Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, Twelve Years Later

Back in the year of 2012, I discovered the Mega Man fan game Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch: a competitive first person shooter built on the engine of Doom II: Hell on Earth. It takes the many characters, locales, and weapons of the Classic series and puts them into fully-modeled 3D environments, giving you and many others the ability to jump and shoot together as the Blue Bomber and his lineup of friends and foes through arenas from all across the series. What started as just representing the original six NES games would grow and evolve over the next 10 years to include Mega Man 7 (SNES), Mega Man 8 (PS1), Mega Man & Bass (SNES), Mega Man the Wily Wars (Genesis), Mega Man V (GB), and Mega Man 9 and 10 on then-modern platforms, all with their assets downgraded (or colored in the case of MMV).

Despite first getting into the game in 2012, I didn’t start playing online until a year later—around when Mega Man 8 content was first added to the game in Version 3. I made friends (and rivalries) with the Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch community of the era and got to partake in the development of a few mods that were being worked on at that time. Nowadays with many more games coming and going and the modding scene for 8BDM changing drastically over time, 8BDM became a game I wouldn't revisit as much in spite of it now being a fully complete game as of 2020. What happened? Why did I fall out of hanging with and playing matches with the Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch community? Well, there’s no better answer than to pull out the Super Justin: the Blog’s finest tradition: “The List”:

• By the time I had first experienced Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch’s online multiplayer, many vanilla game modes were steadily riding out of popularity and saw little play, including the titular Deathmatch mode. It got to a point where for a time, the only way to play Deathmatch regularly was to play in servers running the “Roll’s Chaos Generator” mod, which injects random events and gimmicks into each match.

• The idea of creating new weapons for players to pick up through weapon packs, due to needing to create new maps to house them, was being overtaken by the concept of class mods—picking a character and getting a unique moveset based on them without having to scout the map for weapons and ammo. Essentially, the concept of transforming MM8BDM into a hero shooter would have a lasting effect on the modding scene for MM8BDM, leading to many others creating class mods of their own.

• In addition to classes, another type of controllable character would gain ground in the early to mid 2010’s: The boss character. One player, as a boss, has to run around and frag all the other players in a server with their bloated health and attack power without dying themselves. If they defeat everyone, they win.

• Any attempt to create a big singleplayer/co-op experience structured like the classic Mega Man games ended up abandoned or cancelled before they could get past the first few stages—MMSP was only able to get half of its planned Robot Masters implemented, had an expansion that added an extra four characters, and was the inspiration for an even bigger mod that planned to have a separate campaign for each Mega Man entry until that got canceled as well. In a related scenario, a mod designed to make the main singleplayer campaign a co-op experience only managed to progress through the first seven chapters (completing the main tournament plus the Mega Man 7 chapter) before it was shuttered.

• Lastly, there’s “Classes Team Last Man Standing” (or CTLMS for short); taking the class mod starring the entire core cast (CBM, or Class-Based Modification) and rebalancing it through constant updates to create the closest the game has to a high-level competitive mode. Pick a class of your choice and try to cause as much damage as you can before you’re eliminated. It would rise to become the community’s most supported mod and perhaps the most played online server in not just Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, but all of Zandronum itself.

As you can tell by the tone of my words, I have a very mixed feeling on the current state of Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch’s netgame servers. Outside of specific events hosted on the game’s current Discord server or the release of some big mod/mod update, the only active server you will generally see is a Classes Team Last Man Standing server or a boss mod server. And to be fair, CTLMS is an enjoyable experience if you can get past its high skill barrier, helped by its community being very friendly whenever I pop into the server to go a few rounds before going back to working on projects. Although matches playing out in a best three-of-five format can cause some maps to overstay their welcome, considering the slower-paced, more defensive gameplay of the mode. As for boss mods, they too have provided moments of hype, especially now that the two most common boss mods, Saxton Hale (an 8BDM take on the Vs. Saxton Hale mode from Team Fortress 2) and Unholy Bosses have taken strides to make gameplay faster, turning the bosses into monstrous killing machines while the other players are equipped with tools to team up and fight back. But what if you don’t want to play CTLMS or a boss mod? What if you want something more traditional? That’s where things get complicated.

The lack of game mode diversity in active servers, as well as my inability to drum up interest in the game’s multiplayer amongst friends killed most of my drive in playing 8-Bit Deathmatch in the 2020’s after the hype for Version 6’s release subsided post-2020. Even the most recent versions of the game, which added quality of life enhancements and automated most of the process for joining net games through the Doomseeker server browser did little to introduce new people to the game that weren’t already there for one of the more common, routinely-hosted mods. In my personal experience, 8BDM seems to be more popular for its expansive singleplayer campaign where you fight against AI-controlled bots and the giant laundry list of bosses that conclude each chapter. Some would talk about the cool story serving as an alternate re-telling of Mega Man 7 through 10 and the side entries Capcom typically doesn’t acknowledge in compilations as well as rave to the original songs composed for the game’s major boss battles. Of those people, very few, if any, would bring up and sing the praises of MM8BDM’s multiplayer, even after years of the game being held as one of the best Mega Man fan games and having one of the most dedicated modding communities still actively creating content for the game. Whenever it be maps, custom skins, or full expansions based on official Mega Man products, ROM hacks, or fan games, there’s pretty much something being worked on at any moment.

