London Comic-Con 2015 (London, Ontario)

Hey Everyone! I'm a couple weeks late with this post but I was busy doing things like trying to finish Disgaea D2 and watching NXT....yeah I'm coming up with terrible excuses...moving on to more important things:

My friend and I went to go see Michael Jai White on September 27th at the London Comic-Con (a 2 hour drive from where we are). Black Dynamite aka Spawn is the main reason we went but there were more people and attractions that we checked out. I will say that London has some of the nicest people in regards to how they act at a con. The amount of people that attended was ideal since it wasn't over packed and to top it all off, parking was free! (might be the first time we didn't have to pay for parking).

When we first entered the con, Michael Jai White was already on stage doing a Q&A and talking about his previous and upcoming work. We found out that Black Dynamite 2 and Never Back Down 3 are both coming out in the future. He also said his favourite blaxploitation film is 'Three the Hard Way' which I just realized I own in my Jim Kelly DVD collection (I'll probably watch it after I finish this post!). He also mentioned how he use to be a teacher back in the day which is something I never knew about him. After the panel, we went to go meet him and get a picture:

We pretty much achieved our main goal as soon as we entered the convention. Walking around the con, I noticed Maurizio Guarini from Goblin who had a booth in the horror section. If you haven't heard of Goblin's music before then I highly recommend it! They did the Suspiria album which I think is one of the best movie soundtracks:

I talked to Maurizio for a while and told him how much their music has helped out the movies they worked on. He was genuinely a nice guy and I got a DVD and picture with him:

Afterwards, I went to go meet Charles Martinet who does the voices for Mario, Luigi, Wario and a bunch of other Nintendo characters. You could tell Charles has a passion for what he does because he would make the signature sounds of the characters he's signing for (my picture had about 8 characters on it and he did the voices for all of them!). Not only that but he had a section set up for people that wanted photos with him! This was the first time I've seen someone set up such an impressive area for photos, so of course, I had to get in there:

The last person I met at the con was Ani-Mia. She's a cos-player that also makes appearances on Youtube, Twitch and other places. I talked to her for a little bit before she had to go judge the cos-play contest. She said she really enjoyed the con and it was the first time she visited Canada and everyone spoke English (I think she visited Montreal before where most people speak French). She said she would be back at her booth after the contest but we didn't really have much time left. It was great to meet her and of course I got a pic with her!:

Now I'll post some of the cool stuff that I saw around the con:

This Wolverine Car was the first thing we saw when we entered the con. Below it is some TMNT comics and a wallet.

A customized Hungry Hungry Heroes board.

Some TMNT and He-Man collectibles

Conan the Barbarian and Pop figures.

Jumbo Video is still ALIVE! Only in London though lol. They said they have a location in the area that has the popcorn and everything!

These are 3 pieces that I had to buy from Eric Vedder after looking through his portfolio. We got Rival School, Street Fighter and a character from a new series that he's working on.

I have to say that I was really impressed with how this con was run and would definitely visit it again. There was also a little haunted house that they had but my friend didn't want to go inside and I didn't want to go in alone lol. They also had pinball machines and old school video games set-up which is always a good thing to see. So yeah, if you live in the London, Ontario area or are close to it then keep a look out for this convention next year. That's all I got for now guys! 

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Until next time!

My Experience at Unplugged Expo 4

Yo! As promised, I am back with another blog entry and this time I will be covering the Unplugged Expo. Also, I found out that I can pretty much copy and paste these posts and put them on my blog's that are on IGN (maybe get more viewers? Who knows? doesn't hurt to try though!). Anyways, let's get started!

This was my first time attending this con and I got the 3 day pass because there was a Street Fighter tournament that was scheduled. When I went on Friday the con was empty but that was to be expected since a lot of people work that day or are too tired after work to head out. There was an after-party that was around 10 PM but I didn't go because I was too tired. My friend did end up going but he said it was dead and the reason they had the party on Friday instead of Saturday was because of Caribana Weekend (the hotels were packed with people celebrating Caribana).

I also bought a Street Fighter gift bag that said it had 90 dollars worth of SF product in it and they were selling it for 60. Of course I bought it because I'm a big fan and I find out it has: a street fighter character book, an E.Honda mini figure and a huge Guile Hello Kitty plushie. I have no idea what to do with that plushie but at least I got that E.Honda mini figure though!

