This weekend, I got the opportunity to hang out with a bunch of friends from Maryland. Nick the Newbie, his fiancee, mutual friends Eric and Mark, and also our JamSpace head, Dom, all piled in a car.

Dom and I have finally worked out Thursday night entertainment. If you head over to our guests page, you'll notice we've added even more new bands that will be performing in JamSpace before we've even finished setting up the concert area! But Dom was up to something else....

We've updated the MAGFest 7 Challenges Page! You can now see all the challenges we'll have in the NES corner this year and get a head start on practicing.

No, you're not seeing things! Head on over to our Guests Page and click the Music tab! Our band list has been announced! We'll be adding even more musicians to this page in the upcoming week so be sure to keep your eyes peeled!

Yo! Long story short, our old website blew up, and took the database with it. Backups didn't restore properly. So, I've taken the liberty of replacing the CMS on our website. On the downside, literally everything off our forums etc is gone. Also, if you had an account on the old site, you'll need to get a new one.

On the upshot, hopefully find the new site much easier to navigate and look at, and we're going to write some cool stuff into the website (for example, rideroom is now integrated into people's profiles instead of a separate spam-filled page). Radio and Chat are already set up, if you'd like to join in on either of those, and you'll also notice that you no longer have trouble with staying logged in (or not being able to log in).

Let us know if you notice anything missing and we'll jump right on it!

A lot of people haven't seen this, and it really embodies a lot of the fun we had at MAGFest last year. Check it out!

PBC, thanks for putting it together.

It's true. We've been holding back a few juicy tidbits of information until the end of the meeting today. But, as usual, we can't keep things like this under wraps for long.

The first and most important item is that room reservations are now available. You can now call the Hilton and get the sexy room rate of $99/night. Don't wait; last year we oversold our room block and they were nice enough to give us the extra rooms but we don't know if they'll do it again.

The Hilton is 703-845-1010, anytime, day or night. Group code MAG. Alternatively, click the link at the top of the page to do it online.

Second, you'll be seeing some new faces at MAGFest this year. The first man probably needs no introduction, since you were probably expecting to see him last year but he couldn't make it to the fest because of the death plague. Please welcome James Rolfe, the Angry Video Game Nerd, back to our guest roster.

Also joining our guest list this year will be a man you are probably familiar more with his work than his name. Howard Drossin, who has quite a bit of game music credit under his belt, will be joining us. Howard has worked on a plethora of games, but most likely people will recognise his work on later Sonic titles such as Sonic 3, Sonic Spinball, and Sonic & Knuckles the most. Working as music director for Sega, he was also around for the series of official Sega Tunes albums, which are among some of the more prominent released video game arrangements on this side of the world. By M7, Howard will also have a few new soundtracks -- both game and movie -- under his belt to talk about. We're really excited!

Lastly, I leave you with this little bitty animation. It's pretty obvious we don't have the rest of our banners and buttons done yet, but a few folks have been asking about something new to use as a forum avatar or a buddy icon, so hopefully this will hold you over for now!