MAGfest 2025: My First MAG - Day 1

Bantz
Bantz Bytez
Photo of a Dr. Pepper and a small personal pizza.

Started the day a little into the morning. Naotox n' Foxcade had their own thing they needed to do, so it was just me n Sylph for a bit. We got some food before we headed out on the main floors.

After we ate, we headed to the console arcade n' played a bit of Sonic R. Beat Syl pretty easily. Sorry, Syl, I'm the better RACIST (I race fast) 😀. Anyway, the most fun we had was playin the X-Man arcade game. Playin' on this thing reminded me of being a kid at Pizza Hut at their arcade while I was waitin' for food. Right next to the X-Man arcade machine was some typewriters. We mess around on 'em for a bit.

Syl wrote something funny to me. Look at the photo now, I realized how blurry it is, so sorry about that. What they typed is: "Dear Diary. Today, the degenerates came to town... IT ROCKED." Soon after I got a message back from my friend Screwy about where they were. I parted ways with Syl n' met up with 'em.

A wide view of The Capital Wheel at National Harbor.

Saw this beautiful view as I was heading to my friend's room.

Met up with my friends, Cheese n' Screwy. Hanged out with 'em in their room for a bit. Met their friend circle. Watched Cheese play a bunch of homebrew n' bootleg NES games on his MiSTer FPGA. This sprite of this game, New Brony, fuckin got me. Fuckin got me howling at that his attack animation is him shootin' a textbox that says "Brohoof."

A sprite of cartoony, smug, large man wearing a brown shirt that says MLP while wearing a fedora.

Once the Marketplace opened, I headed down with Cheese as Screwy headed off to do somethin'. Had fun lookin at the artist alley stuff. Planned out what Imma buy this weekend. Ran back into Syl on the alley on accident. Funnily she was lookin at Tales Of merch as I walked up to her. She said it felt like she summoned me lol. We cruised through the rest of the alley to head to the indie arcade. Syl wanted to show is this game called Kingdom of the Dump. It looked amazing! They had this ill ass fuckin display.

Multiple CRT displays, one with the title "Kingdoms Dump".

Definitely wishlisted this game. Fantastic pixel art and the gameplay looks super interestin'. After, Syl played a bit of Hyper Light Breaker. She played it for so long... so Cheese n' I browsed the rest of the indie arcade. Afterwards, Cheese went to browse the artist alley a bit more on his own. I forgot to take a picture of the Kingdom of the Dump CRT display. So I went back to go get it. Lost Syl in the process lol. So, I cruised the artist alley n' impulsively bought this King charm from Shiny Seabass.

A shiny, reflective acrylic charm of King (from Tekken) flexing and showing of his muscles.

Luckly, Nao got ahold of Syl and we met up at the booth they were workin at. Syl n' I then headed to the bar nearby to meet up with their friends. Had a funny bar experience where a dude in a Sonic onesie asked if we wanted to paint vaginas n' dicks. Also, a nice lady gave us some star-shaped soap. Syl kinda needs it cuz they stinky lol get owned Syl if ur reading this >:)

We went to another bar in the Gaylord to get some food. Spend the time drawin' as Syl was rantin' to their friend, Space Lion, about politics n' how shit Elon n' Trump are (very true). THEN after that, we went back to the previous bar to meet up with some other peeps. They spend a lot of time talkin about RPGs n' such. Had a great time talk about Tales Of n' original characters/ideas with Syl n' this guy called Wayne (Wayneisboss). Pleasant guy!

Various sketches of Gogeta, penguins, a cat, and Kirbys.

The doodles I did as Syl socialized with their friends.

That's pretty much it for my first day. I might've forgot to metion something. A lot happened and I had a lot of fun just explorin' MAGfest with my friends n' meeting new people. Lookin forward to the next day!