MAGfest 2026
Friday January 9, 2026
MAGfest is finally here. There is a chance that you are reading this post because of a sticker I left on an arcade machine. I am writing this on my phone, so please excuse typos and general laziness. I will update this throughout the weekend and add relevant links when I’m not stuck with my phone.
Thursday
My girlfriend and I dressed up as Tina and Bass from Dead or Alive, specifically going for their DOA3 outfits. I looked ridiculous, and she looked beautiful, which is the ideal couple cosplay combination. The only person who recognized that we were Tina and Bass was Alex Ahad, which was cool because he is one of my favorite artists. I bought a book of sketches along with a sticker I’ll be putting on my garage fridge. He got took a picture of our costumes, and I nervously handed him maerk.xyz stickers and told him that his art is a huge inspiration.
We got a sweet little print of cockatoos drinking coffee from Sabtastic. I told her we both loved her “Pizza for ’too” post on Newgrounds, and she gave us some free stickers. She asked if I was active on Newgrounds, but I spazzed and said “not really.”
I played a lot of Third Strike and a lot of shmups. No Progear 1cc yet, but I think I can do it by the end of the weekend. There are a lot of other cool shmups here that I don’t usually have the chance to play, like Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou and Mushimehimisama Futari.
Friday should be more of the same, but I’ll see if there are any tournaments or panels I want to attend. Anyone hoping to win the Kirby Samurai tournament will be getting fucking destroyed by my girlfriend.
Friday
I ended up blowing off all the panels and tournaments I had added to the schedule. Kirby Samurai was waitlisted, so the whole day really was more of the same. We ate chicken tenders, though.
I was Bass again, but my girlfriend was DOA 4 Tina. Only one guy recognized us and got our picture this time. I had my eyes peeled for other Dead or Alive cosplayers, but we didn’t run into one until we were waiting for our Uber home. We chased this Kasumi down and asked for a picture like complete nerds.
I realized we mostly have been playing the games we have at home. I think my girlfriend likes Progear, even if she denies it. Saturday’s mission is to add some variety.
Saturday
We dressed as Leon and Ashley from (the original) Resident Evil 4. The Ashley outfit looked great, but my Leon outfit was just alright. I really should’ve just bought a wig instead of trying to straighten out my fluffy hair. We went to the big Resident Evil cosplay photoshoot, but we only got in the big “RE4” group shot before leaving. Maybe we’re lame, but there were plenty of Leon and Ashleys there for people to pose with. We briefly played Mario Kart Double Dash on a big LAN set up, but then it was back to the arcade for us.
As the night went on, I realized I needed to rapidly dump stickers and the three zines I had on hand. I didn’t get the Progear 1cc, but I did make it to the final level. I’ll get ’em next year.
I think my comments section is broken, but if you were at MAGfest, found a sticker, or found a zine, say hi via email.