Armageddon Report '05

It's the end of the world as we know it! But only in Wellington...

Tired apocalyptic references aside, this year's Armageddon Expo was, for want of a better word, explosive. It was chaotic, frenzied - a seething mass of people floating from stall to stall, searching for comics, cards, and that really nice Atari girl (more on her later). Despite the ridiculously early hour on Saturday (8am!?!), people were queuing up well before the doors opened in order to be the first ones through. Armageddon '05 offered something for everyone, encouraging our inner (or outer) geek to give in and spend lots of money. So, always willing to part with their huge salaries earned at NZGamer, our abundantly rich staff members stepped boldly through the doors, braving the temptations within to bring you this report.

Morgan: I didn't step boldly, so much as run through the doors screaming "fire". Well ok, maybe I didn't, but it would have been fun to do so. After I walked in with coke bag in hand, there were two things that really made Armageddon '05 great for me, one was getting a box set of Voltron cheap, the other was having a go of Tekken 5 in the gaming area hosted by GAMERZ magazine. Unfortunately, the Voltron DVDs don't have the option of Japanese voices with sub-titles and the original dub on the discs sounds awful, it's a shame they didn?t make a new English dub for the DVD release of the aging anime. Back to the topic at hand though, I was really impressed by the games section this time around, with more games and booth babes than last year, I also noted that the Sony setups had smaller TVs than the Xbox setups.

Daniel SR: I felt like I was walking into a safari park for the first time. I couldn?t wait. I was going to see them - heaps of them. If there was any place in New Zealand where the glasses clad, unwashed, geek-elite would migrate this weekend, it had to be Armageddon in Wellington. I was on a nerd hunt, and I was determined to bag myself a pale, oily nerd head for my mantle place. I polished my harpoon in anticipation. Early impressions are alarming - the female count is surprisingly high. What's going on here? I look desperately through the crowd for fat, middle-aged men with booth babe sized breasts. This isn?t looking good. I try a different tact. I yell 'Star Trek' as loud as I can, hoping to attract a straggler out of hiding - praying that I wasn't initiating a mating call of some kind. My only reward was a record number of confused stares. I don?t blame them. I was confused too. Between the tiny tots playing trading cards upstairs and the spiky haired preteens lining up for Tekken 5, your stereotypical fat 'comic book guy' was sorely missing from the mix. I was disappointed. My first Armageddon was almost normal.

Emily: With no particular purchase in mind, I felt the need to neither step boldly, nor run into Armageddon - I casually wandered in. And within the first 4 minutes of my walking through the doors, I had twice felt the sting of age restrictions. The first occurrence was as I entered the venue and spotted a table loaded with goodie bags. I made a beeline for it only to be asked, 'Are you under 18?' I shook my head, and realised in a nano second that I had made a mistake. The exciting bag of novelties was for the children, and all I was left with was a map. Shortly after, I made the decision not to let such a small slight to the old folk take my happiness away, so I continued on to take a look at the much anticipated Jade Empire preview. This definitely wasn't my morning. Due to the graphical violence and extreme nature of some aspects of the game, an R16 rating had been placed on it, and therefore wasn't able to be shown at an all ages event. By that stage, a damper had been placed on my mood, and it was left to a good old fashioned wooden sword fight to cheer me up.

Tristan: Did I hear Ems mention a swordfight? Why, could it have been between two strapping young lads who couldn't walk past a bucket holding wooden swords without buying a couple? That was good fun. It's a pity they don't make stronger toy lightsabers - they always seem to break after about half an hour of intense dueling.

I'd say the highlight of the show for me was definitely Star Wars Lego: The Videogame. Such a simple game to play, but it's packed full of fun! Even Jar Jar is less annoying as a Lego character, mainly because he doesn't speak. In fact, no one does - they just manage to communicate each scene through their limited Lego facial expressions. Maybe George Lucas could've learned a thing or two from this. I'll certainly be picking up a copy of this thing as soon as I can. In the meantime, I might just go and search for my old Lego sets...

Oh, and have I mentioned the really sweet Atari girl yet? She showed me and a five-year old how to play the game, talking to both of us in exactly the same way. Brilliant.

And so Armageddon came and went. The NZGamer staff left, dragging behind their DVDs, wooden swords and fond memories and went back into the world of boring jobs and responsibility. Even though Emily missed out on Jade Empire and Tristan got his ass kicked by a girl in a swordfight, we'll all be counting down the days until the Auckland show in October. No matter where your interests lie, Armageddon will definitely have something to appeal to everyone. Be sure to check it out later this year. We'll see you there.