The Conventions of 2024: Part 2: Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con

 (Yes, I swapped Temera and Wailmarin on the schedule since the former being a resident of New York made for a better fit)

Hello all and welcome to Part 2 of the big convention write-ups of the year of 2024. Last time, we discussed EMcon and Castle Point Anime Convention, two back-to-back different-sized events that I quite enjoyed. With Part 2, we’ll be taking a look at CradleCon and Brooklyn Comic Con, the events I attended in May and June respectively. Both of these events share the same mold in their focus on general pop culture, ala what New York Comic Con would gravitate to over time. And while Cradle Con is definitely rooted in its focus on being a comic convention, BKCC (not BYCC, as I foolishly tagged the event under on Twitter) had a much broader genre representation between comics, video games, and anime.

With the intro done, what better way to start than with CradleCon 2024? As one can tell by its title, this event is located at the Cradle of Aviation, a museum that also doubles as a convention center throughout most of the year. You may recognize this as the same location that hosts the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo (as well as its holiday spin-off, the Festival of Games) each year. It’s quite a versatile location in terms of what it can be suited up for, considering it has done both comic conventions and gaming conventions year by year. For this year, the layout remained much of the same: Vendors on the first floor, artists on the second. Of course with me being Mr. Artist Alley Guy I pretty much remained on the second floor for the grand majority of my visit, with occasional visits down to the lower flower to roam the vendors.

Since the event takes place on Long Island, many of my local artist friends that table at next to every local event on my schedule throughout the year were present and had tables at Cradle Con. Others I would recognize from the same event last year also attended and easily remembering me back when I came up to their booths to chat. As for the artist alley, it was an enjoyable one; Smaller than most of the other events I attend yearly (with only EMcon and the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo having smaller artist alleys) but still offering a decent chunk of artists to chat with and buy from. Being an event closely themed around comics, there were a lot of comics and comic-related art being sold across the vendors and the artists’ alleys. Obviously, comics are not exactly my thing, so I tend to skip on buying comics unless it’s an indie-published comic that has a cool hook that I enjoy or one done by a close friend that I’m very familiar with.

Unlike most of the events that I attend year-round, CradleCon closed its doors completely at 5 PM. It gave me enough time to make several rounds through the building, converse with various artists, and then get out with a good chunk of photos of the venue and commissions from the artists. Compared to the Retro Gaming Expo, not every space of the event was filled with something to do- it was mostly confined to the main lobby filled with vendors, the cafeteria area that was also filled with vendors, the second floor where all the artists resided, and a small section of the Gallery (the eastern section of the museum) that was used to host professional artists, celebrity guests, and cosplays. The venue’s third floor was completely vacant and only saw use as a hangout space away from the rest of the convention’s activity. There were a few panels but I didn’t recall the full schedule of them, other than some of them being held within the Planetarium Dome Theater which is probably the coolest room I’ve ever seen a panel be hosted inside. A massive number of seats and cool colorful lighting all go a long way to make a panel held in this room mesmerizing.

Overall, Cradle Con was pretty fun and I’m glad I got to attend and get out one more big event with the local comic artists of Long Island before summer would hit. I even got to treat myself to a snow cone from one of the food trucks outside before making my leave. Getting a healthy number of commissions was the cherry on top and you can see the complete set here. Sadly I did not take any cosplay photos at the event as I was focused on other parts of the event, and considering I took tons at Castle Point only a few weeks earlier, I wanted to give myself a break from snapping more.

You can see the full gallery of Cradle Con convention commissions here. Of course, the end of Cradle Con meant the beginning of preparations for another big convention. And that sounds like the perfect segway into…

Brooklyn Comic Con. Since AnimeNext pulled out for the year, I decided to attend a different event that was shifting over to an entirely new venue. The focus remained on general pop culture and most of the advertising was sure to include everything: Comics, Video games, Anime. Pretty much no fandom was left out in Brooklyn and everything got mostly equal focus. But alas, the event had a few minor mishaps and questionable design choices that I’ll touch on as we go:

Starting off the bright and cheerful Sunday morning, I accidentally arrived an hour and a half early, as I had gotten accustomed to conventions opening their doors at 10 AM. Brooklyn Comic Con’s intended opening was actually at 11:30 AM, and further issues occurring within the event’s venue caused it to stall for another hour and the line of attendees continuing to grow. I stood in line until around 12:30 when everything was all sorted out and attendees were allowed to enter, and the true fun began.

