My Experience at MadEX 2024

Earlier this month, I attended the first MadEX convention at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, WI. While I was unable to schedule any one-on-one interviews, I did attend several panels and wanted to share some information:

Saturday, September 14^th

So You Want to Be a Pro Cosplayer?

As someone who’s been dabbling in cosplay recently (even if I have no plans to do it as a job), this was a panel I definitely wanted to see. All three panelists brought impressive costumes, and did a great job talking about their work and answering questions from the audience. One panelist (rightmost in the picture) had a particularly interesting story where they had used cosplay as an activity at the VA hospital in their area (the panelist was a veteran themselves) to help returning soldiers re-adjust to civilian life.

Mike McFarland

One Piece Q&A

While this was a panel primarily about One Piece, one of the panelists happened to be Mike McFarland, who had a few small roles in the Pokémon anime. During the Q&A portion (FYI, I generally tried to make sure I was towards the back of the line on these sessions so fans of the series could get their questions in first), I was able to ask him how the Pokémon roles came about, and it basically ended up being a case of being in the right place at the right time.

Ray Chase

X-Men ’97 Showcase

Another panel covering a hot show, this one featured Ray Chase, best known as Professor Cerise in Journeys. As it turns out, there was actually some overlap between his work on the two series, owing in part to Pokémon being a dub and X-Men being a pre-lay. The bulk of the panel was, of course, a discussion of the hit streaming series, and it was great to hear about the VAs experiences with the X-Men franchise and working on the show.

Sunday, September 15^th

Elizabeth Maxwell

How to Become a Hero

This My Hero Academia panel featured Elizabeth Maxwell, who dedicated Masters EX fans will recognize as the voice of Dana. I asked her about the role, and she mentioned how it was interesting to play a character with both an acting and non-acting side. She also implied some things were under NDA, suggesting this might not be her only character in the game, or that Dana might be featured in some future events. Regardless, it was good to hear about the ongoing production of MHA.

Robbie Daymond

LAVA: Loud, Annoying, and Very Annoying

This panel was primarily focused on some outrageously funny improv, but it did also have a Q&A portion, which gave me the opportunity to ask panelist Robbie Daymond about voicing Professor Willow in various Go-related media. He didn’t have a ton to say about it, other than he enjoyed the opportunity. At the very least, I expect it was more fun than when he was forced to hold water in his mouth while the other panelists tried to make him laugh.

Cosplay:

As usual, there was a variety of cosplay outfits on display at the event, as well as a cosplay contest for each day. Compliments to the many great attendees who put in the work to put them together!

Other Thoughts:

-I really enjoyed the panels that I went to this weekend (and I missed a few due to conflicts). There were some absolutely wonderful stories, including a voice actor who did some of their work from the hospital where a family member was a patient during the pandemic.
-The shopping was a bit limited, in part due to the size of the venue, and given that next year’s event is planned for August 2025, I hope they can attract/accommodate more vendors.
-Having some sort of dedicated open gaming area would be nice, even though there was a designated tournament area.

A press pass was provided for this event.

MadEX 2024: Smash Ultimate 1v1 Tournament Winner

Ahmet Kurter

The following is an interview with Ahmet Kurter, winner of the Smash Ultimate 1v1 tournament at MadEX 2024.

Where are you from, and how did you get into competitive Smash?

I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin! I got into competitive smash when Brawl came out because my cousins were obsessed with it, and entered my first tournament in 2014.

You tend to play as a fair number of different characters. Who are some of the more common ones and what do you like about them?

I have used over dozens of characters in my local smash scene. But some of my favorites are Sonic, Aegis (Pyra/Mythra), Joker, Wolf, Dark Pit, and much more! I use most of these characters because I like how they feel to play, or are from my favorite series (Sonic, Persona, and Xenoblade.) Of course, the characters my opponents are playing also tend to influence who I pick in bracket.

What happened in the earlier parts of the tournament?

My bracket run was pretty funny to me, because in winner's semi-finals, I fought Fatalis, who I knew from my local scene, and I knew that would be my hardest matchup for sure. After I won the first set we basically told each other "See you in grands" which was funny, and correct!

Fatalis uses Sheik from the Zelda series. How did that affect your overall strategy?

It affected my strategy a lot, to be honest. I like to rush in a lot, but Sheik is really scary for a lot of different reasons. Her frame data (timing) is so unbelievably fast and has very little cooldown so I often had a lot of trouble figuring out what I could punish. She is also very quick so running from her does not work that well, plus she has a projectile that is very quick and goes very far. Eventually my strategy consisted of me trying to kill Sheik earlier than she could kill me and beat out her hitboxes with bigger and more active moves.

After losing the first game in grand finals [against Fatalis], you switched over to Wolf from the Star Fox games. Why did you choose that?

That was a result of the experience my opponent had-they already fought two of my characters in winners’, specifically Sonic, and Aegis. I won game one there with Sonic, lost game two, then switched to Aegis which allowed me to win game three (with a convincing two-stock). But even after I won that first set it felt very stressful because I felt like I was not hitting him enough, and making a lot of incorrect decisions in advantage.

In the first game of grand finals I started with Aegis, but I lost (he two-stocked me this time), so I decided to try Wolf because I was not feeling comfortable in the matchup. Wolf having a projectile is already a huge change to the pace for the matchup, with Sheik having an incredible projectile in needles I also wanted a strong projectile to bait him into making mistakes when approaching me. Wolf also has very consistent and active hitboxes which allowed me to get combos more consistently than my other characters. The MVP move for the set for me was Wolf's neutral air. I used it a lot to punish his unsafe hits on my shield and to use when he is jumping at me from the ledge, so I could knock him back offstage again to reset the situation.

Technically, your opponent could have switched characters for later matches, but didn't. Did that surprise you?

Nope! Not at all. I have only seen him pick Sheik at locals, so I knew I was only going to fight his Sheik.

What else did you do at MadEX this year?

This was actually my first con, so when I first got there I walked around the whole convention to see everything, met up with my friends, talked with them the whole time, and talked to my GOAT Max Mittleman. For the whole tourney, I rocked Ryuji's codename Skull for my in-game name, so shout-outs to Max Mittleman for indirectly powering me up.

A press pass was provided for this event.

Livestream: Discussing the music of "Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon"

Over labor day weekend, Anne from Pikapi Podcast and I recorded a discussion of the music of Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon. The polished podcast version will come out at a later date, but the raw audio can be enjoyed here: