and Mario and Luigi made a few appearances as well. Nintendo’s booth will always be one of the livelier and welcoming ones at conventions because of things like this. If you got tired of walking around the expo floor you could sit down in front of the massive TV and watch or compete in different games being played.

The new set of Pokemon trading cards had just released before PAX, which was a sort of ‘remake’ of some of the original sets to put the cards in line with modern cards while still keeping the original designs. This meant that a lot of people were going crazy over the TCG again, which was fun to see. People were going nuts, buying boosters in bulk and coming incredibly close to splurging on a full $175 box of around 30 booster packs. These were people who hadn’t played the game in years, but were swept up by hype once again. Conventions are great at fostering an interest in new physical games due to the ease of purchasing cards and games and the fact there’s so many likeminded people there. I went through a bit of a Magic phase because of the first PAX, and I’m sure many people are hooked on the Pokemon TCG now thanks to a combination of PAX and the building Pokemon hype from GO and Sun and Moon.

On the final day of the convention there were two Nintendo focused panels – the first was organised by Nintendo themselves, which was about Pokemon. It’s the series’ 20th anniversary and a new generation of games was launching soon so this panel was to be a big celebration of those 20 years, as well as a look forward at what was to come. It was a great idea but I didn’t really get that much out of it. I remember Pokemon GO coming up a fair bit. There was even a guy on the panel who’d never played a Pokemon game other than GO, who couldn’t contribute answers to a lot of the question, and I was really confused why you’d bring someone onto a panel who has no interest in the topic being discussed – especially when it’s meant to be a panel celebrating the history of a series of games. There was also trivia throughout the panel, with prizes, and one question took hilariously long for people to answer – “Name all the currently revealed Alolan Forms”. About a half dozen people attempted to answer it and failed, even though between them they’d listed all the forms and someone could have gotten the answers just by listening. There was a fun little pre-recorded Q&A with Junichi Masuda and Shigeru Ohmori from Game Freak at the end, which you can view online now. It was recorded specifically for Australia like the Animal Crossing Q&A was at the first PAX, and it’s nice to see our country get noticed.

The Zelda panel was held by Zelda Universe and was an overall better experience. It was also celebrating an anniversary – the 30th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda series, to be precise. It went over the many installments in the series and had a look at what they contributed to the series and gaming as a whole. It was respectful of each game regardless of what the hosts thought about them; it didn’t feel like any particular games or fans were being attacked. It was nice to take a look at how far the series has come, and to reminisce on all our favourite moments from the games. There was trivia here, too, with questions from each of the different games. One lucky fan will be getting a full set of the upcoming Zelda amiibo when they release, and I must admit that I am very jealous.

Steven

Zelda Universe’s 30 Years of Adventure: The History of The Legend of Zelda

This panel was a great time. Of course the entire thirty years of Zelda history couldn’t be covered in the hour long panel, but the ZU crew managed to cram a heck of a lot of mainline Zelda history discussion into their allotted time. For newer players the mention and discussion of early Zelda games was a treat, and even for people like me it served as a reminder that “Hey, I should probably play Majora’s Mask some time, everyone seems to think it’s pretty swell.” Lots of audience interaction and general opinions, and some fun trivia for prizes to break up the talking. Cody Davies, David Johnson and Shona Johnson put on a great panel with something for Zelda fans of any vintage.

Also, here’s a photo of some of us with the Zelda Universe people!

With A Terrible Fate’s “Press X to Scream”: Horror Storytelling in Video Games

Didn’t really expect much Nintendo related out of this panel, but I came out surprised with a new appreciation for Majora’s Mask as existential horror. The panel discussed the psychology of jump scares (using knowledge of the brain and Five Night’s at Freddy’s to demonstrate examples) which was genuinely interesting. Academic enough to challenge and improve my knowledge but not so in the weeds that it was difficult to understand. Some interesting examples of horror games adapting stories from ancient mythology followed, and finally we had some in depth discussion of Bloodborne’s Lovecraftian horror stylings, Silent Hill’s dual judgements of player character, the player and the fundamental unfairness of that judgement.

Majora’s Mask featured too, and the talk placed the game in an entirely new light for me. To grossly summarise and simplify, the panel painted Majora’s Mask as an antithesis of the hero’s story in Ocarina of Time. Link in this game is no hero, and it is heavily implied that as hard as he tries to change the world, Termina is beyond saving. Terminal, if you will. Discussion of abandoned timelines and a complete lack of moral grounding really deepened my appreciation for the game (and was yet another reminder that i should play it… sensing a theme here).

If you’re curious, much of what was discussed is available in essay form on their website here.

Troy

I went into PAX Aus this year expecting very little from Nintendo. That might sound like snark, but with the Switch coming out in March, and only Zelda really being the big release we know of… there’s not much they could have shown anyway.

