Woo, convention! Last weekend I went to Youmacon, my home town’s only anime convention, and my first anime convention ever. It was also my first time running press for any event ever. And I’m a bit embarrassed to say that it was kind of obvious. I got way too excited when I told people I was press and I routinely followed around cosplayers for hours because I wasn’t sure who they were dressed as but I didn’t want to ask because it was on the tip of my tongue. Now that I’ve been, I know why people love these things so much. Wherever I went I was surrounded by cartoon characters and people playing trading card games. That got a little awkward in the bathroom, but hey, we’re all friends here. There’s a lot I could write about the con, but I’m saving most of that for articles that will cure my wallet’s malnutrition. For this article, I’ll just stick with the game room.
This is 100x better than the movie theater arcades.
One thing I thought that was really cool about Youmacon was that it’s a 24 hour convention. From Thursday to Saturday it never closes. To entertain the people who aren’t into raves or porn panels, the convention has a video game room that never closes. And man, is it amazing.
I now know the rage of 80s kids.
The gaming room has stuff for any kind of gamer. Are you a Call of Wargear FPS player? There’s ten screens of Halo 4 and Black Ops 2 screens each. Are you a Nintendo child at heart? They’ve got every Smash Bros. ever released, along with some of the most popular Nintendo games released before discs were just for Playstation weirdos. Did you fight in the console wars before I was born? I saw game consoles I never even knew existed, all running some game that was an illegitimate sibling of Galaga. Here’s a bit of advice: when you go to the game room, bring a bunch of quarters. They have a ton of old school arcade cabinets and even newer ones that I’m sure barely exist in America. There were so many games in there that I never got the chance to see, I wish I had a hotel room so I could stay there any try them all out. I did try out Divekick, though…
Now it makes even less sense that they had a tournament for this instead of Skullgirls.
Now, when you go to the game room, there is one thing that you absolutely must play: the mech pods.
Today, we cancel the apocalypse!
The Mech Pods are a fan favorite at Youmacon. You climb inside and there is a complicated cockpit that lets you pilot a mech in BattleTech. Go to this every day if you can. I got to play once and it was amazing. I hear it takes a few times to get used to, but it’s probably worth it. I really wish they still made these, but thanks to a combination of arcades dying and patent trolling, they’re pretty rare. I wish they still made these today. I would love if they made a Megas XLR version complete with the steering wheel, various video game controllers and .
I wish I had the cash to collect these instead of using emulators.
Finally, if you’ve got some cash burning a hole in your pocket, the room has a cure for that. With the vendors selling candy, snacks and energy drinks, you really could spend the entire weekend in that room. Or, if you’re a vintage video game collector, there’s a lot of that available for sale, too. There’s even a lot of other stuff too, like pixel art keychains and I even bought a bag of over 200 MTG cards for only five bucks.
I didn’t watch any tournaments. I’m the oldest child, so I’m not used to watching others play video games.
I really enjoyed myself at Youmacon. Thanks to all the people that made it possible. I won’t be going next year since I won’t be living in Detroit anymore, but I look forward to returning again some time. Now if you excuse me, I have a dozen other articles to write.
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