Over the weekend I attended the first annual Penny Arcade Expo South held in San Antonio Texas. Commonly called PAX South. Just like with the other PAX conventions tickets very quickly became hard to find. Leaving Sunday as the only day you could buy a badge for leading up to the convention. PAX South set a record for attendance for the first year of a PAX convention. This lead to the show floor feeling fairly congested most of the time. The good news is that a major expansion to the San Antonio Convention Center is currently underway which will greatly increase the number of people who will be able to attend the convention next year. As well as ease to congested feel of the show floor.
For those of you who ever never had the opportunity to attend a PAX the best way to describe it is as a mash up of Gencon and Quakecon’s opening gaming areas. You could play everything from Settlers of Catan, League of Legends, Magic the Gathering to Smash Brothers. You could even play some classic pinball machines. The show floor was filled with massive E3/SDCC style booths and vendors. Selling a wide variety of merchandise. Such as vintage video games, t-shirts, Pop figures and Magic singles. One booth was selling DBZ cards. But sold out before I made my way to them. Dang was hoping to try my luck at pulling a Sphere.
A number of companies were showing off and demoing new upcoing games. Nintendo had the Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D remake playable. As a well as the latest Monster Hunter game. Mayfair Games had a large area were you could learn to play many of their new board games. Like Nuns on the Run. Outside of the show floor the convention offered many panels by various companies and individuals. Gearbox, Riot Games and Jeff Grestman being some of the noteable ones.
I very much enjoyed the first PAX South and look forward to attending a bigger and better one next year.