When we went on Saturday it was more of the same. The con was still pretty empty and it turns out there wasn't enough people to have a tournament. I wasn't too mad about this since they at least tried to plan something at such a small event. All the guys running the gaming section were really nice as well so I just played a couple matches when I felt like it. I also got to try that mixing game that I've seen at previous cons! It's really fun when you get the hang of it.

Also, there were a lot of cool looking tables which you can check out below:

My favourite table was of course the Toronto Power Ranger table because they had all sorts of raffles and fundraisers for charity. When you donate some money you get to shoot a member of your choice, so I had to go with the putty since he's a bad guy and promised to make the weird noises they make when he get's hit lol.

 I also got this sick picture with them! Unfortunately, I didn't get any of the raffle prizes but I ordered the Limited Black MegaZord from Toys R Us after finding out it was available from this con.

 I also visited a bunch of panels. One of them was about comics with Valentine Delandro and Adrian Alphona. They were very informative with their answers and it made me want to check out more of their stuff. There was a bunch of other ones but I'm not going to cover them all. The other panel that I found interesting was the Kill La Kill panel because I never watched the show but I was tired and decided to sit down and pass some time while listening to them. I found out that one of the voice actors in that show (Carrie Keranen) also voiced Caska from Berserk! So of course when I went home I did more research and found out that the other voice actor (Erica Mendez) does the voice for Annie from Skullgirls! The final day goal was to get my Berserk DVD signed by Carrie and get a picture with her:

I also got a Kill La Kill card from Erica Mendez and her and Carrie both signed it:

On the final day they had an X-Men musical. Unfortunately, the main stage is right beside the gaming area so it was hard to make out some of what they were saying at times.

I will say that the musical was pretty funny and it had my girl Jubilee so of course it get's extra points for that lol.

This con overall was pretty fun but they have a couple of things that they need to work on. I would suggest not putting the main stage near the gaming area since it's really distracting for the people on stage to talk when loud noises are happening right beside them. I would also suggest not doing this around the same time as Caribana since A LOT of people will be going to that event instead of this one. They should also make the gaming area bigger. It was hard to walk around in that area which makes no sense since they had a bunch of room for eating (I didn't see much people in this area btw) but none for gaming. There is potential in this con and hopefully they can improve on it next year. They need to find a way to get more traffic because it seemed like the vendors weren't selling much and some didn't even show up on Sunday.

 I'd say overall this con was just a little short of meeting the mark in some aspects. As previously stated, I think there is great potential with these guys and I think with the proper changes they can have something great here. I might check it out again next year but we'll have to see what the line up is looking like. Until next time guys!

Going to ConBravo for the First Time

Hey guys! As you all know, I have been going to a lot of cons this summer and I recently went to two that I haven't attended before. These cons are both still fairly new and don't have much guests appearing at them. Fist, I will talk about ConBravo, let's get started!

I initially wasn't going to go to this event because I had a wedding to go to the previous day. I thought I would be tired, but I wasn't, so we headed to the event a little late (around 3 hours late). I had no goal at this con, mainly because I didn't know any of the guests there (they were all youtubers that I was unaware of) so I was just following my friend to see how the con was. My friends goal was to meet the Black Nerd and he did just that at the TMNT panel. The TMNT panel that was hosted by the Black Nerd and his colleagues was handled really well. They talked about the good memories:

And the bad memories:

I didn't take much pics at this con because it was fairly small and I wasn't there for a long period, so taking pictures wasn't really on my mind. In addition to that, when I found the game room, I didn't leave that area. I had low expectations going into this con, so when I found the game room and it had a Street Fighter and King of Fighters arcade cab, I was like:

At first, I thought you had to pay 25 cents to use the arcade cabinets but then I found out you didn't have to pay anything! This was pretty awesome because I doubt people would've been playing otherwise. Some of the arcade cabs that were there were: Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter 3, Mortal Kombat 3 and a Neo-Geo collection one.

They also had a set up for Ultra Street Fighter 4, Killer Instinct and CVS2. It was my first time playing Killer Instinct and it seems like a fairly easy game to jump into (I was beating people that played the game before). I still don't know how to play that game but it was fun and the people that I played were all really nice. The guys that were good at fighting games were pretty much crowded around the Third Strike cab (I got some wins and losses there).

You could tell whoever was in charge of setting up this area was a big fighting game fan and knew exactly how to set up a gaming area. There were all types of games including: dancing, mixing, fighting, retro and the list goes on. 

Now I will show some of the stuff I saw in the video game area:

This is the E.T videogame that is famous for being terrible. I played it for about 3 minutes and couldn't get out that area. I have to say they might be right about this one lol.

