July 24, 2006

  • - San Diego Comic-Con 2006 Sunday re-cap -

    Compared to the past three days, the shuttle bus ride to the convention center was simply peaceful and nice. It's just the sign that Sunday should be a nice relaxing day.

    The first thing I did was go to the Trailer park panel where they showed some of the trailers released at the comic-con, as well as some new ones. The only one that really stood out to me was the trailer for "Ghost Rider;" which I wasn't able to see on Saturday. Unfortunately, they did not show the new Spider-Man 3 footage shown the past day.

    I went back into the exhibit hall and realized that I don't really have much to do anymore. I did end up buying two more things, one was planned, and the other was a little more spontaneous. The amount of people was probably comparable to how it was on Thursday, so it's at least not as crowded as Saturday was. What surprised me the most was that there were hardly any cosplayers on the floor, besides the professional models. I'm guessing the cosplayers were scared off by the increase amount of people that showed up the past Friday - Saturday, which probably made it hard for them to walk around, or even allow photo ops.

    By Sunday, my body was really feeling the exhaustion from only getting 4 hours each day, for the past five days. If I closed my eyes, I would probably just fall asleep right there and then, despite the noise all around me.

    To keep me awake, I decided to go play some of the video games on the floor. I opted for Capcom Classic Collections 2; featuring Super Street Fighter II Turbo, for the PlayStation2. When it was my turn to challenge the current winner, the guy who lost told me that the directional pad wasn't working properly, which prevents proper control of the special moves. Knowing that, I decided to use Blanka and with only the default attack moves at my disposal. Playing against a ton of Ryu / Ken players with the fireballs and shoryuken uppercuts, I figured I wasn't going to do too well. I won 10 matches straight! Not only that, I completely smoked some players and even got perfects several times (these were even people who knew how to play). I was quite happy with myself, because I haven't played a Street Fighter game against a stranger for probably almost two years now. It was a thrill for me, and I ended up spontaneously buying a limited edition Street Fighter graphic novel Series 1 collection as a result, and even got it signed by the creators from UDON.

    I went to the Masquerade show video playback room, but they seemed to have misplaced the DVD of it. I decided I wasn't going to wait for them to come back with the real deal, but before I left, I overheard a conversation about how long the contract for comic-con is with San Diego. Apparently, the contract ends in 2009, and it was revealed that other cities are anxious to swoop in and take comic-con for themselves (with Los Angeles mentioned as one really interested). The staff said that there's a much better chance that comic-con will remain in San Diego.

    I went back down to the exhibit hall, met up with my friend and his family. We had a diversion to see some Medieval sword fighting demonstration outside the mezzanine section, but for the rest of the day, we just walked around the dealer's room again. We noticed that there are booths offering additional discounts and offers because it is the last day. Unfortunately, we already bought most of what we really needed by that point. At about a half hour before Comic-Con 2006 ends, we left the convention center after getting some Starbucks Coffee (seems they have a slightly different Frappuccino menu there), and went our separate ways. I went home 110 miles north, they have plans to go to Sea World the next day.

    There we go, another Comic-Con gone by for me. I admit to repeat what I said in an earlier post, I thought this year's wasn't on par to last year's experience (I would honestly say at the least the past three years actually). I still enjoyed this year quite a lot of course, there were just several disappointments that brought the experience down several notches. All in all, I already bought my registration for Comic-Con 2007; July 26-29, so I'll be looking forward to that.