MEGATech Showcase: Highlights from LANcouver 2013

Post updated with several videos!

What happens when you get over two hundred highly enthusiastic gamers together in one place, along with some fantastic sponsors, vendor booths, and hyped up spectators? You get one epic weekend filled with all sorts of gaming goodness, that’s what.

Yes, LANcouver 2013 has drawn to a close. Perhaps you caught some of the live stream over the course of those three days, but there was certainly a lot for people to see, do and play at the NCIX warehouse in Richmond, BC.

Opening Ceremony

The weekend officially kicked off on Friday afternoon with the opening ceremony. Main organizer Spencer Whitney, along with “Crazy Russian” Ivan from NCIX offer a run-through of what attendees would enjoy over the course of the next three days. Here is the video courtesy of our friends at Futurelooks.

LANcouver 2013 Hardware Panel

When did you first get into PC gaming? Where is the industry now and what are the future directions that gaming may take in the years to come? These questions were among the focus for the 2013 hardware panel at LANcouver, hosted by Stephen Fung from Futurelooks. For the panel, he was joined by Dennis Pang from ASUS, Steve Sung from NVIDIA, Eric Garay from Futurelooks, and “Crazy Russian” Ivan from NCIX.

You’ll want to grab some popcorn and sit back for this one, as the hardware panel clocks in at just under one hour. There are some fantastic discussions in there about how each of the panelists got into gaming in the first place, how PC gaming compares to the experience of gaming on a console, how the second screen experience could change the future of gaming, and so much more.

Canadian Joysticks Street Fighter Tournament

As you might remember from our earlier LANcouver post, we here at MEGATechNews partnered up with Futurelooks to put together a casual gamers lounge at LANcouver. We were joined by Jackson Dang from Canadian Joysticks and he helped us put together a couple of casual console stations where people could play King of Fighters, Marvel vs. Capcom, Third Strike, and several other fighting games for people who couldn’t make it to Las Vegas for Evo.

To help sweeten the interest, we donated some great prizes for a casual Street Fighter IV tournament at the Canadian Joysticks booth. Many casual Street Fighter players can be intimidated by the bigger tournament scene, so this gave them an opportunity to see what it was like to participate in a real Street Fighter tournament. And yes, it was free to enter.

And here are the top three finishers with their prizes — some terrific USB flash drives, including a USB 3.0 drive for the winner — along with Jackson from Canadian Joysticks and his Q mannequin head.

The Epic Challenges

Playing games on a PC or a console is one thing. Playing games in the real world is another thing, especially when you have hundreds of dollars worth of prizes on the line. First up was the InWin Keyboard Toss where participants were challenged to see who could best rage quit their way to glory. Yes, it involved hucking their keyboards as far as they possibly could.

The second challenge as the Asus Republic of Gamers Endurance Challenge. The “wall sit” is actually something that is really hard to do, keeping those knees at a perfect 90-degree angle with no real support. The knees were shaking… and then some added twists made the challenge even more difficult. Participants had to balance lanyards on their outstretched arms, preventing them from resting their hands on their legs for support, and the final three even had to balance a mouse pad on their heads.

Update: Here’s the wall sit video!

Hands-On with NVIDIA SHIELD

We had a very brief opportunity to try NVIDIA SHIELD at E3, but LANcouver gave us the chance to spend a little more time with NVIDIA’s first foray into the mobile gaming market. It is definitely a little bulkier than what you’d get with a Nintendo 3DS or a PS Vita, but there’s so much gaming goodness in here. The controller itself really isn’t any bigger than what you have on the Xbox 360 (or the Dreamcast, if you remember that) and it’s great that you can not only enjoy pure Android on here with real integrated controller support, but you can also partake in that wireless PC streaming for your computer titles too. The SHIELD should start shipping a little later this month for $299.

Will You Be at LANcouver 2014?

I’m missing a lot of other stuff that happened at LANcouver, like all of the major tournaments for games like League of Legends and StarCraft II. There were also several vendor booths there, showing off some of their latest and greatest gear. BenQ had an awesome 1080p projector there, Shaw had their television packages, Asus ROG had a full suite of products, plus Netgear, InWin, and Corsair, among others. If you’re a fan of PC gaming and you’re in the Pacific Northwest area, LANcouver is definitely the spot to be each summer.

So, will we see you at next year’s event?