For the sake of comparison, 8-bit Deathmatch is not the only game that I occasionally turn on and play rounds of multiplayer where the singleplayer absolutely demolishes the multiplayer in recognition, usually only standing on the grounds of a small but dedicated community. Classic Doom and Doom II, which run on the same engine as Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, has historically been more well-known for being a singleplayer game due to the setup one would need for multiplayer back in the 90’s with the original DOS releases. Using the aforementioned Doomseeker server browser in the modern day to play multiplayer Doom… sure it’s easier than on DOS but is still a complicated process that involves fetching specific files from your Doom installation and dropping them into your Doomseeker folder. Once you set up everything, you’ll find a similar gravitation towards non-vanilla modes, with no head-to-head modes among them. Most Doom players, at least from my perspective, are perfectly fine with the recent Doom + Doom II remaster that launched last year for their multiplayer fix, even if the net code is something of a mess and the lack of modes means you’ll only be able to play Co-Op and Deathmatch. Outside of Doom-engine games, there are other classic PC games that have survived on modern hardware thanks to their own dedicated fan communities creating new versions or patches of those games, and many of those games only have the backing of those dedicated communities keeping their respective games’ online multiplayer alive.

So what happens next? Well, I’m not quite sure. I don’t consider myself the voice of Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch in any way, but I do have some desire to bring more people to the community and raise awareness for modes and other mods/projects so they can stand alongside the current longstanding trends of Classes TLMS and various boss mods. The goal would be to make 8BDM’s multiplayer component more noticeable and, perhaps most importantly, accessible and beginner friendly. And even the people run the game’s Discord seem to agree, as starting from the month of February, every Friday would become a community game night of sorts known as “Freezer Bowl Fridays” with the goal of hosting modes that aren’t commonly seen online. The first two would be held earlier this month to quite some success, although a crucial game-breaking bug halted plans for the intended “1-Flag CTF Football” session, forcing a different mod to be loaded so the remainder of the session wouldn’t be stuck bug-hunting for the rest of the night. In the end, Freezer Bowl Fridays are still a step in providing more multiplayer variety for the Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch community, variety that I feel it has needed for a good while.

In conclusion, I'd say Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch has a very promising future to look forward to, even if I'm not as part of the active community as I was in the early to mid 2010's.

Tournament Arkanoid for NES: a history

Happy New Year everyone. Usually I would begin the year with some kind of big update post and a look through some goals that I have in store. This year, however, I didn't really have much to comment on that I didn't already mention earlier in the year. It's too early in the year to really put together the convention schedule and this year I had promised myself internally that I would focus on more than just conventions; and that goes double for my current work force and this very blog.  In addition, there are quite a number of leftover projects from prior years that I wanted to finally get done so I could give them full releases online and move onto other, bigger projects.

Approximately eleven-twelve years ago across the years 2013 and 2014, I would discover Arkalavista, an editor for creating modifications (or "fan games") of the NES version of Arkanoid. Having a Macintosh at my disposal, I was able to download and use the editor to create a plethora of Arkanoid hacks which would later get published onto ROMhacking.net thanks to the help of MrRichard999. The two most notable mods I produced during this run of custom Arkanoid mods were Advanced Edition, Chinese Arkanoid, and Amiga Alternative Levels. I was even able to suggest improvements to Arkalavista to make it more user friendly, making the process of creating and testing these mods more seamless. However, fans of the arcade version of Arkanoid may notice a strange, curious omission from the lineup: the official upgrade known as Tournament Arkanoid.

Last year in late Janruary, during a rather gloomy week and after finding Arkalavista in the folders on my Macintosh, I decided to create a theoretical NES port of Tournament Arkanoid, converting all 32 levels to the NES with compromises to fit the reduced size of the playfield and some of the improved color choices for blocks from the Amiga alternative levels conversion. The hack would sit incomplete for some time as I focused on other things until last week when I finally decided to finish the hack and publish it, adding in three new levels to fill in the final leg of the game before facing DOH and adjusting powerup placements.

With ROMhacking.net no longer accepting new submissions (and myself having having had some trouble trying to submit my Jr. Pac-Man 7800 hack Bleach Pac-Man in the past), I have decided to post the hack here in the meantime as "Release 1". The only elements that I have a desire to change but couldn't due to my lack of hex editing knowledge would be remaking the title screen to better match the arcade version (its background is in the ROM but goes unused) and a few other miscellaneous palette edits that aren't supported by Arkalavista. If a 100% complete mod of the game with the aforementioned changes becomes possible, I will consider publishing this Tournament Arkanoid mod on one of the alternate ROM hack-hosting sites that have spawned in the wake of ROMhacking.net's closure.

Download Torunament Arkanoid for NES (Release 1) here.

You will need a patching utility to apply it to an existing Arkanoid ROM.

The Conventions of 2024: Part 5: AnimeNJ++ and Festival of Games

Well, it’s all come to this: the finale. The last conventions of the year. Did this year go out with a bang, or with a whimper? Well, read on to find out.

