We had an amazing time at PAX! Thanks to everyone who came by our booth to play games and say hello to us. We love seeing old friends and making new ones… and SEGA fans are the best!

Here’s some photos and behind the scenes stuff from the show, the GameWorks party, and the great people we met.

SEGA Booth Setup

The SEGA event crew had arrived earlier in the week, and started building our booth. This was the first photo we got (and tweeted) from the show floor.

When I arrived on Thursday morning, a lot had already been done. The booth was up, the kiosks were set up, and it was just last-minute organizing and setting up that needed to be done.

Sonic Generations, Shinobi, Binary Domain, and Renegade Ops were set up in kiosks like this.

The Rise of Nightmares dungeon was mostly set up — this is the view from the inside.

When I was there, the art team was painting the finishing touches on the Rise of Nightmares area.

The finishing touches were also getting put on the Aliens: Colonial Marines theatre.

This is just some of the boxes of stuff we would be giving away over the course of the show. Those white boxes contain the Aliens: Colonial Marines t-shirts. Also in there are fliers for Spiral Knights, Rise of Nightmares, and Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown.

Teri (who hates to have her photo taken) is in charge of all of our booths and does a tremendous job. And as you can see by this photo, her organizational skills are amazing.

PAX!

If you’ve never been to PAX, you probably don’t know how epic the line can get. There is an entire holding room next to the show floor where people wait to be let in. Our booth was directly on the entrance pathway from this room, so we witnessed people streaming by our booth for a solid 5-10 minutes every morning when they opened the doors. (We may have video at some point — I know a few of us took footage.) Anyway, imagine going from that up there to the photo below in about 10 minutes.

Yeah. It’s intense.

Once people were in the show, our booth was busy the whole time. We always had people asking questions, playing games, picking up cool swag, or just wanting to chat. We also had some special guests in our booth — non-SEGA employees helping out.

If you saw our photos from E3, you’ll recognize these folks — the Colonial Marines cosplayers were back, as was Fay from Binary Domain.

We also had other professional cosplayers in our booth, like these zombies for Rise of Nightmares. Microsoft had a great contest going on during PAX — if you spotted these zombies on the show floor you could take a photo of them and tweet it with the #RiseAtPAX hashtag to be entered to win a copy of Rise of Nightmares or a Rise of Nightmares t-shirt. These zombies were at our booth a few times, and lots of people wanted their photos with them.

It wasn’t all professional cosplay though… we saw lots of familiar faces, both costumes and the people in them! Here’s one — Ulala from Space Channel 5 came back this year.

Another familiar face from last year, in the same amazing Valkyria costume.

We also saw a few Bayonettas walking around.

Our Valkyria Chronicles cosplay crew was also back this year!

It’s not all costumes though — some fans came through to show us their art, too.

There was more SEGA stuff going on in other parts of the show, too. Here’s Christine from our Standards team (they are the people that make sure your games work the way they are supposed to) helping out in the Nintendo booth on Shinobi and Sonic Generations.

Toward the end of the show, we found out that Aliens Infestation was picked by Destructoid as one of their 10 PAX Picks. We were totally excited!

GameWorks Party

The party may not have been until Saturday night, but we had been working to get everything set up for weeks prior. On Thursday, once the booth was in good order, the SEGA team all went to GameWorks to assemble all the party credentials and giveaway items. As you can see, this was quite an undertaking and took our pretty large team of people about 4 hours to complete.

The first step was rolling all of the reusable shopping bags. Each person that came to the party got a blue bag with a white SEGA logo on it, and these bags folded up into little pouches. We wanted to attach the pouches to the lanyard, so each person got a neat and efficient bundle of stuff when they arrived at the party. Unfortunately, the bags didn’t arrive packaged in the pouches, so we rolled each and every single one by hand. All 2,000 of them. This is Chris, Matt, and Dan working hard to get the job done.

Each bag was then attached to a Sonic CD lanyard.(Again, 2000 lanyards.) This is Stephen and Christine working on a pile of bags and lanyards. These lanyards were created for PAX and are similar to the ones we created last year, but instead of being black are bright green, and have different Sonic running animations on them. They were incredibly popular, and incredibly awesome.

Our two Davids (we had three Dans and two Davids at the show!) were also busy attaching bags to lanyards.

Then we had to assemble all 2,000 badges. We put a Guest or VIP guest badge in the badge holder, then slipped in a GameWorks game card and a raffle ticket. This got attached to the bag and lanyard. This is our assembly line to get it all done.

After several hours of hard work by everyone, we had 2,000 finished credentials — some of which Christine has here.

Saturday night, we opened our doors and a thousand people (literally!) flooded in for food, drinks, and games.

One of the things we had going on during the party was a raffle… for this epic hoodie. We made these in black with white stitching last year, and they were incredibly popular. We wanted to do them again, but slightly differently. So we made them in blue & tan this year. 20 lucky winners from our party will win a hoodie!

We also had a special guest show up to our party — Wil Wheaton! Julian got a photo with him on his way in.

Thanks again to everyone who came to the party! We had a blast, and we hope you did too.