The Major R Owen’s Community Center is, truth be told a rather small venue to host a convention in. But as events like EMcon and Castle Point Anime Convention showed, you can still have a good functional event in a smaller venue. The venue was divided into two halves: One side was the vendors and artists all combined together into a single lineup, and the other was everything else and the kitchen sink.

The artists represented one of the most diverse lineups of artist types and styles but, surprisingly to me, focused more closely on anime art styles with some occasional comic influences. The vendors, by contrast, followed the comic convention’s main focus on comics. Only a few booths within the gallery of vendors would sell existing comics and goodies—the remaining set were dedicated to selling their original indie comics made from the ground up. Of course mainstream comics like Marvel and DC appeal to me only slightly, but something about indie comics and supporting artists by purchasing their comics makes me unable to resist purchasing said comics and taking them home. Especially in the Western convention scene where works featuring original characters are very hard sells to the attendees (just look at the state of anime convention artist alleys swimming on hot trends). And speaking of original creations I of course was able to snag several character commissions during the event, totaling up to eight commissions total.

What I was surprised to see with the artists at the event was a convention buddy that I met all the way back at ICon 2018, a now defunct Long Island-based convention. And of course a few other familiar faces within both the comic and anime convention scene attended and sold their art and.or comics. The vendors that didn’t specialize in original works featured things like the almost iconic “wall of vintage comics” that is at every comic convention and the video games and video game soundtracks at the Video Games New York booth. Said booth also played a few fun and recognizable tunes throughout the event, some of which I jammed to during my trots through the vendors and artists.

Most of the event’s general design was geared towards cosplay: About half of the attendees were in some form of outfit repping their favorite comic, anime, or game character. A few of them did catch my mind and I couldn’t resist starting a bite-sized collection of Cosplay Convention Shoots midway through the day. Cosplayers also received a special Cosplayer badge and some were allowed to enter the venue prior to opening. 4PM on both days featured the Cosplay Runway; a runway where cosplayers walked across a red carpet through the vendors and artist alley. Seeing all the cosplayers at the event all gather around in a central and easy to access spot was very welcoming, although it cut into an excursion through the vendors and artists as I had to navigate around all the cosplayers.

And then there was the other half of the venue, the “everything else” section. Featuring activities for people of all ages; there were tons of video games, a wrestling ring, a bouncy castle(…?), a playable Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit track, an inflatable obstacle course and slide, and a section for LARPing in cosplay and/or with foam weapons. With conventions like these being paid ticketed events that don’t attract many children, a few of the entertainment choices at BKCC felt, to keep things brief, unnecessary. Especially since the inflatable obstacle course took up most of the space in this area and ended up deflating only a few hours in. Then again, AnimeNYC last year had an entire section devoted to the military because they were sponsored by it even if a sponsor like that would more strongly fit NYCC. On a more positive note, the video gaming section was a solid addition as they usually are for any kind of event and it included a large number of current-day and retro games to try out. Seeing as I already own or have access to these games through other means and most of the games had people sitting at them all day, I unfortunately didn’t bother but otherwise was tempted to try out the small Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit track even in the instances where it had to be repeatedly managed by staff.

One thing the event sorely lacked was a good variety of food. Unlike other venues I’ve attended, there were no food courts inside the Major R Owen’s Community Center, leaving only the food trucks outside as the sole sources for grub mid-day. And the trucks that were chosen for the event were… not great; consisting of mostly exotic foreign food managed by staff that didn’t understand English. In fact, looking at the map of the venue that was posted, there were plans for even more food that didn’t show up. One truck in particular even refused to serve customers until 8 PM when the event’s main venue closed for the day. And if you had to step out to get food at any moment, you were forced back on line to keep the event’s venue manageable. And speaking of the venue, and as much as I enjoyed being there, it did have a few small but significant issues. Firstly, the loudspeakers used to play music and share announcements for panels and events through the day were all set too high, forcing me to speak very loudly or cover my ears when trying to speak to the artists and vendors at the event. And second, the sun’s position throughout the day shot a beam of bright sunlight through the west end of the event making me struggle to chat with the event’s many east-facing booths.