As you’ve noticed through these blogposts, 2024 ended up being one of the busiest times of my life. I would inject three more big events into my usual schedule to fill gaps caused by two big shakeups from the prior year: the cancelation and likely permanent shafting of AnimeNext resulting in Brooklyn Comic Con joining the schedule, as well as the moving-up of AnimeNYC to August resulting in both DerpyCon and today’s focus, AnimeNJ++, becoming the year’s final events. AnimeNJ++ is a convention that was founded in 2023, aiming to bring a new signature anime convention to New Jersey after AnimeNext crashed and burned during lockdown and then had a poor showing at 2023 filled with many misfires and unfortunate design decision. Since I remember only very little of AnimeNext 2023, I’ll just give you last year’s recap for the sake of trimming down an already lengthy blogpost. But nonetheless, New Jersey was deserving of a new dedicated anime event to its name after AnimeNext went belly-up. And while much of Derpycon was focused around anime, it doesn’t consider itself a full-on anime event on the same caliber as Castle Point or AnimeNYC.

Part of my motivation for attending AnimeNJ++ was from the Youtube channel Bamboo Calculator, who posted a video that reviewed the event’s first ever show in 2023 with glowing praise. Seeing the review lit a fire in my mind and made me add the event to my schedule for 2024, slotting in several weeks after DerpyCon and the week before Thanksgiving weekend. Being in the middle of the route to DerpyCon also helped; literally just take a different route once you stepped into the state and presto, you were at the venue for this event: the Hilton Hasbrouck Heights. It was a wonderful little venue, and I mean that literally: It was probably around the same size as Derpycon’s venue, albeit with even less room in the main lobby and the hallways connecting each section together. Everything at AnimeNJ++ was spread across two floors: the lowest floor was home to the vendors and artists, plus gaming sections for both console gaming and tabletop gaming. Unsurprisingly, the video games at the event were 95% fighting games and they even ran full tournaments for some of the bigger titles like Smash Ultimate and Street Fighter 6. One of the panel rooms was also in the first level; the second floor and beyond would house the remaining panel rooms and a robust dining area. Since this was a hotel, I was able to chow down on a good restaurant-quality cheeseburger just as I did at Derpycon (though this time the burger was not completely charred). 

Further exploring the first floor, you’ll come across the Vendors’ Hall and Artists’ Alley, and boy was it more cramped than I would have expected. Of particular note was the area reserved for artists: While a few artists were allowed to table outside the main Artists’ Alley room, the actual Artists’ Alley itself had perhaps the thinnest isles ever confined to a convention’s artists’ alley. The two isles were only wide enough to have approximately 1.5x people walking through, and since the artists’ alley was designed like an oval, people had to make full counter-clockwise laps through the Artist’s Alley if they decided to venture through, as well as duck into the gaps in-between each booth if need be. When there weren’t many people inside, it was alright, but during peak hours midway through the day, trying to get through was almost impossible—both isles would get bottlenecked by attendees during peak hours in the middle of the day. As for the number of artists total, the number was comparable to Derpycon’s Artist’s Alley at around 25 boots total, most having either one or two people. Surprisingly, I would score a few commissions in this very small but memorable Artist’s Alley, although all but one of them would be forced to wait until after the event.

Outside the Artists’ Alley was a line of booths for cosplay guests and neighboring conventions, some of which I hung around with for a bit in-between my treks through the vendors and artists. Compared to the Artists’ Alley, the Vendors’ Hall was standard fare. Big wide isles with lots of anime-themed swag like books, DVD’s, and figures from Japan, anime-themed TCG’s, and toys from Tokusatsu shows. The one thing that stood out from other anime conventions’ Vendors’ Halls compared to this one was the inclusion of a R-18 section in the back corner. You had to possess a specific wristband to enter (which ran out mid-day) and it was all for a single booth selling DVD’s and two statues. As I’m not one to buy straight-up R-18 content as these shows, I only skimmed through whenever I dropped in… which wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. 

One thing that was noticeable about the Vendors’ Hall was just how easy it was to meet with the professional voice actors invited to table at the event. There were no long and winding lines for each actor or black tarp separating them, and the lines that were there were very brief and did not last the whole day, compared to many bigger events in the tristate area with lots of celebrity guests. It was a very casual and stress-free experience with the four actors I took time to chat with, and I got some helpful advice and encouragement from them at the end of the day. For a convention only in its second year, there were quite a number of big names, but one particular guest would be the star of the event: Japanese rapper Lotus Juice, famous for his work on the Persona franchise and many of its vocal tracks. He would perform on the higher floors of the hotel on the first and second days and his table drew in the biggest line in the period he appeared in the guests’ corner of the Vendor’s Hall. His presence would also influence one other topic I didn’t bring up until now:

Yup, it’s time for some cosplays. The limited scale of the Hilton Hasbrouck Heights meant there weren’t as many cosplays as other events. Among the cosplays people brought to the show included a lot of the traditional sightings at most anime conventions: Lots of My Hero, some Jojo, a bit of One Piece, and some Final Fantasy here and there. The traditional MiHiYo franchise over-saturation of cosplays and artists didn’t seem to hit this event, and even modern Shonen franchises like Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen didn’t have much presence here. Dandadan was making a small splash at AnimeNJ++, but its boom was too new to see a huge wave of cosplays storm the halls of the event. The most impressive and most surprising cosplays of the event were one person coming in as a whole Gundam just big enough to fit in the halls at the event, and another person that dressed up as, of all things, Balan from the Square Enix title Balan Wonderworld that crashed and burned in early 2021. It’s probably the only time I’ll see a Balance cosplay live and in person, but, wow, the cosplayer really committed to the bit (especially since the character design of Balan was one of the stronger aspects of the game in question). With all that said, one franchise would see a very surprising amount of representation all over the event, and you may have, err, seen it coming thanks to the event’s star guest…

Do you like Persona? If you answered yes (as I did), you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that the Persona cosplays dominated the halls of the Hilton Hasbrouck Heights. While I was snapping cosplays at the event, I could have sworn I was having deja-vu as I ran into five Jokers, two Persona 3 Protagonists, two Goro Akechi, and several other party members across Persona 3 and 5. The deja-vu was so strong that I ended up snapping duplicate pics of at least two of the Jokers that I had to scrap from the final album. Truly, the presence of Lotus Juice did quite a number on the cosplays you could find at the event, and I don’t think we’ll ever see a huge surge of Persona cosplays like this at the bigger events for a long time.

In total, with all the duplicates removed, I snapped 100 cosplays at the event. However, Facebook falsely flagged one of the cosplays as I was uploading the gallery and forced me to delete it, leaving me with 99 total—the same total as DerpyCon last month. As usual, the full gallery can be found here on my Facebook.

With five commissions locked in and almost a hundred cosplay photos under my belt, by the end of the day there wasn’t much left to do. An announcement would be made and passed around towards the end of the day that the vendors and artists would have their closing times pushed from 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM, but right until the final moment I has assumed it was 7:00 PM. Thus, at around 6:20, I was forced to drastically speed up my goodbyes to the artists and ended up leaving the Artist’s Alley right as the clock ticked past 6:30. I attempted to go back in, but a guard blocked the way in and lacked any sympathy to my reasons why I would want to go back into the Vendors past closing time. Not wanting to risk serious drama or worse, I let the guard have his way and prematurely departed from the vendors’ section of the convention, not bothering to tell him things such as “Sir, I only go to these events for one day, do you not see the “Saturday” badge on my neck?”.

Feeling defeated and deflated, I simply left the venue, unable to converse further with the guard as he stood outside the entrance into the vendors area. The entire moment put a damper on what was otherwise a solid, if a bit cramped and overcrowded, event. It didn’t completely ruin AnimeNJ++ for me but I will not hide the fact that it led to the day ending in an anticlimactic twist rather than the satisfying conclusion that every other event would end with. My usual walk through what was left of the venue to reflect on how the day went, what activities I engaged in, and what people I met did not happen, as I was too shrouded in negative emotions to think straight. I didn’t consider unwinding at any of the late-night panels or the game room; I simply left and sat in my car for a few minutes in defeat before driving back home.

Putting the incident aside, AnimeNJ++ was a great event filled with all of the convention features you would expect and, from what I’ve seen online, a big improvement over 2023’s event. That said, there are still some growing pains to shed as the show transitions into future years, especially as it draws in more and more people from around New Jersey and the neighboring tri-state area each year. Not having to compete with AnimeNYC for attendance in the same timeframe is a big plus, as I myself would have not batted an eye at AnimeNJ++ this year if I still had AnimeNYC to focus on in the month of November. A venue change would probably be the only way I’d see the event further expanding out, allowing for even bigger vendor and artist sections, more guests, and a more comprehensive and easy to follow layout. The only thing that may suffer is the food at the venue—getting a good hotel quality burger and fries on-site is just not a thing in your typical convention center which only serve fast food-style grub for the most part.

And with that out of the way, it’s now time to talk about the Festival of Games… Wait, what’s that? It got canceled again?

Yeah, I saw it coming from a mile away and you all probably did too, but I didn’t think this event would be returning in any capacity and those thoughts turned correct once I got a conformation from two people I know that managed the event. It may have been possible in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic and the small scale of the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo at the time, but after the Expo continued to get bigger, the chances of the Festival returning for another year became slim. I had a small ounce of hope the event would return this year especially with some optimistic words around this time last year. But as the year went on, I saw the writing on the wall that the event would very likely be canceled a second time, possibly for good. Anyone I would speak to about the event, from online to at other conventions, wasn’t very optimistic about the show returning. And indeed, there would be no announcements on any social media in the months leading up to what would likely be the show’s occurrence this year (December 14th).

With the event currently on indefinite hiatus, I decided towards the beginning of October to repurpose what would have been my coverage of the Festival into a hypothetical look on what the event could look like if it was given a facelift to allow it to stand out from its summer cousin. This facelift would serve to make the Festival of Games into an event that still features many, if not all, of the typical convention features for those that want a bit more gaming and shopping before the year ends and holiday fever takes over. Of course, this is all hypothetical, so do take it with a grain of salt, but I tried to present it in as realistic as an event like this would function.

