The fight for autumn: MGC Experience

The first new convention: MGC Experience

Written on 09/19/2011 by Patrick Bregman

The MGC Experience is going to be the first convention after Abunai! in the Netherlands. This year is the first time that it's being organized, so what can we expect of it, and is it worth your time and money? Let's find that out!

Normally, price is not really something I worry about too much, since I see conventions as a place to meet friends and just a day (or weekend) out of my normal life. That keeps both my normal life and the conventions interesting. But ofcourse money is still not endless, so it certainly helps when the convention is cheap. And to be honest, you can't go much cheaper than the MGC Experience. A ticket is only €6,95 for the whole day!

A point which is very important to me is how crowded it's gonna be. Looking back at Tsunacon this year, it was way too crowded with more than 1000 visitors. The MGC Experience has set a limit at 350 visitors, but they do have a smaller location than Tsunacon. I think it will be noticable that there are a lot of people, but I don't really think it'll be super crowded. That means there should be plenty of room to walk around everywhere and just do what you want to do.

After those points that don't have anything to do with what you can actually do there, let's take a look at the events! They've got quite a lot planned out, including the "standard" things like a cosplay show, a game zone (normally a room), Kinjin's Evil games, karaoke, a dealer room, a photo shoot, a disco, a para para workshop and more. More interesting are the things that you don't see on every convention.

The most interesting event in my opinion is the Mahjong workshop, I really enjoyed the anime Saki (except the sudden end...) so I would really love to learn to play this game. Preferably the Japanese style as seen in the anime Saki, but even when it's another version it would still be a nice way to spend some time there and do something fun.

Besides the standard console games there will also be an area filled with active games, like DDR and several Wii and XBox Kinect games. I already know that I fail at DDR, but Kinect is still something I would like to try myself. I mean, the demo at E3 this year was so awesome and worked pretty well, so I wonder how it works in real life.

If, after visiting all the above events, you have time to spare or want to go somewhere to rest for a bit, there's always the MangaKissa where you can sit down and read a nice manga or two.

Overall, this convention is highly recommended. It's cheap, it's in Utrecht (well reachable by public transport) and there's enough to do to keep you entertained for the whole day! What more could you wish for? I intended to put at least one "negative" point here, but I can't really think of something. The only thing I can come up with is that the start and end time is not easily found on the website, but I'm sure it is there somewhere.

So, what do you think? Are you going to visit this convention?

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