In spite of everything I had to point out, I had a great time at Brooklyn Comic Con 2024. Meeting up with artists I have not seen in a while and being introduced to and getting to chat with plenty of new artists from the local convention scene always makes for a good time. Especially in this rare kind of event that seemed to cater to every demographic possible: Comic books, Anime/Manga, Video Games, Retro Games, Fighting Games. Not a stone was left unturned. I never thought the fun would stop, but it did: Towards 8 PM, announcements that the event would close for the day became more frequent. I had two final commissions that I had to scramble and obtain before the venue closed in the event’s last ten minutes. The Video Games New York booth would really set the mood by playing one last song: Game Over from the Mario and Chill album by GameChops. I watched as the artist alley became a ghost town of closed-up vendor and artist booths and the venue’s internal lights went on. And so with no other options and no desire to join the event’s afterparty, I took a few last-minute shots of cosplays and the venue itself before making my leave.

Overall, the event was a solid good; about on par with most of the local events and some of the more medium-sized conventions. It had a great vendor hell and artist alley with tons of fandom representation and being able to meet and support tons of people is a strong part of any convention form me. Unfortunately, the excessively loud music loudspeaker audio, the lack of options for food, and some choices for entertainment that don’t exactly fit the event’s biggest target demographics. It reminded me of last year’s AnimeNext and some of the mishaps it also endured, although Brooklyn Comic Con’s flaws were not as significant nor easy to point out. For example, AnimeNext didn’t have background audio that made it impossible to communicate at times and had better options for food (read: not just foreign food), but Brooklyn Comic Con had all its panels, video gaming, and everything else under one roof and didn’t require a shuttle bus just to experience the whole event. And while both events have ways to improve, BKCC’s flaws were not glaring enough to completely kill the following year’s event. Meanwhile, AnimeNext’s reputation from having to cut costs and split its experiences between two separate venues let to it its show for this year and there’s strong hints that it will not be hosting another one in the future.

As for me, I’m currently unsure if I’ll be attending Brooklyn Comic Con 2025. Mostly since this year has been quite a busy one for me in more ways than one and I have not had much of a chance to sit back and take a chill with all the nonstop conventions, mobile game events that require me to get out of the house, various fighting game events and Games Done Quick, and my friend’s birthday party all occurring one after the other. While I am certainly up for returning to Brooklyn Comic Con after all the fun I experienced this year, everything that I listed above is making me think really hard about coming back next year. I won’t forget about BKCC and the many cool people and artists I met, but I don’t know if my love for the rest of the event is strong enough to want to come back.

With my full coverage on both CradleCon and Brooklyn Comic Con over, I’ll leave you with the commissions and cosplay shots of the event. Since EternalCon was canceled this year, the next events that I’ll cover will both take place next month: Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and the recently-rescheduled AnimeNYC.

The End of SRB2 Kart

Well we’ve all come to this; After five years the long-awaited sequel/followup to Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers, shaddowdropped during the week I was prepping for Castle Point Anime Convention 2024. The game that had famously swallowed most of my productive life for almost half a decade and put a stop to my years of routinely contributing to The Spriters’ Resource now has a full sequel filled with engine improvements, a hugely expanded roster of characters and tracks, new mechanics to balance out the eighty-one stat blocks so more racers then ever will be able to take wins without relying on modded rulesets, and perhaps most important to this post: an all new artstyle and a new tool for making custom tracks.

Originally I was planning to write this before Ring Racers Launched, but since the game emerged from my back out of nowhere while I was focused on other projects and while I was still stuck in something of a struggle to get back into working on projects, I decided to tear down and rewrite the post to get my points down in less time (and believe me the first draft was quite long).

For starters, the Superjustinbros Character Pack, or the SJBCP as I call it, will make a return in Ring Racers, now re-branded as the New Super Justin Bros. Character Pack. As of now, this is what I’m currently planning for the pack when it launches and I have more time to develop characters:

• The pack’s contents will gravitate towards new drivers with a stronger bias to Sonic and SEGA characters to better complement Ring Racers’ base roster (and my growing obsession for retro Sega titles).
• For characters returning from the SJBCP, they will receive overhauls and in some cases will use different, more modern looks than they looked in SRB2Kart. And for characters I choose not to bring back, I will fill their slots with new characters with a similar feel but with more appeal on a visual and recognition standpoint.
• The pack’s new non-Sonic and non-SEGA characters will give priority to more well-known characters, including popular characters and themes in Kart servers during that game’s time in the spotlight. The more obscure, left-field picks that defined the SJBCP will still persist but will include choices with more appeal from their design and personality alone. Some of the media I choose to represent will have a secondary character, side character, or rival/antagonist picked over the main character depending on who fits the theme of Ring Racers more (or who I prefer).
• Unlike SRB2Kart, there will be little to no themed character packs released as separate addons on the message board such as the Mini Racer Pack, the 8-bit Pack, the My Little Pony Pack, or the Super Mario Kart Pack. There is however a chance I may at least bring the Super Mario Kart pack back with the assistance of a close friend since it was somewhat of a popular mod back in SRB2K and by far the most successful of the themed offshoot packs next to the Pizza Tower Pack.