• The event would have a scaled back budget and scope compared to the current state of the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, close to LIRetro 2018 and 2019 before the event grew to cover the entire Cradle of Aviation. This would include taking place over only two days instead of the main show’s three, so vendors can keep their setups intact for more than a single day and get more value out of the event.
• In addition, It would allow vendors from LIRetro to return to sell more of their leftover wares, and some artists and comic authors from Cradle Con (another event hosted in the Cradle of Aviation, which I discussed in detail earlier this year in Part 2 of the convention coverages) and other local events would be invited to sell at the event and fill out the vendors.
• The event’s main focus would retain the focus on playing and shopping for games around the holidays, complete with holiday decor and festive music in the venue. It would promote a relaxing and fun-for-all atmosphere during what is otherwise a busy and stressful time of the year.
• The roster of staff managing the event and bringing in equipment would shift around from the main event, to allow a different core crew of staff to manage the event while the main crew recovers from the Retro Gaming Expo and plans for next year’s event.
• A variety of consoles and computers are set up on the second floor, each featuring some kind of game, romhack, or homebrew title on original hardware. Each game would be themed around the holiday season, or winter in general. Among the featured games is the 8-Bit Xmas series of NES homebrews, including the Christmas carols of ROB’s dancing to Christmas songs in front of a CRT as was featured at the event in 2022. The Hangar Arcade would also be available.
• Special guests would still attend the event for meet & greets and to sell their merchandise. 
• Panels and tournaments would still be present in some capacity. Each feature would be presented to complement the event’s holiday theming, such as a high score challenge for a Christmas game or a panel discussing holiday gaming memories or the most impactful Christmas gift.
• The event’s Cosplay Contest would be winter and holiday-themed, tying into the event’s overarching holiday theming.
• Food trucks and food stands could still be present in front of the venue’s entrance, preferably those that would serve warmer foods and other treats associated with the holidays (including hot chocolate!).

That surprisingly took a bit more time to think about than I had expected, considering I’ve never organized an event and am only going off of what other events of this scale and budget have featured in their lineup of activities. In the end, what I decided to go with was a scaled-down Retro Gaming Expo with a bit more of a holiday flavor, which is what I assume would be the most realistic direction to take the Festival of Games.

After eight months of touring the tristate area for new experiences, we’ve finally reached the end of our journey through the conventions of 2024. Overall, I quite enjoyed this year and there was quite some variety in the locales we visited. We toured a library, an aviation museum, an athletic arena, NYC’s signature convention center (twice!), and several hotels in New Jersey. I saw many friends and artists I recognized from prior events, met new creators that specialized in creating different types of content, and I was able to commission a wide variety of artists for artwork featuring the vast and diverse cast of Aozora’s Adventure. My love for exploring and going out to these places fueled these blog posts looking into each convention and analyzing them, especially as a way of archiving the good memories of each event and giving insight on how these events could improve. But like all things, everything must come to an end and I go on my four-month hiatus from attending events to celebrate the holidays, catch up with projects, and plan for next year.

But before we get to discussing what next year will be like, let’s take one long look back at this year’s round-up of events I attended, and review my thoughts on each one.

• As small as EMCon is, it’s still a fun and charming event with many people to socialize with and it gets bonus points for being the only event I attend that’s free. It is unfortunately held back by its commitment to a library, which forces its family-friendly atmosphere and limited number of vendors. It still manages to fit a number of features under the hood time and time again, but with this year’s event taking place the same weekend as Castle Point Anime Expo I may or may not attend depending on how sore I am from Castle Point.
• For my seventh year attending the event, Castle Point Anime Convention made a lot of genius updates this year that really fleshed out and improved the experience. Expanding the gaming area, sealing up the live stage to lower the amount of sound that bleeds into the rest of the event, and not being super strict with the amount of people that enter the Vendors/Artists area made everything more enjoyable.
• Cradle Con was great. It didn’t really do anything new and still leaves a good amount of the event space unoccupied, but for a comic event that’s not as big as NYCC, it was still a fun and very social event where I got to hang out with a lot of local convention buddies.
• Brooklyn Comic Con’s vendors and artists were very strong offerings and I got to meet up with some other convention buddies I haven’t seen in a long time and got a lot of variety out of the commissions I ordered. admittedly the venue’s small size was to its detriment: There was very little on offer in terms of on-site food and you were forced to return back on-line if you ever left the venue. A lot of vital space for the event was also taken up by random features I wouldn’t consider essential for a convention (two bouncy houses and a wrestling ring) and the loudspeaker that radioed announcements and played music was overtuned, making chatting with vendors and artists a lot more difficult.
• The Long Island Retro Gaming Expo had experienced its biggest show in years, taking what it featured in 2023 and upping the ante with more games and more convention features. Still 100% recommended if you’re in the area and have any interested in video games from times past.
• AnimeNYC was good, though this year it didn’t really do anything big to improve upon the year prior. The huge number of artists tabling at the show was either a positive or negative point depending on who you ask. For me, the 640 tables made it quite overwhelming if you’re as much of an Artist’s Alley connoisseur as I am. As for the rest of the show, the gaming area was still great for some Japanese retro arcade games and modern-day fighters, and the cosplays were on point.
• I feel as if I was a lot more prepped for New York Comic Con this year compared to AnimeNYC, but I think that was because its Artist’s Alley was easier to navigate and it came with the always-strong Vendors’ area with their giant booths and cool on-site experiences. Plus I left the show with my favorite commission haul of the year.
• The quality of DerpyCon was genuinely surprising, even with its smaller and more compact venue size and having among the smallest Artist’s Alleys I’ve visited this year. Its venue served some great food and its gaming area had some surprising retro-game inclusions to make it stand out from other events. The cosplays were also great, especially for a smaller event.
• As the event is only in its second year, AnimeNJ++ was great and had all the essential bits but showed room for improvement. Time will tell how much it’ll find ways to innovate and expand as all these other, older events have been expanding for years.

