AVCon, Adelaide’s famous fan run convention for games and anime, took the big step of moving from university campus to the Adelaide Convention Centre. This was a bold change for a non for profit, fan run convention with lots of people not convinced it would work. However it has to be said it worked extremely well and the increase in attendees and sponsorship buy television station channel TEN is testimony to that.

Where: Adelaide Convention Centre
When: 24th to 26th of July 2009
Website: AVCon '09 Website AVcon '10 Website
AVCon Photos

The Convention centre is located in a very convenient location close to the centre of the city and was large enough to have everything located in doors with no having to walk outside to get to other buildings. The one building held most of the attractions while the other, with an enclosed walkway had the screenings and main theater. The main theater for the contest was very large, reportedly holding close to 1000 people. The stage was a good size and there still seemed to be plenty of room.

Saturday was the Madman National Cosplay Championship round for Adelaide and after a very late start of more then 40 minutes (mainly due to the competitors being taken away by a newspaper for photos) things got underway. There were five entrants and it was won by Janita dressed in as a Zaku Gundam Girl. This was followed by a quick cosplay walk where cosplayers quickly walked on stage and posed for photos but there was no actual contest for them.

 

Sunday had the regular cosplay contest with plenty of prizes to be given out with first, second and third for Best Male, Best Female, Best Group, Best Skit, Best Newcomer and Best Technical. The contest was limited to 50 groups which is probably a good size for the time and attention span of people.

 

With a theme of Heroes vs. Villains other events/activities that happened at AVCon included Cosplay Chess, a Maid Café, Sumo Suit wrestling, an Indie Games Room, Video Game Contests, various AMV shows and contests, Gameshow and Quiz Night. There was also a huge range of panels to interest everyone on subjects such as Going to Japan, Lolita, Video Game Development, Asian Ball Joint Dolls and Cosplay panel.

It should also be mentioned that AVCon also raised over $2000 for the Games4Kids charity (http://www.games4kids.org.au/) through such activities as the Maid Café, Auction and the shaving of Vice-Convener Mitchell’s head (which in itself raised over $800). They should all be applauded for a fantastic effort!

In the end it was a wonderful event and very well run. It may have lost a little of that old AVCon feel but that is always going to happen and they are making a new AVCon feel. With a total of 4064 attendees, and a lot of them being first AVCon goers, things can only get better. With talk of things growing again next year and more events planned it can only be up for AVCon!