Tag Archives: gaming

Dragon Con 2025 Photos, Part 5: The Cosplay Parade, Video Game Division

September 7, 2025 By in Conventions & Events, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Fallout Technicians Costuming Group holding their banner. Some have Vault jumpsuits, at least two are New Vegas dancers.

Fallout fans welcome you to pre-Wasteland Atlanta!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

In 2019 my wife Anne and I attended our very first Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia, one of the longest-running science fiction conventions in America. We once again made the eight-hour drive from Indianapolis and returned for our fourth nonconsecutive Labor Day weekend at that amazing colossal southern spectacle. We can’t conscientiously afford to do D*C every year, but we’ll see how long we can keep up an every-other year schedule before we’re too old or overwhelmed to handle it…

Our belated coverage of Atlanta’s annual Dragon Con Cosplay Parade continues! We amateur enthusiasts took way too many photos that took me too long to sort in between juggling other life aspects (such as a family reunion this weekend). If you or someone you know was in the parade and you’d love to see them, pretty-please let us know! We’ll be happy to search our files and show ’em if we caught ’em. No guarantees, but we’ll oblige if we can. Also, please let me know if any characters have been misidentified. As we get older the number of pop-culture universes keeps multiplying and we can only contain so many of ’em in active memory at once.

Next batch up: lots of video game characters, just because. Enjoy!

Continue reading →

Yes, There’s a Scene During the “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” End Credits

April 16, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The four main cast members in an arena, gazing upon the surrounding audience and awaiting potential doom.

The film begs a variation on Gene Siskel’s old rule of thumb: is this film more entertaining than, say, watching the same four actors at a table playing a D&D session?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, served for years as our neighborhood’s Dungeon Master and owned all the Advanced D&D hardcover manuals published through 1986, by which time all my friends had moved far away, found other pursuits, or quit me specifically. Our group breakup was slow in coming, and the final session ended acrimoniously through no small fault of my own. Eventually my subscriptions to Dragon and Dungeon Adventures magazines expired, and I stopped keep track of updates and new products in the world of TSR’s classic tabletop RPG, unless you count the handful of time my wife and I attended Gen Con and were surrounded by the company’s products. One silver lining: my departure left me with no reason to see the misbegotten 2000 film that took its name in vain.

My attention wandered so far away from the game that years passed before I was aware TSR had been acquired by Wizards of the Coast, the Magic: the Gathering masterminds. Still more years passed before I learned they in turn had been gobbled up by Hasbro, thus moving D&D under the same corporate umbrella as G.I. Joe, the Transformers, and, arguably the source of their company’s best film to date, Clue. I likewise had virtually no emotional investment when trailers began popping up for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Once it was released and word-of-mouth picked up momentum, then I gave it a chance. I entered the theater, I mentally rolled a d20 saving throw vs. Awfulness, and the imaginary die blessedly came up a 19.

Continue reading →

Old Guy With a PS3, Year 7: You Are Now Leaving Skyrim

January 30, 2022 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Skryim PC!

That time my character had to assassinate the emperor himself by posing as a chef. Well, “had to” might be an overstatement.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, at the beginning of 2016:

As a kid, I frequented video arcades regularly. As a parent, my son and I spent a good decade playing games together on his various systems. When he graduated and moved away to college, he took all his systems with him, leaving me with only my old Nintendo that won’t play cartridges unless you keep the Game Genie firmly inserted, and an Atari Plug-‘n’-Play Controller I got for Christmas a few years ago that interested me for about two weeks. On Black Friday 2014, I decided I wanted back in the 21st century gaming mode and picked up a used PS3.

Naturally I started off a generation behind the rest of the civilized world, but I didn’t care. After fifteen months without, holding a controller felt abnormal and rusty for the first few weeks. Once I got used to it again and figured out how to disable the “Digital Clear Motion Plus” feature on my TV, I could shake the dust off my trigger fingers, choose the games I wanted to play, sprint or meander through them at whatever pace I saw fit, and try some different universes beyond Final Fantasy and our other longtime mainstays…

…and it’s been a minor MCC annual tradition ever since. On average I would play three times per week, maybe two hours per session, and get through four to six games per year, except when I spent thirteen months on Borderlands 2, that other time I spent nine months of 2019 on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel…and, as you can understand, when I ventured to Skyrim for eleven straight months in the Year of our Pandemic 2020. That February I’d entered the Elder Scrolls world for the first time. A month later, the real world fell to pieces.

Continue reading →

Old Guy With a PS3, Year 6: There’s No Pandemic in Skyrim

January 29, 2021 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Skyrim Claudia Christian!

Yep, that’s me in the dragon plate armor I forged myself, hanging out with my favorite blacksmith, voiced by Claudia Christian.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, at the beginning of 2016:

As a kid, I frequented video arcades regularly. As a parent, my son and I spent a good decade playing games together on his various systems. When he graduated and moved away to college, he took all his systems with him, leaving me with only my old Nintendo that won’t play cartridges unless you keep the Game Genie firmly inserted, and an Atari Plug-‘n’-Play Controller I got for Christmas a few years ago that interested me for about two weeks. On Black Friday 2014, I decided I wanted back in the 21st century gaming mode and picked up a used PS3.

Naturally I started off a generation behind the rest of the civilized world, but I didn’t care. After fifteen months without, holding a controller felt abnormal and rusty for the first few weeks. Once I got used to it again and figured out how to disable the “Digital Clear Motion Plus” feature on my TV, I could shake the dust off my trigger fingers, choose the games I wanted to play, sprint or meander through them at whatever pace I saw fit, and try some different universes beyond Final Fantasy and our other longtime mainstays…

…and it’s been a minor MCC annual tradition ever since. In an average year I would play three times per week, maybe two hours per session, and get through four to six games. Except for that time I spent thirteen months on Borderlands 2. Or that other time when when I spent nine months of 2019 on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Perhaps my definition of “average year” is stretching a bit.

And then there was 2020. Without conventions, family gatherings, friendly outings, work-related events, holidays, out-of-state vacations, or restaurants I could enjoy without terror or paranoia, I had a lot more time on my hands for hobbies. Especially this hobby, as it turned out.

Continue reading →

The Horrors We Can Contain

June 1, 2020 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Arkham Horror!

Sometimes systems that look like unmitigated chaos from the outside are easier to navigate once you’re fully on the inside. Or they can consume you whole.

If now is not the time for a tortured metaphor involving a convoluted board game set in a fictional universe created by a flagrant racist, I don’t know when is.

Continue reading →

Old Guy with a PS3: Year 5 Results

January 22, 2020 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Borderlands Handsome Jack!

One day I’ll have to murder Handsome Jack after he turns into an intergalactic madman, but in our shared past he’s just tipped me $22 for saving his life. What a guy.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, at the beginning of 2016:

As a kid, I frequented video arcades regularly. As a parent, my son and I spent a good decade playing games together on his various systems. When he graduated and moved away to college, he took all his systems with him, leaving me with only my old Nintendo that won’t play cartridges unless you keep the Game Genie firmly inserted, and an Atari Plug-‘n’-Play Controller I got for Christmas a few years ago that interested me for about two weeks. On Black Friday 2014, I decided I wanted back in the 21st century gaming mode and picked up a used PS3.

Naturally I started off a generation behind the rest of the civilized world, but I didn’t care. After fifteen months without, holding a controller felt abnormal and rusty for the first few weeks. Once I got used to it again and figured out how to disable the “Digital Clear Motion Plus” feature on my TV, I could shake the dust off my trigger fingers, choose the games I wanted to play, sprint or meander through them at whatever pace I saw fit, and try some different universes beyond Final Fantasy and our other longtime mainstays. The following is a rundown of my first year’s worth of solo PS3 adventures…

…and it’s been a minor MCC annual tradition ever since. Last year’s entry covered a banner year in which I made time during my limited gaming sessions (three times a week at most, 90-120 minutes/sesh) to plow through five different games, winning four of them and infuriated at the other one. In 2019, I managed…um, not many. Very, very not-many. But I have excuses!

Continue reading →

Dragon Con 2019 Photos #5: Still More Cosplay on Parade Continued

September 4, 2019 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Big Brother and Little Sister!

Big Brother and Little Sister from the Bioshock trilogy.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

For years we’ve been telling friends in other states that we’d one day do Atlanta’s Dragon Con, one of the largest conventions in America that isn’t in California or New York. We’ve been in Atlanta, but we hadn’t really done Atlanta. Hence this year’s vacation, in which we’re aiming for a double proficiency in Atlanta tourism and over-the-top Dragon Con goodness…

…such as that Saturday morning parade through downtown Atlanta. In this installment we focus on characters from the world of gaming — those that I could identify or half-identify — plus a mini-gallery of folks from a certain old HBO series.