Here is my personal ranking on how much enjoyment I got out of each event this year:

1. Long Island Retro Gaming Expo
2. New York Comic Con
3. Castle Point Anime Convention
4. DerpyCon
5. Cradle Con
6. AnimeNYC
7. Brooklyn Comic Con
8. AnimeNJ++

(EMCon not ranked as its size would make it an unfair comparison)

And here’s a ranking on which events I feel could expand out and reach all-new potential the most:

1. EMCon
2. AnimeNJ++
3. CradleCon
4. Derpycon
5. Brooklyn Comic Con
6. Long Island Retro Gaming Expo
7. AnimeNYC
8. Castle Point Anime Convention
9. New York Comic Con

These all were great events and I would absolutely encourage you to attend one if you have the time and budget—these rankings are nothing more than how much total enjoyment I got out of each event, measured on a roughly equal scaling. But now with this year’s events all finished up, what about the events of the far off year of 2025? Well, as I alluded to in my coverage on DerpyCon in Part 4, I was quite enamored by the big variety in conventions going on in the state of New Jersey in 2025. Sure, Castle Point has been a yearly tradition at this point, but after the cancelation of AnimeNext, it marked one less event in the state in the spring/summer. As a compromise I would add in two NJ-based conventions towards the end of 2024, and after attending both, my curiosity for other events outside of New York began to grow. Indeed, aside from Castle Point, DerpyCon, and AnimeNJ++, all of my events this year have been native to my home state of New York City as they have been for quite some time.

In regards to the current lineup of events, pretty much everything I attended this year will be on my agenda for next year. However, I am planning on temporarily shelving Brooklyn Comic Con and AnimeNJ++, not only to give these conventions a year to see if any of my issues regarding them are fixed, but also to free up some valuable time to work on my own projects in what I’m currently foreseeing as a very busy and eventful year. And with all the commissions (roughly 60 in total) and convention merchandise I scored this year, I don’t mind missing out so I can enjoy my birthday month and my time before the holidays as well as focus my funds towards other things. Especially since this year felt like a constant back and forth between conventions, watching FGC events on Twitch, and playing along with events in mobile games.

But what about potential new ventures? While the schedule is not set in stone yet, I’ve had a few ideas in my head for some events in the first half of the year I would be open for attending. For starters, there’s NJIT Minicon, a one-day anime event at the NJIT Campus Center in New Jersey, taking place in early April. Another two potential candidates are Garden State Anime Fest and Kogracon, both in the first weekend in May. And then there’s Thy Geekdom Con, a comic and general pop culture event in late May celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Defend the North, a big and meaty FGC event in early August, takes place later in the year (the weekend before Long Island Retro Game Expo, as a matter of fact!) and has been on my mind after realizing I missed it last year. Although the Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC also being that month would make it difficult to prep for all three, but we’ll see what I decide to do when the full schedule has been decided on.

With that said, it’s time to finally bid farewell to the year of 2024. Wherever next year takes us, I hope you all will join me for another incredible journey as we explore the conventions of the mysterious year of 2025. In the meantime, enjoy your holiday breaks—you all deserved them.

The Conventions of 2024: Part 4: New York Comic Con and Derpycon

Another month done, another set of conventions off the table. In a sudden repeat of what happened earlier in April this year, this month had two conventions on two back-to-back weekends. I personally didn’t mind too much, as my legs have gotten used to enduring long trots through big events compared to in the late 2010’s and 2022 (provided I have a chiropractor visit here and there), though in this case the events were much bigger that EMCon and Castle Point combined.

The two conventions in question are of course New York Comic Con and DerpyCon: Two events with very different themes and of wildly different sizes. Both took place in the final weekends of October: NYCC on the third weekend and DerpyCon on the fourth. Each year I typically make the former convention one of my big mandatory visits of each year, but the latter was an event that I had not attended since 2016. Since AnimeNYC became the center of my attention as the other big fall event of the year from 2017 onwards, it caused me to shelf Derpycon for eight years until the combo of countless leg excercises and AnimeNYC moving up two months into August to reconsider attending. Was it worth the year-long prep? Well, you’ll have to read on.

New York Comic Con is perhaps the quintessential convention experience. It’s the biggest show I attend each year and the one many smaller local comic conventions emulate the most when it comes to the kinds of media they feature inside. Since the show remains massively popular in today’s age thanks to the number of guests and panels it brings every year, I opted to attend the event on Thursday in order to avoid the massive crowds of Friday and Saturday that made journeying through the event’s Artist Alley cumbersome. In a way, the event went overall smoother than the year prior, since my plot to venture into Artist’s Alley first for four~five hours was effective in allowing me to hang and converse with the artists tabling without the worry of an over-congested Artist’s Alley. Though that came at the cost of being able to see the vendors’ area for an extended amount of time; which was clearly the bigger focus of the event for many with all the media giants setting up big elaborate booths and vendors selling off merchandise.