With much of my attention in May and most of June taken up by a combination of convention and birthday prep and the first two weeks of July being taken up by SGDQ 2024 and prep for my friend’s birthday, I got something of a late start to working on characters. In all honesty don’t expect to get any of my currently-planned characters done and released till sometime later this month, if not early August before I end up getting swamped by two back-to-back sessions of convention prep for the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC.

The first characters I will release for the pack include the two OC’s you see in the image above with updated designs, a Sonic character from one of the series’ first spin-off games, and a Sega arcade icon using a design of theirs look from an overlooked 90’s reboot. In order to ensure a sooner launch, the SEGA characters will launch separately in version 1.0 and 1.1 respectively. As with the SJBCP, all my characters will be available separately so players and server hosts have more freedom with what they want to host from the pack’s contents. As for what else is coming? Well, there are about 50+ ideas on the docket including returning characters but seeing as my drive to work on characters has not come back in full force yet and there are still other things I want to try messing with at some point, do not expect to see each and every one of them in Ring Racers unless by some miracle I end up developing a new, faster process for developing characters. Even if said process may not kick in until later this year when the number of events I have to attend is reduced and I have more weeks to myself and not having to prep for something every other week.

Anyways it looks like I made my point; this blogpost has been in the workings for quite some time and has gone through a multiple number of changes so it’s best I post it before I find myself with too many drafts to balance—especially with the growing number of subjects I want to discuss.

The post-30th Birthday Blog

Well then, 30 years of being on this planet.

For those not in the know, June 14th was my 30th birthday. And honestly I don't really have much to write about it. By this point, birthdays mostly just "happen" with little fanfare. These years I typically save Christmas as the big "go all out with gifts and etc" moment since I don't have conventions around that point that get the lion's share of my wallet. Of course my birthday still gives me an excuse to take the day off, go out to local arcades to spend a few hours playing games, and enjoy some homemade cake. And sometimes that's all I need to make me say "You know what, I had a good day today."

While I was deep into making this blogpost, there was something that alluded me last Spring: This year marks the 15th anniversary of Super Justin: the Blog. Yeah, surprising right? I originally started this blog in March 2009 at the age of 14, and since then the blog has changed and evolved so much, pivoting to longer and more professionally-written post about my projects, experiences with conventions, and other things I enjoy. And of course there will be many more things to come in the future as I work on digging myself out of this creative slump that I found myself in following a particular worldwide event from 2020 and move forwards with several particular ventures I've been eyeing up for some time now. As for what's next for this blog, I plan to start on the entry dedicated to sharing my experiences with Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con before it becomes far too late and I have to head out for another two events in August. And if you're not into the convention scene around here, don't worry! There will be other posts to check out, provided I don't get too distracted with other pastimes while writing them...

And so, a new decade of Super Justin: the Blog starts.

The Conventions of 2024: Part 1: EMCon and Castle Point Anime Convention

Yes, this blogpost came out quite a bit later than I would have liked for a variety of reasons but I figured I better start typing it out before I head off to another big event later this week.

Last year, I dedicated a separate blogpost to each of the six “major events” I attended. This time, with the promotion of what was the “side events” to main event status to give each event a proper day in the limelight no matter their size, the structure had to change somewhat. And thus, today I will be writing on the first two events I appeared at in April of this year: EMcon, and Castle Point Anime Convention.

To begin, I’ll introduce you to EMcon, a small but sweet event at the East Meadow Public Library that’s only a short drive out from my place. While not the earliest event in the area that takes place, it’s the first one I attend after a lengthy break that starts from November the year prior and I like it precisely because it comes at the right place and the right time. It’s a very casual general geek culture event that has a few artist booths lined up in the front of the library, and being a free event at the library for all to attend, it also features a slew of activities for younger children. The artists present are a few local indie comic artists I’ve befriended over the years, including some that I’ve known from my first few years of attending conventions, and I always enjoy catching up with everyone after months of not seeing each other.

