The Conventions of 2024: Part 3: Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC

Well then… what an eventful month that was.

Starting off the blogpost, you may be wondering how the schedule ended up like this since if you were to follow my convention coverages from years past, normally AnimeNYC would be the final big event I would cover to close out the year. Well, in something of a curveball moment not long after the conclusion of AnimeNYC 2023, it was announced that AnimeNYC will be rescheduled from its usual timeslot of November to three months earlier in August, causing it to fall exactly two weeks after the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. As you know, these two events are something of big deals for me as one is unlike any other event I attend and in the year and the other is easily the largest anime event in the tristate area. So to have them both not only in the same month, but quite close to one another, it’s been quite stressful on me since it meant I had to focus all of my time prepping for these two events and not being able to spend much of my extra funds on anything else that’s not a convention purchase.

With that said, it is time to finally cover August’s duo of conventions for the year, featuring the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC coming in swinging to close out a wild summer. Last time we visited the schedule we had just wrapped up Brooklyn Comic Con, an event that had lots to do and had a great roster of vendors and artists representing every different category of convention but fell slightly short of perfection due to some odd design choices and the relative lack of space to maneuver around the event and options for food. The event before that, Cradle Con, was a very solid all-around comic convention that went in hard on the comic theming and featured the return of many of my favorite artists in the local convention space.

Long Island Retro Gaming Expo was the first event of the month and this time, they returned bigger than ever. Taking everything from the past year and expanding it out with even more games to play and shops to buy from, the event would find itself with record attendance across all three days. A greater number of big-name special guests including hosts of gaming-focused Youtube channels and podcasts attended, some of them also being in various panels throughout the three days of the event.

Entering the museum converted into a retro gaming convention, viewers were greeted to the vendor’s hall where retro video games, consoles, and homemade goods were up for grabs. I personally went into the event looking for two games in particular to grab: Fighters’ Megamix on the Sega Saturn, and Gungrave on the Playstation 2. Alas, no booth in the vendor’s hall stocked either game, even amongst the hundreds of PS2 games at every booth. I did however come out of the event with a few games for other consoles (home-brews included) and I would have bought more were I not saving up for AnimeNYC in two weeks from then. Perhaps the biggest get from the event was a sealed copy of the Mega Man Wily Wars Collector’s Edition that has long gone out of print for several years. Gaming-themed books also populated the event and I found myself leaving the venue with three of them in tow, all sold by the special guests that set up in the vendors’ hall.

This year, the event went all out with a Sega Dreamcast theme for the console’s 25th anniversary. The entire third floor of the building was completely filled with playable Dreamcast consoles and banners that gave insight on the system’s history, the event guide and badges featured VMU’s, and you could even purchase VMU shells with the event’s logo that you could put real VMU parts inside. Unsurprisingly, there were more than just Dreamcast games across the event and one good look at the map would show all the themed sections returning from last year. The first floor’s main freeplay sections were once more separated into quadrants: Console Freeplay, PC Freeplay, The Museum, and Tournaments. Console Fereeplay remained the most like it did last year, playing retro games on period-correct CRT televisions but with different games and a small section devoted to the history of Tetris (the focus of 2023’s special third floor exhibit). PC Freeplay, meanwhile, managed to get a big glowup in the form of many of the computers present getting some mixture of running with a full or partial 90’s PC gaming setup. Not every game provided the full retro PC gaming experience but getting to play the likes of Jazz Jackrabbit on authentic hardware was a delight.

The Museum continued its quest to showcase rare and exotic gaming consoles, handhelds, and computers. There weren’t as many new additions when it came to consoles since the roster only got a few additions, but for computers the section deeper within the Museum that was previously only partially filled with retro computers was now fully stocked on every corner. Even if the computers lacked small pamphlets like the consoles did to give history on each machine, seeing the room covered toe-to-toe in computers was very satisfying. Adjacent to the Museum was the Pokélab, a Pokémon-themed room set in front of a lunar lander allowing you to trade for event-only Mythical Pokemon and transfer event items to old Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS cartridges. The Tournaments section located across from the Museum remained mostly intact, although the FGC group that organized most of the section in previous years did not return (to my knowledge), leading to the only modern fighting games being Street Fighter 6, Smash Ultimate, and Tekken 8. Personally, I consider the retro games better fitting for the event, using older entries in beloved fighting game series along the competitive modes in non-fighting games.

The second floor featured the return of the High Score Challenge, the event’s other big competitive attraction spanning many different consoles up to the Wii U, and Eon Gaming returned to feature console LAN games and tournaments, including a massive Mario Kart Double Dash tournament on Saturday. The second floor also featured an entire section dedicated to indie games on retro hardware (including a homemade game console!) and the Timeline exhibit returned again as the second floor’s signature attraction. The 2010’s were unfortunately not well-represented in this section, although to be fair the era only ended four years ago and the only consoles that would fit in the section thus far would probably be the 3DS and Wii U (the Wii U was present but it was running homebrew software (a port of Sonic Mania to be exact) and the backdrop and history pamphlet made for it labeled it as a 2000’s console). The event also has two arcades: the Hangar Arcade on the first floor and the Arcade Age exhibit on the second floor. The Hangar Arcade was a really cool Japanese-style arcade with many fighting games, puzzle games, SHMUPs, and rhythm games. The Arcade Age Exhibit was an American-style arcade that, unfortunately for this year, lacked a number the iconic and noteworthy arcade titles of the era and didn’t share much of any history or background on the games that were present. In short, it had great choices for arcade games and some standout picks but was done better in prior years of the expo.

