Exploring Dallas and Getting Geeky with trips to Madness Games & Comics and FX Game Exchange Before heading to Fan Expo Dallas 2016
I’ve never been to Texas before, so when Bernie Monsanto (@ZF_Bernie) of @ZeroFortitude invited me to experience Fan Expo Dallas, I knew I had to go. It was time for me to visit the Lone Star State. You’ll find full coverage of Fan Expo Dallas here, but I wanted to share a few of the experiences I had outside of the convention for those of you who, like me, have never been to Texas.
Fan Expo Dallas opened its doors at 4pm on Friday (3pm for attendees with Premium or VIP badges), so Bernie and I did some sightseeing before the convention began. Bernie was a fantastic tour guide. We toured the Texas School Book Depository and the famous grassy knoll beside the road where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It was sobering to see the site in real life after seeing the video footage so many times over the years. The fact that people were standing so close to the road when JFK was shot is unbelievable. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.
After touring Downtown Dallas, we headed to Plano to visit Madness Games & Comics (www.madnessgames.com) to get our geek on before heading to the expo. Madness Games & Comics is a huge pantheon of pop culture awesomeness in the middle of Plano, Texas. Not only does it boast the fourth largest selection of comics in the US, but it is the sixth largest selection of Magic the Gathering and gaming paraphernalia in the world. Yes, the world. As in Planet Earth.
The place is enormous and features shelf after shelf of graphic novels, figurines, and the latest comic books along with an entire wall of current back issues. That’s just one side of the building. The other half of the building is where gamers meet to play and compete. Tables fill the open space while cabinets line the wall, full of Magic cards available for purchase. To a gaming plebe like me, it’s almost overwhelming to see so much stuff. If they make it, Madness has it.
Despite the fact that the Fan Expo was only a few hours away, I decided to buy all of the comics I needed that week from Madness so I could spend my time at the expo focused on everything else going on. (This proved to be a great strategy; I ended up finding things at Madness I hadn’t even thought about looking for at the expo, so I ended up with bonus items)
Before leaving the strip mall where Madness Games & Comics is located, we visited FX Game Exchange. (www.fxgameexchangedfw.com) FX carries every kind of used video game you can possibly imagine, including the really old stuff like original Atari games. They even have arcade games like Mortal Kombat and Pacman that they have available to play on free mode at certain points during the day. I was on a hunt to find Playstation 2 games and was pleased to find Disney’s Cars in the $2 bin. I also got a Disneyland game for the XBOX Kinect for $2. I love going into places like FX with no agenda other than to find things I didn’t know I needed. Their stock of original NES games was impressive. What I liked the best about the store was that they have a rewards program for local kids who get good grades. While we were there, a family came in with their report cards, and the kids received store credit for their As. Very cool.
By the time we were done at Madness Games & Comics and FX Game Exchange, Bernie and I had already done some shopping and we were in fine form to begin the afternoon at Fan Expo Dallas. I wanted to share this experience with you because almost every city has great local shops for both comics and games, and it’s always nice to support them when possible.
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