-This year was WonderCon's 25th Anniversary.
Congrats on 25 years, WonderCon.
-WonderCon completely sold out of Saturday
tickets. Maybe. Online, it said that all their tickets for the day were sold
out, but I know a few people who were able to get in Saturday afternoon by
buying tickets at the regular ticket booth at the show. Were they trying to keep
the attendance lower, or did someone miss-count the tickets sold? I know a
couple people who didn't go because it said "sold out" online.
-There were some nice exclusive comics and
figures this year. IDW had an exclusive cover for Godzilla: Kingdom of
Monsters #1 of
Godzilla
smashing the convention center. Marvel had an exclusive cover for Uncanny
X-Men #534 of the X-Men in Giants colors. A friend of mine got in line for
it immediately on Friday. There was a limit of 20 per person, but by the time he
got to buy it, almost two hours later, the limit was reduced to 1 per person.
Apparently too many people were buying 20 at a time. Meanwhile, DC Direct had
White Lantern Batman and White Lantern Flash figures, which were a shared
exclusive with the c2e2 convention. Batman does look pretty dope in white.
-In the midst of the small press tables was one
that really caught my eye: 8-Bit Bytes Design. It was a daring duo that made
8-Bit looking videogame characters out of beads. They use some kind of magical
fusing action to seamlessly fuse the beads into your favorite 8-Bit characters.
But they don't just make 8-Bit characters; they also make more modern characters
using the beads. They even had a He-Man on a Battlecat that was one of
the coolest things I saw at the con. I went back to their table to visit them
on the last day, but they weren't there. A sign citing "technical difficulties"
was all that was posted. I hope everything was ok because I would really like to see
their stuff again. And I kind of wanted to purchase something.
-Capcom didn't have a panel this year like they
usually do. Sure, they had the "How to Get a Job in the Videogame Industry"
panel, but not their usual "what's coming from Capcom" or a panel that ended with
a Street Fighter tournament. My friend who works at Capcom said it was probably
due to Captivate being the week after. Capcom's booth was just as big as other
years though, with lots of game to try and stuff to buy. I finally played a 3DS
at their booth, one with Super Street Fighter IV 3D. The 3D effect was neat and
all, but my eyes started to strain after the first match, so that was enough.
They had some new Capcom logo shirts for sale, Bobble Buds, shot glasses, games,
the Okamiden plushies that you can get cheaper at
SOTA, and Ryu cologne, which surprisingly didn't smell that bad. Capcom also
had artists Long Vo and Jin Han on hand for sketches and autographs. Both are
quite awesome guys.
-The Nintendo booth had some magical device that
let people play DS game on a TV. It was kind of similar to what I saw at the
Fire Emblem booth back at
WonderCon 2009. Seriously, Nintendo, you need to sell
these things. We all know you can do it. We've seen it. I, and I know all
my friends that have a DS, would love to be able to play our DS games on a TV. I
would even buy two of them. Please make these.
-Some photographers need to be considerate of other
photographers. I know you want to show the cosplayer the photo you just took
of them, but when you just barge next to the cosplayer to show them the photo
you took two seconds ago, it ruins the photos of the four other photographers right behind
you. Some cosplayers don't actually want to see the photo you just took of them
two seconds ago.
They know what they look like already and if they don't they can just do a
Google search of "WonderCon 2011 cosplay" and find themselves. I heard one
cosplayer say to a photographer that was showing him the picture he just took
say, "Yep, that's me," in such an apathetic tone that made me laugh a little.
Most cosplayers say something nice like, "Thank you," but this guy was having
none of it. So please, cosplayer
photographers, be considerate of other photographers around you.
-Nearly every booth that was selling trade
paperbacks and graphic novels were doing so for half-off. I don't know how the
one that were only selling their books at 15-20% could really compete. It wasn't
too difficult to find something you would wanted, except that a friends of mine
never found one of the books he was looking for.
-There weren't as many anime body pillows this
year as there were last year. Or maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough.
-That Metal Gear Solid thing I didn't buy
last year? It was back this year, so I bought it.
-It's a good thing that one booth only accepted
cash, otherwise I could have dropped a lot of money.
-I saw
Raychul Moore against this year. She wasn't holding hands with Shoe, though.
Aww.
-No Chase Masterson this year? Shocking, because
she's always at WonderCon.
-To counteract the awful "Free Hugs" T-Shirts,
one booth was selling "Free Punch in the Face" T-shirts. Apparently they had
them at SDCC last year, but sold out really fast.
-Bob Wall and Jim Kelly were both at WonderCon
this year, so if you had a copy of Enter the Dragon you could have gotten both
of them to sign it. Bob Wall also had some very fancy facial hair.
-Adam Hughes made it this year. Yay!
-The Squid Kids Ink booth had squids. Plush
squids. In many sizes, including massive. They also had the retro goodness of their
hit So Analog 10-Doh! vinyls. These are obviously modeled after the NES cartridge and feature similar
games as the old NES greats. I especially like the Tetris and Metal Gear ones.