If you wanted more videogame-adjacent entertainment, the musical performances and panels delivered. This time the musical performances were made far less obstructive than they were in prior events thanks to being set at lower volumes in the main room. One of the four groups would even perform inside the planetarium once panels wrapped up for the day. And speaking of panels, there were lots of them this year across the two panel rooms (one of them being the aforementioned planetarium) at the event. I thought I had seen where a third panel room could have been used somewhere in the venue but turns out it was being using as a staff and guest lounge. They would even bust out beer and alcohol once the vendors closed up shop at 7PM and let people purchase drinks. Drinks in front of many rare and valuable retro gaming consoles and hardware… I shiver up at the thought.

Overall, this was probably peak LIRetro for me. I attended both Friday and Saturday till late into the evening, enjoying the atmosphere, catching up with friends, and trying out some cool and forgotten retro games that even I was not familiar with. If you’re wondering where the artists and cosplays in this post were; I never associated LIRetro with having that strong of an artist’s alley, considering the size of the venue and catering more to vendors than artists. There were a few cosplays I quite liked, but not enough to build a large showcase of them at the event. Maybe 2025’s event will turn out enough cosplay photos to make a folder of them online. And speaking of future events I do have some thoughts on the Festival of Games, the winter holiday spinoff of LIRetro, but I’ll save them for a future post once I know if the event is happening or not. Especially since I still have one more event to cover in this post…

Two weeks later, I would attend AnimeNYC 2024, the seventh overall AnimeNYC and the sixth I would attend (having skipped 2021 for reasons that should be obvious considering what 2020 was like). By now, the event’s design and layout have been set in stone and the biggest difference this time around was the move from mid-November to towards the end of August. I had gotten accustomed to the event’s late Fall timeframe and aside from not having to pack and walk around the convention with a coat, it all felt very familiar to me. Of course, the only caveat with the timing was I didn’t get much of an opportunity to recover from two days of the Retro Gaming Expo and event prep ate into much of the free time I would have otherwise spent to finish up the last of my end-of-summer todo list before September hit and the days became shorter and colder.

As hinted at, the venue changed very little since the prior year. After spending two years confined to the northern side of the venue’s big vendor area, the Artist’s Alley moved back to the rear end behind all of the vendor booths and was spread out to fit a much bigger space as it did in 2019. And “bigger space” would be underselling just how massive the artist alley was this year: Looking at the map, I counted roughly 624 individual booths and with some of the booths being double booths, there could have been as many as 800 or so artists at this one event. All I can say is I ate exceptionally well that day at the cost of sacrificing time away from other parts of the event, and with the huge selection of artists all selling at the venue, I couldn’t hold longer chats with the artists that I could at Castle Point Anime convention, Cradle Con, and Brooklyn Comin Con. And with that many artists, it led to one of the biggest commission hauls of any in person event, even if I did miss two booths that were offering commissions and three of the artists I was able to reach and commission in time were not able to finish the commission on site. It was a very busy weekend, after all. And something about moving the event to the end of August might have had something to do with it.

Yup, just like LI Retro, AnimeNYC was able to host record attendance during the three day period of the event. And it was all likely a factor of the move to hosting the convention at the end of Summer instead of the end of Fall. With people not busy with studies and holiday prep, even more people were able to attend this time around, and the results showed when the final attendance numbers were revealed. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like there were as many crowds throughout the day, mostly because of the size of the venue being able to contain the bigger crowds of people in the event. Crowds still would gather at the event, particularly in busier parts of the vendors and artist’s areas and the main lobby, but at least people were still able to navigate around the event easily. If there was some part of the convention you wanted to go to, you usually were able to head there with no issue whatsoever. Compare NYCC, where pretty much most of the place is packed with attendees on almost every corner during the day, the main lobby and artist alley seeing the worst of it until the event dies down following the closure of the vendors and artists at 7/8 PM.

The number of panels were very numerous, with five different panel rooms of varying sizes plus two stages for live shows: the Main Stage and the Sakura Stage. Unfortunately, with my time through the Artist’s Alley taking up the majority of my focus, I was unable to attend neither panel I considered going to in the morning and afternoon of my visit. I was still thankfully able to get a good break in from the convention’s activities during an admittedly late 4PM lunch (it was typical convention junk food, as to be expected) but it made me recall back to when I was able to make it to one, sometimes two panels in 2018 and 2019 and was prevented from attending a panel in 2023 due to being similarly focused on the now ballooned in size artist’s alley. Maybe at DerpyCon and AnimeNJ++ later this year I’ll find a panel or two I’m interested in to discuss in the final two parts of this year’s convention coverages… just don’t expect me to pay any attention to the ones at NYCC as my attention will be laser focused on just vendors and artists.