Destructoid Dance-Off

About 2 weeks before PAX, we were contacted by Jim Sterling from Destructoid. Would we be interested in having Sonic do a dance-off with him during their panel on Sunday? Of course! Unfortunately, Sonic couldn’t make it, so we sent a dancer from the Massive Monkees, a Seattle-based dance crew that was on season 4 of America’s Best Dance Crew.

Who won? Well, I’ll let you judge for yourself in the footage below, but we gave Jim a score of 4.5. Hmm… where have I seen a score like that before?

Thanks to Jim and Destructoid for asking us to participate — we had a blast!

SEGA Crew

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that we love to show you the people who work at SEGA so you can get to know all of us a bit better. We are all passionate about our products and what we do, and we all genuinely enjoy hanging out together.

This is Stephen, who works in our QA department. He was helping us roll up and pass out posters for Rise of Nightmares.

This is Marcella, our Director of Marketing, playing Sonic Generations.

This is Teri (our booth manager), Dan, Chris, Matt, and Jonathan hanging out in the convention center lobby on setup day. Dan, Chris, and Jonathan work in QA, and Matt is an Assistant Producer.

This is Chris and Rey grabbing some grub. Chris works in QA, and Rey runs our mastering lab.

Thanks to everyone who came to see us at PAX! For more of our photos from the weekend, check out our PAX set on Flickr.

Hey PAX, are you ready to party? We got so many compliments about how fun our PAXtravaganza party was last year. Well, we thought so too, so we’re doing it again! We will have 2 hours of free arcade play, a raffle for some special prizes, food, drinks, and fun! This party is open to the public (you don’t need a PAX badge to attend) and is open to all ages. We are letting people in on a first-come, first served basis and once we reach the venue’s capacity, we will be letting more people in as people leave.

Who: Open to the public, all ages allowed!

Where: GameWorks, 1511 7th Avenue, Seattle, WA

When: Saturday, August 27th from 6:00 PM until 12:00 AM

Food & Drink: We will have food and non-alcoholic drinks available for everyone. If you are 21 or older and would like to drink alcohol, you will be carded and given a wristband at the door. Alcohol will be served in the bar area only.

Game Play: You will receive a card good for 2 hours of free game play from the time you first start playing. You can re-load the card if you wish to keep playing after 2 hours. The card works in all arcade machines in GameWorks. We will not have any demos of games from the show floor at GameWorks.

Prizes: We will be raffling off 20 pieces (one per winner) of rare custom-made merchandise. But we’re not going to tell you what it is yet! Trust us though, you want it.

We created a Facebook event page for the event that you can RSVP on. Please note that doing so is optional and does not guarantee your entry to the party!

#SEGAPAX

We’ll be tweeting photos and updates from the show! Use and follow #SEGAPAX for all the tweets about our booth, our games, our party at Gameworks, or anything you find that’s PAX and SEGA related.

We’ll also be updating our Twitter, Facebook, and blog with news, photos, updates, and more throughout the show.

For our Knights of the Clockworks who are busy Spiraling Out to this year’s PAX:

We’re giving away an exclusive in-game costume item — the PRIME BOMBHEAD MASK (caps necessary, due to the capital nature of the mask) for Spiral Knights fans who drop by our SEGA booth!

Just stop by the booth and ask for a flier with a unique code on it — you can then go to http://www.spiralknights.com/pax/ to enter that code. Hope to see you there!

Attention, PAX attendees! Here’s your guide to all the great stuff going on this weekend with Rise of Nightmares

Hunt the Zombies!

Hunt the Zombies before they hunt you! The zombies will wander about for one full hour each day at PAX at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm. Take pictures of the Zombies, and tweet them using the hashtag #RiseatPAX. Then visit the Rise of Nightmares area of the Microsoft booth within the Kinect for Core area to claim your prize. One first place winner will get a Rise of Nightmares game,  and 19 second place winners will get Rise of Nightmares t-shirts.

Pre-Order at PAX, get a Limited Edition Poster

Place your pre-order for Rise of Nightmares at PAX, then come to the reception desk at the SEGA booth. Show us your pre-order confirmation and get a limited edition poster of the Rise of Nightmares box art. They’re awesome, and once they are gone, they are gone…so come get yours!

Play Rise of Nightmares

Whether you play at Microsoft’s booth or at the SEGA booth, make sure you make some time for Rise of Nightmares this PAX. And don’t forget to get a photo in our Rise of Nightmares electric chair!

We’re excited about going back to Seattle for PAX Prime 2011! SEGA will be on the show floor in booth 3625, and will have games, swag, fun, and more! The list of games that will be at our booth includes:

Aliens: Colonial Marines
Binary Domain
Renegade Ops
Rise of Nightmares
Shinobi
Sonic Generations
The House of the Dead: OVERKILL – Extended Cut

We will also have games in Microsoft’s booth, and Nintendo’s booth as well.

In addition to games, we’ll also have some awesome swag items for you to pick up at our booth. Some items are free to take, others require you to do something to get them. What will we have, and what do you have to do? We don’t want to spoil all the surprises for you, so you’ll have to stop by our booth (or read our blog this weekend) to find out!

