Last week was Super MAGFest, the Music and Gaming Festival in National Harbor, MD. I don’t go to events expecting there to be a Final Fantasy VIII presence, but MAGFest in particular has been a disappointment in this area over the last few years. In 2024, the Final Fantasy cosplay photoshoot had a grand total of ZERO FF8 cosplayers show up, even though I was told there was an extremely good Edea wandering around that weekend.
I am excited to report that Super MAGFest 2025 saw a significant increase in the number of FF8 cosplayers! I saw four Squalls, a Seifer, and a Rinoa. There was even a Gilgamesh cosplayer and, of all things, a WARD COSPLAY, which I saw and mentally said “Oh that must be Wedge from FF7” because I couldn’t even conceive of a world where someone would cosplay as Ward.
I made extra sure to track these folks down because one FF8 fan, Alyson Caraway, left a post-it note on the MAGFest “quest board” asking for a picture of FF8 cosplayer. I fulfilled my end of the quest.
But that wasn’t the highlight of the weekend. The highlight is that, as you can see in the picture at the top of this post, the Rinoa cosplayer was carrying around an entire Triple Triad board with premade decks. On the final night of Super MAGFest, I ran into Rinoa, and you better believe we played Triple Triad.
(Video by sebmal, who I was hanging out with when Rinoa walked by and I had to put everything on hold.)
Naturally, I picked the deck with the Raijin and Fujin card for good luck.
In the end, we tied, which is apparently the best anyone had done all day against Rinoa! Sounds like those other CHUMPS didn’t spend hours constantly saving and reloading at the first save point in FF8 trying to get the Minimog card. AMATEURS.
For challenging Rinoa, I received a Triple Triad ribbon, which I now cherish. Thanks
Thanks Cara Rae (Rinoa!) for making this Super MAGFest memorable! You can order this full set of Triple Triad cards here. It’s super high quality, and it even comes with sleeves so you can play Open vs. Closed rules! We did not play Random because we have souls.