Next to the panels was a very packed video gaming section, moving from a corner of the main floor down to where you would otherwise experience the Artist’s Alley at NYCC. It was full of arcade games, indie games, console games, and tabletop games. The arcade lineup, provided by Physic Drive, is pretty much what one would expect from an anime convention arcade: tons of Japanese rhythm games and candy cabinets with popular fighting games and other head-to-head titles loaded on. The candy cabinets in particular had a few machines I was very familiar with: Sonic the Fighters, Mr. Driller 2, Windjammers, and Tetris the Grand Master 3. Probably the big standout was F-Zero AX, the arcade counterpart to the beloved GameCube classic F-Zero GX, complete with its memory card port. The console games were also typical anime convention fare: lots and lots of fighting games on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch and you could probably make easy guesses on what games were loaded on the many systems up for play. I didn’t bat much of an eye at the indie games and the tabletop games; mostly since by then the event was fast approaching 9PM and I would be leaving, preventing me from sinking too much time into any of the games in the event halls (and also because I can just play/emulate everything back at home).

The cosplays at the event were just as strong as they usually are each year, and after giving Brooklyn Comic Con’s cosplays little attention and not bothering with the Retro Gaming Expo’s small number, I went wild with snapping pictures of cosplays I found within AnimeNYC and walked home with 146 different shots. Nowhere near close to the record, in part because of just how big the Artist’s Alley was this year, and I do not expect to break the record anytime soon unless I were to dedicate the entire event to taking pictures of cosplays. As for what “trends” I was able to spot amongst the cosplays I did take:

• One Piece was all over the event, breaking grounds as one of the top dogs of the Shonen anime world amongst the expected HoYoverse reps. I couldn’t turn a corner without seeing at least some OP cosplays and I believe I ran into at least five or six Zoro cosplayers at the event. 
• Speaking of HoYoverse, yup, they’re still alive and kicking. Plenty of cosplayers of the current trifecta of MiHoYo games (Genshin, Honkai, and Zenless) appeared to rep the scene. Though in the end I didn’t seem to see as many of them as I did in 2022 and 2023.
• One series that did get quite a noticeable amount of rep via cosplays was Final Fantasy. A Sephiroth was the first cosplay I took after stepping into the building and from there I would run into several Clouds, Tifas, a Barren Wallace, a Vincent Valentine, and a Reno. It was great to see some FFVII love out in the venue, especially following the launch of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth earlier this year.
• Next to One Piece in the “category of Shonen cosplays” was none other than the always-fabulous and mega-popular shonen franchise Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. With the franchise still riding the highs of the extremely successful anime adaptations since a decade ago. I believe I ran into two Jotaros, two Josukes, and a literal pair of DIO (said DIO being the second to last cosplays I snapped before exiting the vendors’—the actual last cosplay was a Raiden of Metal Gear Rising fame)
• My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man, and Demon Slayer were still alive and kicking, and fellow “Big 3” members Dragon Ball and Bleach continued to get love in the form of cosplays. Not as much as I remember, considering just how much of a melting pot this event was when it came to franchise variety. Kaiju No. 8 also started gaining some traction amongst the cosplays.
• There was a small but noticeable number of League of Legends cosplays with Jinx being cosplayed by at least three people at the event, all repping different skins of hers in the process.
• I’m grouping the fighting game cosplays I saw at the event into one, but the FGC got some small but healthy representation at the event outside of the gaming area, including Guilty Gear’s Potemkin and Testament, Fatal Fury’s Terry, two Dante’s (per his inclusion in the MvC games) and gender swapped Morrigan and M.Bison towards the end of the day.
• The biggest surprise in terms of cosplays: Gurren Lagann. Yup, my favorite mecha anime still gets love at these events, including two different Simons, three Yoko Littlers (one of which was gendeerswapped), and one Kamina. Considering the series tended to get overshadowed by all the Shonen franchises, it was nice seeing a good number of cosplays of it.

And that was AnimeNYC. I may have preferred last year if only because it was easier to navigate around and my time wasn’t entirely consumed by Artist’s Alley, but this was still a great events with tons of what I love about anime conventions. It’ll still take some time to get used to the event’s new Summer setting, especially after so many years of traveling out in November to cap off the year with one big event. And speaking of big, I only see the event getting a lot bigger in the future… or scaling back a bit because of how much it grew in the span of a single year. That said, you can find all of the cosplays I snapped at the event and the commissions I scavenged for this year at the appropriate links.

And speaking of NYCC, next time we visit the convention coverage series in Part 4, I will be doing a dual-coverage of October events New York Comic Con 2024 and the grand return to Derpycon 2024. Part 5 will, likewise, close out the year with AnimeNJ++ in November plus some words in regards to Festival of Games whenever or not it happens this year.

To conclude today’s post, my sincere apologies if this one came quite late into the season. I was swamped in work on various projects big and small and wanted to really take my time on this entry in particular since both LIRetro and AnimeNYC mean a lot to me as a fan of anime and retro games. I promise the NYCC + DerpyCon entry won’t be this long of a read unless something were to happen at either event that I absolutely had to bring up.

Anyways, cya all later!