MAGfest Day 3
MAGfest Day 2
MAGfest Day 1 2024
MAGfest 2024 Welcomed Snow
MAGfest, or Music and Gaming Festival began in 2002. This year, it was held January 18-21 with Wednesday, 17 as Day 0. Day 0 is an unofficial first day where many people dress up or just hangout, arriving at the hotel and convention early. This year, MAGfest sold out a week before the event. Even so, the badge pickup line on Thursday morning was fast, taking 20-30 minutes a person.
Early Friday morning through afternoon welcomed enough sustainable snow and wind for people to run outside and get rarer environmental photo shoots. The snow mixed with the ferris wheel, beach, harbor, trees, and other elements were perfect for many costume types, both day and night.
A unique thing about MAGfest is that it’s 24 hours, including the arcade, which hosts hammocks for napping. Inside the arcade are DJs, classic and modern games, and basically anything you can think of. There are also gaming tournaments like Smash Bros. There are also concerts that are or nearly 24/7. Protomen put on a great show and had special musical guests Cybertronic who performed the first time there last year. Protomen started off creating concept albums based on Mega Man games and Cybertronic dress up in costumes based on Transformers, so the guest appearance was fitting. Other musical guests included Creep-P, Janus Rose, Zaku, Cowabunga Pizza Time, Suzubrah, Flow Mein, Sammus, Bit Brigade, and more. There were visualists including Datacats, JMR, Nobel Yoo, and Claire Kwong. These included videos, interactive performances, and other installations.
In the hallways of the convention center you can find jam spaces with various instruments setup. Attendees are welcome to pick them up and play for an allotted amount of time, which can create interesting scenarios. Also in the hallways are random photo shoot spaces, such as that of Felix Wong, who provides free photos and selfies using his professional equipment. At the bottom of the convention center in the corner by registration is the infamous Danny Devito shrine where anything from food to video games to trading cards is left in his name.