Clark was excellent for the drive. He played some DS, he watched some movies. He really likes the novelty of being able to watch stuff in the car. Here he is watching Bolt.

Bolt was the beginning of the trip. He also watched about half of the first Pokemon movie (the sweet one with Mewtwo) and four episodes of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. I let him choose the DVDs for the trip... in addition to those mentioned he selected one disk of TaleSpin episodes and the Final Fantasy Advent Children movie, neither of which he has ever seen. We also brought one of the Bach-based Baby Einstein disks to engage super calm down at night, and we definitely needed it. Clark has been wired.

We blew into Columbus around 9pm... slight confusion at the con pay-per-day parking lot, as the gates were simply raised and the ticket machines were not giving out tickets. You just drove on in. So we did.

That was Wednesday night; Thursday morning Clark and I walked out to try to figure out what we should do, and we had a pretty hilarious conversation with the ticket booth operator. He told me what I had to do, and I agreed, but I kept trying to point out a flaw in his plan... but I was not explaining myself very well so he just kept repeating the pay scheme. He told me I had to pay for yesterday and then I could get a ticket to park there for the rest of our stay. I wanted to know how he knew I had only arrived yesterday. I could have parked there six months ago and only now told him about it. I don't think he cared about my innate curiosity.

There's Clark in full convention gear this morning. In past years we've always enjoyed a room with a single king-size bed, but by the time we got in, the only kings available were on smoking floors. Which probably shouldn't even exist in the year 2009, but seeing as how those floors are already forever ruined by smoke, I suppose there's no need to force hotels to change.

This year we are joined by Mike, and Chris and two of his kids, Alex and Megan. Alex and I have already traded a couple pokemon back and forth. He has a pair of Arceus which of course still has no legal means of procurement here in the US. Nefarious schemes obviously presaged this.

Mike is playing Chu-lip in his spare time, by the way. How about that!

Here we are on the vendor hall, which is reason numero uno why I come here. We're all considering trying out Gen Con Indy next year instead of Origins. I need to do some research on that. We all have serious pros and cons on the issue.

At the Bandai booth, Clark got to play the Naruto card hunt guessing game, where you flip over facedown cards and the more Narutos you find, the more free boosters you score. Clark aced this one last year, finding like six without ever failing out by selecting a "bad" card. This year he was not naturally lucky and the booth lady kept jumping him to Naruto cards just so he could win. Very nice. Pays to be four and cute.

Not that Clark looks happy in the photo, but he definitely was.

And there's Chewbacca. I already have his autograph from somewhere and I'll be damned if I can figure out when I got it.

There's the Twilight Creations zombie booth again! The zombie was holding a box mockup of their new Deadlands board game, which they were not demoing (it's not ready for prime time). But I am psyched to hear more about it.

We had lunch at North Market, as always. That means aloo mutter for me.

Incidentally, a large portion of the Columbus Convention Center and adjoining Hyatt (where we're staying) is under construction. So it would be kind of a bummer to have our last Origins be this messed-up one, should we switch to Gen Con. There is a temporary walkway here that is truly tested by the hordes of gamers. It is the size of an airport gantry, and it sounds like the Death of Mufasa when you walk through it.

I've made the Death of Mufasa joke three times now, counting this one.

Here's Mike doing a very familiar activity: buying Magic cards for a quarter each. I think I take this picture every year. I should make a collage.

And all told, I doubt he's spent over five bucks.

When Rhonda took Clark up for a nap, I got in some good demos. Here is Chris and Alex at a new minis game that I have already forgotten. I'm all for it in concept: plastic minis with simplified rules and Clix-style icon-heavy bases. But I just don't need another unplayed miniatures game.

We also demoed:

• Battle Spirits TCG, which we thought was pretty good. Chris and I thought it was pretty good anyway. I don't think Mike was much impressed. Everybody got a free starter. The game is out in stores this August.
• Ninja vs Ninja board game. I didn't care for it, but that was largely due to a strange rule that we later figured out.
• Go Duck Go... I think that's the name. It uses rubber ducks in a manner sort of like the Crimson Skies air combat game. You have ducks and you play cards with pre-determined paths to move them to the goal. The cool thing is that there are hundreds of special sculpted ducks (cowboy duck, bat-duck, hockey duck, vampire duck, etc) and you get six random ducks in the box. But if you buy the game at the con, they will let you open the box and swap ducks with their stock to build exactly the six ducks you want. The not-as-cool thing is that the game costs $32, and that's the convention sale price. Chris and I have been arguing about who is going to buy it.
• Montego Bay, which is a very cool board game that we all liked... but sells for $60. Here's a great picture:

That picture should be in all the marketing materials for Montego Bay. "It's family fun in a dockside tropical paradise! Suitable for gamers from 8 to 88!"

You have guys you move around the table, loading barrels of an undisclosed substance (cocao? eels? bodily remains?) onto boats for points. It's a lot more fun than it sounds, and it's one of those games where everybody's turn is quick and involving... so nobody gets bored while waiting for their turn to come around again.

As far as things we actually bought... Mike picked up Backseat Drawing, which is one of those party games I always hate. He also got Living Labyrinth, which seems okay. Chris bought Rorschach, which is kind of an Apples to Apples clone. There was something else, but I forget what it was.

Mike also bought a cheap box of Doomtown, the Reaping of Souls expansion. He tore through it, keeping perhaps a third of the cards. Out of his leavings, I grabbed some (probably for no reason other than my irrational need to not throw things away) and Megan took the rest. She actually came close to building a couple of complete poker decks out of Mike's throwaways, which I thought was a pretty clever idea.

I bought Donkey Kong Jenga. I have never played Jenga in my life, but the Donkey Kong angle was enough to sell me. We opened it up back at the hotel room and I learned that Jenga is about taking the tower apart, not building it, which I did not know. The DK bit involves getting little Marios (Jumpmen!) to the top before the tower falls, which is cute. This is basically a collector's item that is a neat building block set for Clark.

What was extra interesting about DK Jenga is that the store was also giving away a complete game with purchase. The free game in question was stacked to the ceiling, so they were clearly very eager to move this product out of the warehouse. The game is a "screaming hoverboard racing" board game called Vapor's Gambit.

We tried it, and it is not completely terrible. It's a simple racing game where you skate around a track and try to be the first to three laps, amid ramps and attacks and zip strips and banging into each other. I would never ever have bought it, but for free it's pretty good.

What a terrible title. Vapor's Gambit. Oy.

Back at the hotel room, we had some great Smash Brawl matches, some Bonsai Barbering, and even a little Super Mario Bros goin' on. Then Rhonda and Clark went to bed so the rest of us escaped back to the gaming halls to play Living Labyrinth, Rorschach, Monty Python Fluxx, and my own Fatal Frame.

Tomorrow will be more of the same brand of awesome. We'd like to demo Twilight Creations' Martians game, and Looney Labs' Are You The Traitor. There's some t-shirts I may buy (a Red Dwarf one for sure; maybe a Portal shirt.) There is a kids craft room that Clark enjoys. We'll do the Naruto free booster game again. And we may get Alex to do a Pokemon DS battle tournament, since he has a bunch of level 100s.

Being mainly a vendor fan, I feel the lack of big name companies. I noticed this bullet point on an official Origins ad board:

For me, that's kind of the problem. Not that I'm against the small press, just that the big names used to always bring the pomp and circumstance that made Origins seem more like an Event (capital E) and less like a garage sale.

And I'm not sure the number of demos available could count in the hundreds. At the minimum, that's 200 games, and I don't think that's the case. For purchase, absolutely, but available for pro demos?