Even with the size of the event, there was still a good, if small, selection of cosplays and panels to experience on the event’s two days. One of the comic artists even got an entire panel to himself to show off and discuss his work process. There was a video gaming section but it was only for fighting game setups (there were tournaments for Tekken 8, Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Dragon Ball FighterZ) and it was packed away in a room to the side, distant from the rest of the event and the various vendors and artists that crowded around the library’s main entrance. Surprisingly, I was able to walk away from the event with three commissions, including one from a longtime friend I had met at Castle Point Anime Convention 2016, the very first convention I ever attended eight years prior.

And that was pretty much EMcon, one that I would love to go into more detail on but when we’re dealing with the smallest event of the year, there’s only so much detail I can get into without stretching things too far. If you’re wondering why I didn’t take any pictures of the interior, the large number of children in the building (in addition to wearing myself out the night prior playing Splatoon for four hours straight) made me reluctant to snap too many general pics of the venue. Maybe next year I’ll try to get some out but don’t hold your breath. Until then, time to move on to…

…Castle Point Anime Expo 2024. If EMcon was the warmup event, then Castle Point was the first true big event of the year. Unlike 2023, the event got to experience actual sunlight in the day, allowing for the outdoor cosplay and general atmosphere shots that I severely missed taking at and around the Medowlands Expo Center. It all felt very familiar, as familiar as my first time attending the event following the pandemic two years ago. Parking was thankfully a non-issue, making return trips to the car easy, short, and convenient. Stepping inside, all I had to do was present a QR code and I immediately received my badge, allowing me to explore the rest of the event. The inside of the convention center stayed pretty close to its layout from 2023 with one very crucial and well-appreciated change: The sound stage was not only much lower in volume overall, but it was now concealed in black tarp on all angles which allowed the stage to have light effects on for the entire day. Of course I still ended up losing my voice partway through trying to talk through my mask due to the crowds pouring into artist alley, but at least I was still able to cleanly chat with and likewise hear the artists in the artist alley.

Speaking of the artist’s alley, in past years Castle Point would typically have a line leading into the vendors’ hall and artists’ alley. It’s something they’ve done for years as a safety measure to avoid causing a big fire hazard but for reasons unknown, or perhaps since they saw the line as unnecessary following the move to a new venue, this was their first event in years to not feature the lines I associated with the event’s storefront areas. All I can say in response is a blunt “thank god” since every other event I’ve attended has never had to contend with lines into vendor halls and artist alleys (but getting into panels and even the events themselves is their own story). As for the Artist Alley itself, I was mostly unfamiliar with but still got along well with everyone that I chatted with. Getting commissions was something of a struggle at first but I was thankfully able to score the usual amount I get from CPAC, give or take maybe one or two images, and you can see the entire set of pics over on my Aozora’s Adventure blog.

Across from the artist’s alley was the video gaming section, and if you’re familiar with the gaming areas in anime conventions, you know what to expect: there were lots of fighting and non-fighting games on consoles, Japanese arcade and rhythm game cabinets, and stations to play board games. The fighting games were mainly the usuals: Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, and Smash Bros. Ultimate, and all of the aforementioned titles held tournaments as part of “King of Castle Point” through both days of the event. Since fighting games were not the central focus of the convention, I didn’t really stay around to spectate the fights. Dragon Ball FighterZ and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 were available to play, though neither game ran any sort of tournament. Of course I had to preserve the cute doodle of Ken Masters that accompanies the signup paper which to my knowledge was drawn by DrowZs, the artist of the webcomic One Time Taxes that was receiving funding through the tournament. (If I'm wrong, please correct me!)

I did attend a single panel held in the mid-afternoon, one that I ensure I don’t miss each CPAC: The Dad Panel. What is the Dad Panel, you might be asking? Well, it’s a big comedy routine featuring a collective of four dads with their audience playing the role of their theoretical, collective children. The “children” ask the dads questions and they react accordingly, and the amount of humor that was able to be blasted out in an hour thanks to the heavy audience participation element of the panel and a half was astronomical. If it was available anywhere online for viewing, I would have strongly recommended you check it out--but since it's not, I suppose you'll have to catch it when it returns next year!

