This was our first time attending Game On Expo, and we saw some things we never would have expected to. The event was held at Mesa Convention Center, which felt like it was straight out of the 70s, with inset water fountains and still had ashtrays outside the bathrooms. The layout of the place divided the con into 3 distinct areas, with a narrow hallway and then a breezeway to get between them. The Areas included the expo floor which had vendors selling their wares, like every other con, but also had booths for Microsoft and a few schools that teach coding.
Costume Contest
In the main hall, a lecture hall with desk space in front of each audience member the costume contest was held. The judges were introduced and I was surprised to hear that one was a costume designer for the Disney Company. The contest was MC’d by Professor Palo Verde, Arizona’s local Pokémon Professor, named after the green barked trees found around the desert.
The highlights of the contest included a snowflake shuriken throwing Glacieon played by Chiyo Cosplay and a whip wielding Leafeon performed by Heartless Aquarius.
The closing to the competition came to a point when a Jedi went on a quest on film to find a very special holochron, the one containing the engagement ring he appear on stage to give his girlfriend, a Twi’lek Madolorian Mercenary. He proceeded to get down on one knee and propose, as well as telling her they leave in the morning for a cruise.
After the excitement of the engagement the judges adjourned to make their decisions and during that I came to learn that the ultimate bait to catch cosplayers is fresh French fries, they swarmed their friend who brought some with.
Gaming Rooms
Finally let’s talk about the gaming. There were 3 gaming rooms essentially, one for classic consoles off the expo hall, one for online gaming, and one for arcade and pinball games. In the arcade game area I was able to experience classic games such as Tron, getting to control the light cycles and tank from the film. Also I got to play in the motion simulator Star Wars game controlling an A-wing in the battle of Hoth. Finally around the outer hallway were pinball machines. My favorite was the custom-made Walking Dead machine.
The crowning achievement of this con was how they were able to acquire and display the one of a kind videogame system the SNES-CDROM/Playstation. This was a collaboration between Nintendo and Sony prior to Sony releasing their own console. It was an add on the Super Nintendo System which used a CD based game versus a cartridge. There is supposedly only one in existence and someone through some back-alley channels was able to acquire it as well as the disk needed to use the system.