I arrived at the event at around 10:30 and, as mentioned, immediately dipped into the artist’s alley. The layout was pretty much 1:1 with last year, separating the artists into multiple isles comprised of both big-name professional comic artists, smaller hobbyist artists, and everything in-between. The lack of crowds congesting the alley, especially the A/B isle directly to the left of the entrance into the Artist’s Alley, made getting around much faster. The backs of the center isles were filled with professional artists whose tables were sponsored by larger organizations of artists, though of course my attention was drawn to the more independent artists that lined the front and sides of the Alley. The kind of artists that you would run into at any other comic or anime convention in the tri-state area. And well, the Artist Alley at NYCC this year did not disappoint. Many artists I had known for years tabled at the event and there was a massive variety of artists with differing art styles that, at least outside of the sponsored professional artists, there was no artist that drew even remotely alike another. The only kind of artist that was noticeably light in representation were the anime artists, and you can easily chalk that up to the existence of AnimeNYC two months prior for them to put their eggs into. Some artists even tabled both events.

After several hours in the artist’s alley, I made my way up to the vendors. Next to the special guests and certain panels, this is probably the main attraction of the event for many attendees. And for good reason too: the huge size of the Javits Center makes it real easy to bring in and assemble massive booths filled with attractions and, most importantly, shops to sell off merch to. And if you weren’t convinced from past New York Comic Cons that anime was being more and more integrated into general pop culture more and more with each passing year, look no further than here: Many of the booths that lined the east gates into the vendors were all connected to Japanese media companies or franchises in some way. Dragon Ball and One Piece had entire booths dedicated to themselves- each featuring their respective stars as enormous balloons towering over attendees. The various properties Bandai owned or created products for had entire sections at their booth, including Godzilla and a person dressed in a full-on Godzilla suit for the occasion. Gundam would have a while section to itself, and Viz Media and Crunchyroll, two corporations known for their contributions to manga and anime in the West, had booths as well.

But that doesn’t mean the Western-made media had no presence at this event, in fact it thrived quite well this year. Marvel came back with another booth featuring a giant stage in the middle of the vendor’s section, screening new previews of various Marvel properties and even having a cosplay contest at one point. The Nickelodeon booth had a giant SpongeBob display of the homes of the main trio in celebration of SpongeBob’s 25th anniversary. And being that the convention took place in the stomping grounds of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you bet the heroes in a half shell were all over the event—not only did they get a big booth all to themselves in the vendors, many artists in the Artist’s Alley sold art featuring the TMNT (particularly of the IDW comics’ continuity). Various indie artists and comic creators also promoted and sold off their own original comics, which I found myself purchasing quite a few as a means of supporting them and getting to experience the adventures of many cool characters at the comfort of my own home. Going into the vendors for the first time in the day would sort of take the rest of my time in the vendors off the rails, as I would spend part of the event searching for Straight Edge Comic, creator of Straight Edge and the Black Belt Adventure after stumbling upon a discarded business card right at the escalators. Unfortunately for me, there appeared to be no booths for the comic at the event and the official NYCC app made no mention of Straight Edge. In memoriam for my inability to find the people responsible for creating this story, I kept the business card on hand when I returned home.

After about 4 hours in the vendors, I said my goodbyes to the artist friends tabling in the premium artists section and returned to the artist’s alley to claim the last few commissions at the event and get in some last-minute chats. Since the Alley was disconnected from the vendors, the alley got to stay open an hour later, 8PM to be exact. That said, many artists would put up the tarps covering their booth and depart for the day at 7PM, so the final moments of the event became a mad dash to claim everything I could, say my final set of farewells, and get out before closing. Ultimately, I would leave NYCC with eleven commissions, the wild diversity of the artists carrying over into the big variety of character art I would receive, many of which I likely would only be able to get at other comic events like Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con. The personal favorite of the set for me was a Genroy art I received from comic artist Jacob Chabot, since it took me back to my high school years when I first created Genroy and the other OG’s back in 2011. It also made me realize in hindsight that I should go back and give my older original characters more love, while still introducing and fleshing out newcomers and other underdeveloped ideas once I have a load off my back from all these events this year hogging up attention.

If you want to see the other commissions, I posted the full gallery onto my sister blog as per usual. Overall, this was a really fun and welcoming New York Comic Con. Going more quickly through the artist’s alley and keep my attention to only certain booths made the schedule go by without much trouble Compare and contrast AnimeNYC, where I found myself trapped in an overly large Artist’s Alley with too many artists to interact with in one spot, giving me little time to explore other parts of the event. In hindsight, the one aspect of NYCC I completely sidelines was the video gaming section down on the lower floor, but it didn’t really impress me enough at NYCC 2023 to bother to travel down again. Cosplay shots were also a no go at this event, but that doesn’t mean there were no good cosplays at the event. My mind was unfortunately too occupied with the vendors and artists to be able to take pics of cosplays.

Thankfully, I would get lots of those taken at my next event: DerpyCon 2024.

