Fun at Youmacon

[Kevin]

Fun at Youmacon

Holy Toemoley! I’ve been so busy that I didn’t realize that I haven’t posted a Murmur in TWO WEEKS! Sorry about that.

Last weekend was Youmacon a fast growing, popular Anime/Game convention (mostly “anime”) here in the Detroit area. Although the "official" attendance numbers were not yet tallied by Sunday, we heard unofficial estimates at around 1800 people. Very impressive for a second year convention. I can tell you the place was packed and the energy was electric.

We found the event to be well organized, friendly and fun. Our thanks to Morgan, Dennis, the Shank Girl, and the Door Guard (gosh, I hate that I don't remember this fella's name, because we had fun talking and goofing around all weekend) for making it all worthwhile. I took something like a hundred pictures and had Wayne Smith post a handful on line for your viewing enjoyment.

I was pleased and surprised at how many people were familiar with Palladium and our games. Lonnie Langston, one of the stalwart Megaversal Ambassadors ran 4-5 game events before heading back home to Indiana with Dennis Hughes. It was great seeing Lonnie and Dennis again, and we enjoyed a Friday evening of chatting and silliness with a local fan-pal, Todd.

We sold a few books, a few anime related toys from my personal collection and enjoyed meeting folks at the convention like Michele, Sabrina, Todd, Ben R., Chris, Juliette, Jonathan, Joe, Richard, Mark Dudley, and a host of other folks.

A stupid fan-boy moment for me was meeting RICK HUNTER! Okay, yes, I know Rick Hunter isn’t a real person, but I did get to meet Tony Oliver, “the voice” of Rick Hunter and had him sign my Art of Robotech One book. Tony is a very warm and genuine person who cares about his fans, so we had a nice time chatting on and off a couple of panel talks.

Everybody we spoke to was excited about Palladium doing a new series of Robotech RPG books, which is only working to get us all more excited about this license.

As for the Robotech license, all seems to be going well. In fact, its all a matter of fine tuning the licensing agreement and signing it before it’s all a done deal. I sent out the changes and suggestions we’d like to see in the contract a week or two ago, the royalty guarantee money is waiting in the bank, and I’m anxious to finalize the deal and jump into the development of the new RPG series. We are shooting for a March, 2007, release date for the re-launch of the Robotech RPG series, probably starting with Robotech: Shadow Chronicles and working backwards.

Thanks for listening to my muttering and murmurings.

Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, Writer, Game Designer and Proto-Culture Addict!