My Weekend at the local Anime Convention with a Game Boy

I go to a local Anime Convention every year, this was my 8th year. I cosplay for this convention, I’m not going to post those here, that’s not the point of this. My first cosplay I did for two years, Kirito from Sword art Online, Kirito wasn’t common when I cosplayed him and I was the only one at my con with both swords, and when I saw him become common like Pokemon trainers and Misty I stopped. After that, I did a year or two as Frank West from Dead Rising with a friend as Chuck Greene. This was Followed by Dragon Ball Super Trunks with the blue hair, I cosplayed him three years in Conjunction with Frank West. Last Year I spent months putting together Monster Hunter armor I have always wanted, technically it’s not completed as I found some things to fix when I was actually wearing it around the con. This year I was lazy and still haven’t fixed/finished that monster hunter armor, I put together a lazy Sunday cosplay I have always wanted…Captain N the Game Master!

I know Captain N is extremely simple, I wore around my normal daily jeans and black/white sneakers, paired with a $5 yellow shirt and a varsity jacket I sewed an ‘N’ onto. Pair that with an NES controller belt and a Zapper and call it good. I took apart a Zapper and cleaned it up real nice, I learned some things about the inside of a Zapper during this…

Inside the NES Zapper

First of all, there are two metal weights inside the Zapper that give it it’s hefty feel. Up top, we have two half-circle pieces of metal taped together in the barrel so the light can still pass through. In the handle, is an inch-long brass weight. The second thing I learned is that the cable you plug into the NES itself has a connector on the end of the circuit board, this means that you can use one of these controllers for cosplay and reattach the cable later or that you could replace a broken cable if you found one that still worked.

Having cleaned up a Zapper for this cosplay, I finally motivated myself to buy some security bit screwdrivers to open up my Game Boy. I have two Game Boy’s; both have pixel lines that do not show up. I took one of these Game Boys and cleaned it up for use, one has a single-pixel line out, the other has multiple throughout the screen. Someday I will go and fix these, I have seen the fix online and it looks easy and seems like it can be done as often as necessary, from what I understand it is just reheating the solder without touching the board to reconnect the screen. At this point, I have a nicely cleaned up Zapper and Game Boy. I just used a silicon brush under running tap water.

You can certainly tell which one I cleaned up

I had planned on and started getting what I needed to be Captain N before I even started doing my weekly posts about the games I had as a kid. As time went along and I picked up the Jacket and patch, or as I cleaned up the Zapper…my weekly posts were reminding me how fun those games were and making me want to play them again. I still have to finish games such as Astra Chain, but I spent the last month being lazy and not playing many games. I spent most of the last month rewatching Captain N and Space Dandy.

BTW, check out the autographs I got this year

So, as I was doing all of this, about a week or so before the con I got this bright idea…”I’m only going to take a Game Boy and only play that during the con”. So, I got my Game Boy, my Flash Cart, a Game Boy Camera and a pack of batteries. I didn’t even need the pack of batteries; the initial 4 batteries lasted all weekend. Get this though, I played a lot between panels or in the autograph line, I went through almost all of Super Mario Land 2 and got a decent start on Final Fantasy Adventure. The Original Game Boy had amazing battery life, it was supposed to be anywhere from 10-30 hours depending on games and such. I would have to have charged my 3DS or Switch multiple times over the weekend, 3DS has a battery life of about 4 hours.

Now, like I said the first thing I played was Super Mario Land 2. I went most of the way through the game, I completed up to entering Mario’s Castle getting the door open. The convention, unfortunately, was not the place for me to focus on getting through the castle, I will do that here at home. Then I was looking for another game to play casually and landed on Final Fantasy Adventure, I never owned it as a kid but I tried to play it a few times and never reached the first town. The game is a bit difficult to start, it basically begins with two boss fights, and then forces you to get to the first town all with about 19hp. You can save at any time you want, but I couldn’t heal until the first town. Now, part of this is me just not knowing how to play the game and you have to realize I wasn’t looking up how to play either. I finally figured out about an hour or so in how to actually use items.

Aside from a few minutes in the way overcrowded game room playing an SNES Mini, I actually spent the entire weekend only playing my Original Grey Brick Game Boy, and it was the most fun I’ve had playing games lately. I played games from my childhood and game I would like to have had as a child. I spent the whole weekend between my cosplay, my game choices and the way I played those games like I was a kid again. A kid with a low-resolution blurry LCD screen you can’t see in the shade, with no internet help on how to get all the secrets or beat the boss.

I got more looks and questions about the Game Boy than I did my cosplay. A few people recognized Captain N, but I think most people, especially those under 30, just didn’t even know who he is. I saw on person I should have talked to who I believed was one of the virus Captain N’s from toward the end of season 2 where Kevin gets sick with a Videoland Virus, but I didn’t realize that until a bit later. More people, mostly those in my age group, were much more interested in what I was playing.

Oh yeah, remember how I said one of the things I took with me was a Game Boy Camera? I don’t have the fancy somewhat expensive contraption the download the images from my cartridge to my pc, but I have a cellphone camera…