Of course I had to hit the classic SF2 for Super Nintendo. Props to the guys that still have a working SNES from back in the day (I don't sadly).

This was the retro area that had SNES, Atari, PS2 and other retro systems running the classics.

This was a mixing game that I didn't get to try out but it looked awesome! Overall, ConBravo did exceed my expectations because of the one gaming area. This con had the best gaming area I have seen at any of these events. The con itself is small but for 20 dollars admission, there's not much to complain about. This is a con I would visit again for the games. Hopefully they get more guests that I know of in the future.

That's pretty much my experience at ConBravo. I will try to get my post about Unplugged Expo (the second con I attended recently) up soon. Until then,

 Peace!

Anime North 2015

Hey guys! What's up? I know it's been a couple of weeks since Anime North finished but I've just been too busy to update this thing in a timely manner. Still, I would like to cover my Anime North experience!

I wasn't planning to go to Anime North this year but decided last minute that I would go for Sunday. Anime North is a really popular convention that is over-packed whenever I go. The time you have to wait in line and the space you have to walk around could both use some improvement. That aside, I did have fun at this expo and got some really good deals on books. When I first entered the con, I saw an anime kigurumi booth and had to take a pic!

 I left and eventually came back to their booth to get a group shot:

Their booth was called 'Rise the Pig Studios' so check them out for some cool outfits. While walking around I ran into two people I had to take a picture with (Lord Zedd and Deadpool)

Unfortunately the Lord Zedd picture came out blurry but it was cool to see someone dressed up as him nonetheless. I also thought the Kingdom Hearts x Deadpool concept was a great idea for a costume. Next up, I'll cover some of the cool items that I ran into. First up are two horror collectibles that have Jason and Freddy as women? Or women cos-playing as Jason and Freddy? Either way......they look great!

I also ran into some Power Ranger items. I didn't buy any of them for one reason or another (size, price, not the version I wanted, etc..) Still, I got to support the Power Rangers and show off those products.

As many of you know, I am a big fighting game fan. As such, I took some pics of characters from different fighting games. We got Shermie (one of my favourite character designs), Poison and Akira (I think Virtua Fighter doesn't get as much attention as it should).

I also found a figure for my favourite X-Men (Jubilee) but held off because I think I can get a better price down the road. I was surprise they made a figure for her since she isn't the most popular character and I will definitely be getting it down the road.

My cousin was searching for this Pikachu x Charizard plushie the whole con but unfortunately couldn't find the real one for a good price. I have to say, I wasn't too impressed with the prices because I thought they would be better on Sunday. According to my people; the prices were better for certain things but not for much.

Next up is just a batch of photos I took of things that looked cool:

I was surprised to see an Aeris figure worth 1000 dollars! I'd be more surprised if someone bought it but then again FF7 is the most popular in the series. After browsing around the con we decided to head to the Sheraton hotel because that's where the gaming goes down.

If I was staying in a hotel for Anime North then this would definitely be the spot for me. They had a bunch of TV's set up for different games (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Smash Bros, Miku Dance Something, etc...) They also had a projector that had a live tournaments shown on it.

There were also Indie developers showing off their games in the main lobby. The first game is a puzzle game reminiscent to megaman and the second game is one where you have to work with your team-mate to keep the ball in your area for a certain amount of time. Both these games were fun to try out and it was nice that we got to play them before they were released.

They also had a bunch of rooms that were dedicated to certain things (one room was Rockband another was retro games etc...). I was surprised to see this room which had a DDR machine aswell as a Japanese DJ game that I never seen before! Not only that but they had a mixer game that seemed to be from Japan (if anyone knows the name of the games then feel free to let me know!)

We eventually went back to the con and decided to do one more walk around before we left. During that time. my friend noticed a black ranger picture and we decided to head over there to find out more about it. We found out that this artist was Kurt Lehner and he was commissioned to do some work for the second black ranger. After talking to him some more we found out he designed Franklin the turtle and did some work on Gargoyles. After talking to him for a while I decided to show that support and pick up some of his work (had to get the black ranger because of Power Rangers and of course Gargoyles because I watched that all the time back in the day).

 I also picked up a bunch of books that were a dollar each! This was the best deal at the con and I was surprised there were so much good titles left over.

That was pretty much all I did at Anime North. It was a fun convention and I saw a lot of really great costumes. There are some areas the event organizers can work on like space and line management but all-in-all it was a good experience. That's it for now though, until next time!