Attention cosplayers! If you’re wearing a SEGA-related costume, we want your photo! Find me (I’ll be at the reception desk) or Julian (he’ll be near Shinobi) and we’ll snap your photo for the blog.

Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown at PAX!

In case you missed it this morning, we are bringing the arcade version of Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown to play all weekend long during PAX at Gameworks! In a custom Lindbergh arcade station, straight from the Arcades of Japan (it still smells a bit smoky), we have Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown Ver. A on hand. This is the FIRST time to play the new version outside of Japan!

Starting August 26th at 11am, the Seattle Gameworks will have the stations set up, ready to play, with our own Patrick Riley to explain some of the finer points of the game to the uninitiated.

Gameworks Seattle
1511 7th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101

August 26 – 11am – 8pm
August 27 – 11am – 5pm & 6pm – 8pm (during the SEGA PAX Event)*
August 28 – 11am – 8pm
* Gameworks will be closed for one hour while we prepare for the SEGA PAX Event that evening.

PAXtravaganza Party at GameWorks

But that’s not all we have going on at GameWorks! We got so many compliments about how fun our PAXtravaganza party was last year. Well, we thought so too, so we’re doing it again! We will have 2 hours of free arcade play, a raffle for some special prizes, food, drinks, and fun! This party is open to the public (you don’t need a PAX badge to attend) and is open to all ages. We are letting people in on a first-come, first served basis and once we reach the venue’s capacity, we will be letting more people in as people leave.

Who: Open to the public, all ages allowed!

Where: GameWorks, 1511 7th Avenue, Seattle, WA

When: Saturday, August 27th from 6:00 PM until 12:00 AM

Food & Drink: We will have food and non-alcoholic drinks available for everyone. If you are 21 or older and would like to drink alcohol, you will be carded and given a wristband at the door. Alcohol will be served in the bar area only.

Game Play: You will receive a card good for 2 hours of free game play from the time you first start playing. You can re-load the card if you wish to keep playing after 2 hours. The card works in all arcade machines in GameWorks. We will not have any demos of games from the show floor at GameWorks.

Prizes: We will be raffling off 20 pieces (one per winner) of rare custom-made merchandise. But we’re not going to tell you what it is yet! Trust us though, you want it.

We created a Facebook event page for the event that you can RSVP on. Please note that doing so is optional and does not guarantee your entry to the party!

#SEGAPAX

We’ll be tweeting photos and updates from the show! Use and follow #SEGAPAX for all the tweets about our booth, our games, our party at Gameworks, or anything you find that’s PAX and SEGA related.

We’ll also be updating our Twitter, Facebook, and blog with news, photos, updates, and more throughout the show.

We’re excited about going back to Seattle for PAX Prime 2011! SEGA will be on the show floor in booth 3625, and will have games, swag, fun, and more! The list of games that will be at our booth includes:

• Aliens: Colonial Marines
• Binary Domain
• Renegade Ops
• Rise of Nightmares
• Shinobi
• Sonic Generations
• The House of the Dead: OVERKILL – Extended Cut

In addition to games, we’ll also have some awesome swag items for you to pick up. Some items are free to take, others require you to do something to get them. What will we have, and what do you have to do? We don’t want to spoil all the surprises for you, so you’ll have to stop by our booth to find out!

Attention cosplayers! If you’re wearing a SEGA-related costume, we want your photo! Find me (I’ll be at the reception desk) or Julian (he’ll be near Shinobi) and we’ll snap your photo for the blog.

SEGA PAXtravaganza at GameWorks

We got so many compliments about how fun our PAXtravaganza party was last year. Well, we thought so too, so we’re doing it again! We will have 2 hours of free arcade play, a raffle for some special prizes, food, drinks, and fun! This party is open to the public (you don’t need a PAX badge to attend) and is open to all ages. We are letting people in on a first-come, first served basis and once we reach the venue’s capacity, we will be letting more people in as people leave.

Who: Open to the public, all ages allowed!

Where: GameWorks, 1511 7th Avenue, Seattle, WA

When: Saturday, August 27th from 6:00 PM until 12:00 AM

Food & Drink: We will have food and non-alcoholic drinks available for everyone. If you are 21 or older and would like to drink alcohol, you will be carded and given a wristband at the door. Alcohol will be served in the bar area only.

Game Play: You will receive a card good for 2 hours of free game play from the time you first start playing. You can re-load the card if you wish to keep playing after 2 hours. The card works in all arcade machines in GameWorks. We will not have any demos of games from the show floor at GameWorks.

Prizes: We will be raffling off 20 pieces (one per winner) of rare custom-made merchandise. But we’re not going to tell you what it is yet! Trust us though, you want it.

We created a Facebook event page for the event that  you can RSVP on. Please note that doing so is optional and does not guarantee your entry to the party!

#SEGAPAX

We’ll be tweeting photos and updates from the show! Use and follow #SEGAPAX for all the tweets about our booth, our games, our party at Gameworks, or anything you find that’s PAX and SEGA related.

We’ll also be updating our Facebook pages and this blog with news, photos, updates, and more throughout the show.