Unlike last year, the entire set of console games went dark as soon as the vendors and artists closed up, and there were no late-night free play setups or tournaments held even if it’d be the perfect time to play some Mario Kart or go bash some skulls in a few rounds of Good-Ass-Tekken. Only the arcade games (in a dimly-lit gaming area), a few late night panels, and two music and dancing performances were held past 7PM including the event’s signature “CPAC: the Dance”. Thankfully, the event was still very much active—the arcade machines still had lines lining up to play the various rhythm games, the Initial D machine remained alive through the night, and a four-player Gundam arcade title with a spectator monitor got quite a bit of spotlight through the event. Many people also hung out across the venue even with the lights over most of the event shut off, chatting with friends and watching the last set of performances at the music stage before returning to their hotel rooms and calling it a night.

And that was Castle Point Anime Convention 2024. How was it overall? Well, a month past its original date, I still am looking back on it pretty fondly, being just the right size for my first big event after the end of my winter break. If there was anything I’d say could use work, the only thing that would really come to mind is everything in the game room shutting off after 7PM. The vendor’s hall was also somewhat not to my liking, but considering I do not attend conventions for the vendors for reasons I stated before, I am in no position to say how it could be made better, especially with the limited space the vendors could occupy compared to other anime shows like AnimeNext and especially AnimeNYC. The one saving grace this event had over 2023 was the weather being bright and sunny.

At this point, you all may be familiar with how I usually end these anime convention overviews: a look back at the “trends” of the convention via its cosplays and the arts and other merch sold in the Artist’s Alley. I’m just going to go out and say that Genshin/Honkai, Jojo, One Piece, and to a lesser extent Demon Slayer were the biggest winners when it came to cosplays. With the artist’s alley I couldn’t really tell what series would have “won” as there was quite a wide range of representation even with the obvious biases twoards the newest and most popular media franchises. And because I’m something of a fighting game guy and have friends in the FGC, I’m happy to conform that quite a bit of Guilty Gear representation was at the event via cosplays and a few artist booths. The same cannot be said for Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8 despite the tournaments the two games had in the gaming section. If you’re wondering how big the cosplay photo gallery got, I was able to get 100 shots total. Not close to my current record but by this point I think chasing down cosplays is much more cardio than my body can take, considering 120 is my average for Castle Point Anime Convention anyways. Now that that's taken care of, you can see the complete cosplay shoot gallery here. The full commission haul for both Castle Point and EMcon can be found here.

That's all for now! See you next month for an overview on Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con, which will also be... the month of my 30th birthday?!

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Anniversary Bash 26: The Recap

(Pardon the low-res Spaz, it was 2 in the morning when I made this and I couldn’t bother to go find a higher-resolution image)

For the previous two years I’ve been doing blog writeups on the Anniversary Bash, a yearly event held by the community of Epic Games’ Jazz Jackrabbit 2 to celebrate the anniversary of said game’s original (shareware) release. For this year, my drive to participate has been the same as all the Bashes I joined since 2022: to give a community that doesn’t get a lot of attention the recognition it deserves.

The Anniversary Bash was the most active between 8PM and 12AM CET, which translated to 2PM and 6PM in my timezone (EST). Friday and Saturday ended up being the most active days of the Bash and the days where I was present for the entire length with a few breaks here and there. Normally these two days would be considered the “standard” days of the event—Day 1 is Battle, Day 2 is Capture the Flag (commonly shortened to just “Capture” in the JJ2 community). For this year, the hosts decided to try a different format: For each time the level rotation for Battle looped twice, the game mode would swap to CTF and after two full loops on the CTF levels, the inverse would happen.

For all four days, the server was run alongside mod files known as “mutators” that altered parts of the game. As a Jazz player, one particular mutator would give the game’s titular star a buff to his super jump uppercut, now coming out instantly with zero delay and making it more useful to reach higher platforms and serve as a useful, albeit situational, getaway option. The other of the Jackrabbit Bros., Spaz, was played by roughly 90% of the Bash’s player base thanks to just how good his double jump is as both a traversal tool and to help him get some much-needed height while in combat. As with 2022 and 2023, I swore with Jazz for the entire event as I’ve become too used to the helicopter ears and high-jump technique, but I would briefly swap to Spaz and third playable character Lori with another mutator that let players change characters on the fly without having to back out to the main menu. Despite being a really useful idea (and a great QoL feature in general) on paper, the mutator was shut off after only a few rounds of being active as players could simply switch mid game whenever they wanted a different set of abilities and what character the player picked did not carry over from level to level, reverting back to their default pick once the current match was over.