As I mentioned previously, DerpyCon has been around for quite some time. During my long absence from the event to focus on two bigger events, Derpycon would see itself relocate down to the Hyatt Regency in New Jersey’s New Brunswick. This new venue was a lot more compact and allowed for much quicker travel between event features, in addition to much better lighting in the artist’s alley. And after two conventions at the Javits Center, it was a breath of fresh air to visit a new venue. As for what kind of event the show is—you would assume it would be an event dedicated to cartoons or otherwise another general pop culture con due to being named after Derpy Hooves of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fame. And you would be partially correct; the show’s features leaned more towards anime and the show’s scale is very comparable to Castle Point Anime Convention in that regard, but go through cosplays and the booths in Artist’s Alley and you can see love for animation of all kinds even with the slight bias towards anime. This focus towards animation was also seen in the three special guest voice actors that were invited to the event, each of them having big roles in western media. (Sadly I didn’t go meet any of the guests due to lines for them piling up over the day and my lack of spare funds to put into their paid services towards the end)

Since the event was at a hotel, parking was fairly simple and I was able to walk right into the main event space through a door in the parking garage that conveniently led inside. It was a bit hard to find the main reception table at first but signing in was simple the moment I found it. Afterwards, I was left to roam the event to my leisure and… wow. It was surprising just how much of the typical convention features they were able to contain in a small venue. All the panel rooms were upstairs on the second floor, and the gaming room full of arcade and console setups (including a shocking number of retro game setups) could be found in the lower floor. The vendors and artists shared the same room and while it was fairly large, its size was around the same size as Castle Point Anime Convention’s entire artist alley, leading to only 1 and a half full isles of artists while the rest would be used by the vendors. Even with the lack of artists compared to other events (in fact this may be the second smallest artist’s alley next to EMCon), I got to interact with both some new and long-time artists from the area, including two that I consider good buddies and saw a combined total of three/four times this year alone. Unfortunately, for those looking forward to my post-event commission dumps on my sister blog, this event only resulted in one full commission. Every artist at the event was either a digital artist or a craftsperson, after all. Thus, I decided to use my money to make purchases in the vendors and artists, buying some early Christmas gifts of figures that intrigued me and some swag from one of the Artist Alley tables.

Adjacent to the vendors’ hall and artist’s alley was an enormous concert hall. Some audio would spill over into the vendors but thankfully it was very minor and pretty much nothing compared to how loud the main stage would get at CPAC in past years and the over-turned loudspeakers at Brooklyn Comic Con earlier this year. With only so much time at the event (and my sensitive hearing not helping much either), I didn’t travel inside and only caught glimpses as I passed by the rest of the venue. Partway through the day before the vendors and artists closed up shop at 6, the lines used for the special guest booths in the main area were repurposed into a big queue for a cosplay gala show and I watched as what felt like 150 different attendees in cosplay poured into the concert hall. And speaking of cosplays, by golly did I see a good haul of cosplays at this event—so much that I almost immediately started my set of Cosplay Photos after my first trip through the Artist’s Alley. In total, I managed to get 99 individual cosplay shots, all of which you can see here. Just the fact that I almost broke into triple digits was surprising, especially in an event with a much smaller amount of space compared to other events I attended. I didn’t keep track of what franchises got represented more this time around, but I did notice qiute a few for League of Legends as well as The Amazing Digital Circus.

One avenue that genuinely surprised me was the food. Since this event was not at a convention center (or in the case of the Cradle of Aviation, a museum), I got to order a real cheeseburger that was cooked in realtime. It took over half an hour to cook, but the end result was perhaps the most satisfying meal I had consumed at a convention. Typically, I would be forced into getting hot dogs at other venues as I have a very big distaste for fast food-quality hamburgers and the food sold at most food trucks or booths within parts of the buildings generally didn’t appeal to me. Maybe that'll change one year, especially in the case of if I return to Brooklyn Comic Con which lacks them altogether.

Once 6:00 PM finally hit, I finished up my goodbyes at Derpycon and took a stroll along the now mostly emptied main halls and the game room on the lower floor. The sun roof in the main area of the venue darkened significantly, leaving the room lit by only the lights on the first and second floor. I peeked back into the second floor and, while now mostly vacant this late into the day aside from some of the panel rooms and after-hours programing, a variety of booths that contained various ads and promotions for other conventions in New Jersey and Pennsylvania lined the balcony overlooking the entire first floor. It got me genuinely curious about conventions across the two states, given that my last proper visit to New Jersey before DerpyCon was for Castle Point Anime Convention all the way back in April. I’ll go into further detail when I discuss potential events for next year in the finale blog post since there might be a change or two the schedule. Anyways, with little else to do, I took a few final cosplay shots, checked out the gaming room one last time, and promptly departed the Hyatt Regency, overall satisfied with the event.

In the end, I’m glad I was able to visit Derpycon after a massive eight year gap and that my visit to NYCC the week prior didn’t make me too sore to attend. It’s certainly an event that I’d love to come back to next year, although the event’s Saturday being November 1st may cause some conflict with my usual Halloween schedule every year. Heck, even with the smaller Artist’s Alley, I may have gotten just as much entertainment out of this convention as I did at Castle Point and Cradle Con this year. It was that good, and the perfect size for an event this late into the year. And overall, October was a pretty good month for cons this year.

So with that all out of the way, the next post will be the finale of the conventions of 2024. Do be on the lookout for it, as I have quite a lot to say about the end of this year (AnimeNJ++ was this past weekend and Festival of Games… well, you’ll see) and what’s to come for the big year of 2025.