There was still a strong presence there from Nintendo, with the big screen playing Mario Kart and Smash Bros., the demo tables showing off some 3DS games that came out recently, and the Wii U demo kiosks, also playing recent releases. Off the top of my head, I saw Yo-kai Watch 2, Paper Mario Color Splash, and some classic Wii U titles, like Super Mario 3D World. There was even a Mario and Luigi wondering around the area (I didn’t get a photo, sorry!)

The cool attraction this year was the giant Pokeball to take photos with, and a prop Master Sword, specifically the aged, rusted one from Breath of the Wild. Sadly, Breath of the Wild wasn’t there to play, so I’ll just have to wait until next year when it comes out…

On top of the booth, there were a ton of retro artifacts in the retro gaming area, including some stuff I had never even seen or heard of before! Some really cool stuff in there, including a Famicom disc system, the big SNES Earthbound box with the guide book, and the Panasonic Q GameCube/DVD system! I took a bunch of photos of everything I could find, so check them out!

Nintendo also hosted a Pokemon panel on the Sunday, which us Vooks people got the front of the line for. There was a fair bit of discussion about not just Sun and Moon, but also Pokemon GO. And just like the Animal Crossing presentation back at the first PAX, we had an exclusive video from the developers of Pokemon Sun and Moon (which I believe is now on YouTube…) At the end there was some trivia, with plushies and the special edition Sun and Moon 3DS XL given away as prizes.

I also managed to get some Animal Crossing amiibo card trades in with the Nintendo staff at the booth, so next time you’re at PAX and need some cards, be sure to ask around! I have to wait another year before I can trade with them again, hopefully I get a full collection one day…

Delilah

This was my third PAX, and this year felt a little off for the whole event. Panels were in theatres 3x too small, The showfloor was dominated with VR and kleenex wipes, and the indie sectìon, while much larger had a lot of repeats throughout.

Nintendo didn’t have a lot to show off that they haven’t already at EB Expo which you can see previous coverage for, but I did get to play Shantae: Half-Genie Hero after backing it 3 years ago. I love the Shantae games, and the small demo they had playable felt exactly how I wanted it to and I can’t wait for this game to finally release early next year. Non-videogame related after 20 years, I finally learnt how to play the Pokemon TCG with Josh, but I can’t really remember who won….

There was two main Nintendo Panels, both on the Sunday, in the smallest theatre, and right after eachother. We lined up for an hour before to get front row seats, and the panel 15minutes from commencement was completely full. First up was Pokemon panel that featured a weird variety of people who only played Pokemon Go, and veterans to the video games. The main highlight was seeing an exclusive video Q&A for Sun & Moon recorded by the game’s directors.

Right after was the Zelda panel hosted by Zelda Universe and the line was absolutely massive. We barely got a seat (well, I had to stand up at the back) but thankfully could still enjoy and see the panel, but at least 100 people were rejected entry to a very popular panel. The Zelda Universe crew went through each mainline game release chronologically spicing in a Trivia question after each title. This was one of the better panels I attended during the weekend and not just because they bashed Twilight Princess a lot.

While I was dead on the final hours of Sunday and both wanted to crawl into bed and never leave it was good to finally meet the team for the first time, and ran into the Zelda Universe crew. I feel next year’s going to be a lot more hectic as the Switch will have been out for 6 months and probably a lot more to cover. See you next year Melbourne.

Daniel V

The rest of the team have covered most of the expo really well but I wanted to talk about the Australian History: Bad Boys & Brawlers – The NES Downunder panel. It had a weird name but it was really worth attending for any Nintendo fan.

The panel went over the history of the NES in Australia, sounds weird right? Surely Nintendo just released it and that was it? Well yes but there was also a lot of behind the scenes drama, especially with the local development scene. We learned that the team at Beam Software at the time wanted to get into NES development but becasue Nintendo didn’t allow anyone from the west to develop for the console they instead reverse engineered the console and made their own developer kits which they then started to sell to other developers and publishers.

Until Nintendo shut them down. Doesn’t that sound familiar.

That wasn’t the end of it though, while Beam weren’t allowed to sell their dev-kits anymore they were given the first licence outside of Japan to publish and develop games for the system and it all took off from there.

The second half of the panel was a little more personal especially for Dr Andrew Davie, he was the sole developer on Bad Street Brawler also known as one of the worst games on the NES. However he wanted to set the record straight, it wasn’t his fault. The game was originally designed for the Commodore and the huge sprites that system allowed didn’t translate to the NES at all, it was also rush and he spent days sleeping under his desk to get it developed.

Oh and it was entirely only playable with the Power Glove, gross.

Davie wanted to use the panel as a way to clear to his conscience and tell his story, he’s been sitting on this for 30 years and it had weighed heavily on him. He put the last remaining sealed game, his copy up for auction as a way to finally put this to rest – all of the profits going to charity of course.

The game went for over $150 to a lucky fan.

PAX might be full of VR and internet celebrities making Harambe jokes but its panels like this, while not having wide appeal were really interesting and heartfelt. The Australian game development scene has been through its ups and downs, but it’s interesting to here how it all started (at least re: Nintendo) and just how much of a pain Nintendo way back when. We hope they’re a little better to work with now.