One mutator that was able to stick around was True Fur, a mod that I indirectly contributed to (or inspired, I’m not sure). It implements a form of extended custom character colors in a manner similar to Sonic Robo Blast 2 that works on all three of the main playable characters. Having released late last year, this was the first Bash to implement True Fur, and I pretty much used it for every day after the first to play as a dark blue Jazz Jackrabbit. The remaining mutators mostly served to enable the alternate game modes that became more common on the last two days of the event, but a few did sneak into the first half as teasers to liven up the experience. The roster of game mode mutators included the likes of a randomizer (spawn with a random weapon that you must use, or have a chance of transforming into a bird/frog on each life), Multiflag (players can carry more than one flag), Last Rabbit Standing (each player gets only one life per game), Pestilence (aka the Zombies mode), Free Bird (a mode in which dead players become birds and must be “de-birded” to return to the game), “SWAT” (All players spawn with 1 hit point), and Treasure Hunt (Players gain gems from defeating enemies and must cash them out back at their base).

Not every community-made game mode made the cut for this year's Bash: A mode where players pick a team leader and then hunt the opposing team’s leader was nowhere in sight. Another particular game mode that I greatly anticipated and associated with the finale days of the Bash, Ground Force, in which players use weapons to demolish the stage and ring-out other players, failed to make a presence this year. It’s unfortunate that not every mode was able to come back, but considering the dip in players as the event went into its second half, the drive to play these modes was not strong enough to warrant playing them considering they best work with bigger player counts in mind.

The final hour of the Bash would feature a few games of the "SWAT" mode I mentioned above, and it made me realize that it may be one of if not my strongest mode in all of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 as you no longer had to time your shots around other players' post-hit invulnerability and could just go wild with what weapons you collected till you gained enough points to win. Afterwards, a joke level with nothing but a horde of Jazz raining down from the screen to the castle level background was all that was left before everyone was disconnected from the server. Overall, even with a few setbacks and technical issues that arose, the event was a blast and I applaud the organizers for working their hardest to gather the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 community together for another special weekend. Although in the end it does make me wish for more, as typical for many of the annual events I attend each year.

So what else do I have to mention about the Bash? Well... not much in all honesty. As it’s been well over a month since the Bash came to an end after the first weekend of April, I was running well behind my personal schedule going into April and even May due to preparing for a more active lifestyle (mostly because of all the conventions in my area, more on that in my next blogpost maybe). The only other thing I could discuss regards to the Bash that I didn’t already is the input lag, though that’s on me for playing the game from across the Atlantic Ocean and by now I’ve gotten used to playing with the handicap anyways. And considering the age of the game, it wouldn’t be fair to expect a huge net code update to make server responses near-seamless.

In conclusion, I would like to give my sincere thanks to the the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 multiplayer community for organizing another great Bash. As for myself, I’ll be catching up on blogposts for this blog since I’ve been falling behind this season after a rather slow and busy April.

Super MAYhem 17: Mario Doom Patch Release 2

Yup, it's time to DOOM with Mario and the gang once more. I'm going to keep this one briefer than last time since I already gave you the full run-down back in August last year (and I have a lot of projects/blogposts I need to get back to), but to recap:

This is the Super MAYhem 17 Super Mario Doom patch, a custom build of Valigarmander's Super Mario Doom mod from 2012 designed specifically for use with the the Super MAYhem 17 megawad. Since both mods were Mario themed (one for levels, the other for everything else), the natural instinct was to combine the two together in such a way that it works in various different source ports (for context, the original Super Mario Doom only works in Zandronum and [G]ZDoom). The result is a patch inspired by doomkid's "vanilla conversion" of Super Mario Doom, converting all sprites to use MAYhem 17's a custom palette to give them slightly more color options, removing any assets that would conflict with those of MAYhem 17's, and making small presentation improvements.

When I originally released the patch back in August of last year, it wasn't perfect and I had plans to update it sometime down the line. Later that year and even into this year, I started working on a newer version of the Super MAYhem 17 Mario Doom patch that adds several new changes and fixes. The focus was to polish up the Super Mario Doom content and make it feel better intertwined with Super MAYhem 17. And while there is still plenty left that could be done, including fixing a crash bug when closing out of the game on GZDoom and allowing the game to work in maybe one or two more source ports, this is a good state to call the patch "finished, for now" as I want to shift focus to other, bigger projects. If you’re curious, the attached readme goes into more detail on what has been added and some ideas for what I’m planning for a theoretical Release 3.

