#KidForLife

(October 12, 2019)

This post is a year late, and thanks to COVID-19 most of us are feeling an extra bit older than we should be. But finally having some ‘me time’ to rummage through my photos, I scrolled to this event and couldn’t help but feel nostalgic and remember how this bucket list item made me feel like a child again.

Admittedly, I’m a kid for life. And nothing else could better summon the man-child me than being immersed and completely surrounded by video games, vinyl toys and anime culture. Welcome to GameStart Asia 2019 – Southeast Asia’s Premier Game Convention. It has always been a lifelong dream of mine to attend an E3 convention or an EVO event. That’s why when SEA Majors 2019 announced that it was going to coincide with GameStart 2019, I knew I had to beg my wife for the family to spend a weekend for the event.

It was so much fun, I can’t even justifiably describe how it felt. Right from the moment we were queueing up, we were surrounded by hoards of local cosplayers (of course I wasn’t be able to take photos of ’em – I didn’t want to push my luck, my lovely wife already agreed to go to the event [love you Mylove] ). And as we went in to the convention hall, we were greeted with a ruckus of video game music and sounds all competing for the attendees’ attention. It’s that familiar feeling that kids who grew up in the 90s get when they enter one of those big video game arcades – it was truly one of the most beautiful feeling in the world.

I whispered to myself… “I’m home.”

It was really a lot to take in, good thing that both our kids were as excited as I was to explore and visit all the booths. We relentlessly weaved through the sea of gamers, otakus and cosplayers, we visited each and every booth just to see what every developer, merchandiser, retailer and toymaker has to offer. They also had a booth where retro consoles were on display; seeing a mint Atari 2600 really brought back memories of me and my brother burning away hours upon hours of gaming on that console.

This was also the first time my kids witnessed an offline FGC event. We watched pools for Street Fighter V, Tekken 7 and Super Smash Bros Ultimate. My eldest, Aki, enjoyed it so much that he made a promise that both of us will practice harder so that next year we’d both join the pools – he’ll compete in Smash Bros and I in Tekken.

How cute, too bad COVID happened. Though a year later, he’s now learning Steve Fox in Tekken 7.

To cap the day off, I saved the best for last – we queued up for about an hour to see a preview of Cyberpunk 2077. Only to find out, once it was our turn, that the preview was strictly for 18yrs old and above. I was so tempted to just leave everyone behind just so I can watch the preview, but I’m not about to  be nerfed with celibacy over that. So instead, we just agreed to call it a day. But on our way out, to my surprise, Armaggeddon was holding a Tekken ‘Arcade Time Attack’ challenge that was open for anyone to join. I actually didn’t want to participate because I didn’t know about it and I wasn’t prepared, but Aki was so enthralled by the idea of seeing his dad compete – that I just had to. After a couple of minutes thinking about how to cheese the AI with big moves, I went about my run (which definitely could’ve been better). Aki was cheering me on the entire time, he even made a video of it on my phone. And after the day was over I received a message from an Armaggeddon staff that my run was actually one of the best times. I won some merch for placing 2nd overall at 2 minutes and 22 seconds using Marduk. Not bad for a dinosaur aye?!

All in all it was a very good experience, a truly satisfying tick in my bucket list. What about you guys, what are the items in your bucket list? Let me know in the comments. Enjoy the gratuitous photo dump below. Cheers.

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Lance Sison, Rockstar for Hire.

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