Same cautions apply as last time: we’re pros, not fans; corrections are very welcome if we misname anyone; we do take requests, but can’t guarantee we photographed every parade participant; enjoy!

Continue reading →

Gen Con 2009: The Lost Photo Parade

August 1, 2019 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Yu-Gi-Oh-ize me!

It is I, Token the White Guy, rarer than a Blue Eyes White Dragon and yet far less in demand!

Every August since 2003 our hometown of Indianapolis has hosted the Wonder of the World that is Gen Con, one of America’s oldest and largest gaming conventions. Whether your gaming mode is RPGs, tabletop games, TCGs, dice games, family board games, or video games, Gen Con has its sights aimed in your direction. Try a new game, pick up supplies for your current campaigns, network with gamers from faraway lands, or just wander the premises and gaze upon the wonders. Attendance over the past two years has topped 60,000 and shows no signs of slowing down. On the occasion of their 50th celebration in 2017, as phenomenal as it was by all accounts, I’m surprised a squad of fire marshals didn’t simply shut the whole city down.

Continue reading →

Kid Dungeon Master’s Neighborhood Reign: Nostalgic Confession Inspired by “Die”

June 14, 2019 By in Comics/Lit, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Die 1!

Teen RPG fan Solomon brings foreboding gameplay setup to Die . Art by Stephanie Hans, words by Kieron Gillen, letters by Clayton Cowles.

1. A Long-expected Party.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my annual comic book reviews included a promise of a future entry inspired by Die, the new Image Comics series by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans that I encapsulated like so:

What if you took the structure of Stephen King’s It, but instead of fighting a murderous super-clown, the kids and adults in their respective eras were reliving the ’80s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon as a horror story, and the Big Bad was Tom Hanks from Mazes and Monsters turned into a truly mystical, manipulative interdimensional overlord?

Painted art by Stephanie Hans is like a high-end gallery showing on every page, while writer Kieron Gillen is engaging in ambitious, phenomenally detailed world-building, worrisome in its six-digit word count and rising. He’s exploring fantasy tropes and toying with them from within, but he’s also designed an entire RPG from the ground up to facilitate his vision, one that’s dredging up so many childhood memories for me — some I would dare label “definitive” in regard to my personal backstory — that I’ll need to devote a separate entry to this series in the near future. I have a lot of baggage to unpack here, and I blame Gillen for wheeling the baggage cart right up next to me.

I had the pleasure of meeting painter Stephanie Hans at this year’s C2E2, where I gave her the elevator-pitch version of this entry and she encouraged me to share it. I got a kick out of meeting Kieron Gillen at C2E2 2013, where we briefly chatted about his Britpop-magic fantasy Phonogram and he asked me which character I identified with most. I honestly hadn’t given much thought to it and was ashamed to have no answer, either prepared or improvised. I’m not used to pros at a con asking me a question beyond “Where are you from?”

(Having had time to think later, my answer came to me, obvious if twofold. As a young adult from 1989 to 2000 I imagined myself Seth Bingo, self-anointed tastemaker and DJ, bringing my boom-box and tapes/CDs to entertain at work after-hours — no requests allowed, sharing my collection with peers who just didn’t get me or my nightly playlist. For my life 2000-present I’ve been closer to Lloyd, engaging with music intellectually via long thinkpieces written only for the audiences in my head, but rarely physically and never socially, thus arguably denying its greatest powers. If only I could’ve written all that on an index card before approaching Gillen’s table. Or narrowed my answer down to just one of those two alienating dudes.)

The farther I’ve read into Die, the more I’ve found myself reflecting on my own experiences with Dungeons and Dragons, an integral part of my preteen years. It was a compelling confluence of entertainment and imagination. It was a big hit with the other kids who joined in. It also ushered in the end of my circle of childhood friends.

Continue reading →

C2E2 2019 Photos, Part 5 of 8: Last Call for Cosplay

March 25, 2019 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Calvin and Hobbes!

Calvin and Hobbes, complete with Watterson-accurate expression.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! My wife Anne and I just got home from the tenth annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), another three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, Funko Pops, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. Each year C2E2 keeps inching ever closer to its goal of becoming the Midwest’s answer to the legendary San Diego Comic Con and other famous conventions in larger, more popular states. We missed the first year, but have attended every year since 2011 as a team…

…and sooner or later we run out of cosplay photos as a team. It’s time to share all the cosplay that’s fit to print and left to post. Same disclaimers apply as in Part Two. Enjoy! Some more!

Continue reading →