You can grab release 2 of the Super MAYhem 17 Mario Doom patch here.

As with before, the patch is designed to work alongside Super MAYhem 2017 and must be loaded after Mayhem 17's wad file (and its own “update1” patch) to add in the Mario enemies, weapons, and sounds. Super Mayhem 17 is not included with the download and can be found here. If you’re new to playing Doom mods, I recommend the Doom Launcher to make organizing and launching into Doom mods (especially multiple mods at once) easier.

Mangchi The HammerBoy (PC) Audio Rip

Since times have still been a bit slow and light in productivity for my liking lately and I've just begun to warm back up into doing bigger projects, how about another soundtrack rip to pass the time? This one came by rather sudden, as it's a very obscure little gem that even I, someone who knows way too much about obscure games, completely passed on back then until a streamer I started following since last year did a surprise longplay of it live on their Twitch channel back in March.

That's right, we're traveling to Korea to experience the one and only Mangchi the HammerBoy.

Released in the year 2004 as a loose adaptation/licensed title for the similarly-titled "Hammerboy" anime film based on the manhwa of the same name, Mangchi the HammerBoy is a simple 3D platformer exclusive to Windows PC. Owing to its obscurity, it has very little documentation online, and what documentation exists in English is extremely brief. What's most notable from this research is Mangchi's complete redesign into something closer to Kingdome Hearts' Sora, including changing the weapon from a real-life hammer with a rope on it to a giant cartoon mallet. All the characters from the original story that do appear were able to keep their names at the least, including the game's central villain and final boss Moonk. The game is also pretty short, having only 5 stages total, but I will admit that the first level, an abandoned and flooded city, is not a common trope for the setting of a 3D platformer.

The game's audio comes entirely in the form of wav files, which made assembling the soundtrack as easy as "convert to mp3 and tag the files appropriately". I also included the theme used in the opening FMV sequence but, for understandable reasons, didn't do the same with the rest of the in-game cutscenes that are full of sound effects and voice lines. If there is interest in listening to those as well, I will gladly convert those and bundle them with the full rip as extras since I would also like to update the track of Stage 4's boss with the boss' actual name if I ever come across it in the future.

With that all covered, here's the audio rip for your listening pleasure.

Conventions of 2024: A Mission's Briefing

 

It's nearing the end of March and with that, local pop culture conventions are once again getting on my mind as I prep for another year of attending big events in person and bribing the artists in Artist's Alley to draw my immense and ever-growing selection of OC's as I tend to do.

...Okay that's not all there is to these events, but considering all the commission dumps I post on my other blog, I wouldn't be surprised if "commissions" were engraved into my brain whenever I attend an anime or comic convention. I suppose that happens when you have a giant roster of original characters and want to see them drawn in the art style of other artists. Anyways, it's March, and with this being the time I post my big lineup of conventions I'll be attending throughout the year, I had to get it done before April rolled around and I start attending events live once again. This time I abolished the Major/Minor event format of last year since it didn't feel fair, deciding the best way to portray the events was to do so on all equal footing.

The presence of conventions I'm attending for the first time, as well as events that I have not gone to in more than a year was a part of that reasoning for every event falling under the same amount of attention. A good friend of mine in the convention scene motivated me to grab tickets to Brooklyn Comic Con after the cancelation of what would have been AnimeNext 2024. Meanwhile, AnimeNYC's move to August has allowed me to fill the rest of Fall with two events. DepycCon and AnimeNJ++. The former I only attended once in 2016 until I was forced to shelf attending further years of the event as it occurred in too close of a proximity to AnimeNYC. The latter will be having its second year and since now there's no other events in the area competing with its timeslot I can easily attend it and see how it works as an anime convention. Based on what I heard so far, both events look good as wind-down events as the winter season approaches, and if everything goes as planned, the Festival of Games will return once more after skipping 2023 to cap off the year.

I'll hold off until the end of the year before I talk about plans for 2025 and beyond, as it's still far too early to discuss potential schedule changes just incase another event pops up that I can attend or if AnimeNext resurrects itself. For now, expect the usual from these events: lots of photos, lots of cosplays, and lots of commissions.