Over the weekend, I did my first out-of-town anime convention. This was part of my goals for this year to do more traveling for conventions. I had a blast and my booth ended up getting more engagement than previous Anime Fests.
On Saturday, the day before the convention, we did the two-hour-long drive from Erie, PA to Pittsburgh, and stayed the night where the Anime Fest would take place the following day. My hotel room had a beautiful view of Interstate 79, though I wouldn’t see myself living by an interstate highway because of the fumes from the passing cars and trucks. I could not sleep that night due to excitement, though it wasn’t as bad as the Nintendo Switch 2 launch last summer.
My day began like normal as with past Anime Fests. It was much different due to me being able to get downstairs, eat breakfast at the lobby, and go straight to the convention. It almost didn’t happen because right when I had just finished setting up, the fire alarms went off, leading to me concerned that something blew up inside the hotel. It was reported to be a false alarm and nothing was going on. The hotel staff confirmed the cause was a patron’s perfume. This whole thing forced everyone to evacuate the hotel in temperatures as low as -17°C (roughly 0°F). No injuries were reported.
Anyway, the convention saw my booth seeing more visitors than I’ve had at previous conventions, as mentioned. This event marked the unveiling of a brand new Touhou Project fangame in the works: Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel. Ironically, many of the people who played had never played a Touhou Project game before nor even heard of the franchise! As a result, none of them could get to the midboss! While I have had a few players familiar with Touhou Project stop by my booth, I have yet to see one Touhou cosplayer at an Anime Fest.
Critical reception on the kiosk demo has mostly been positive, aside from difficulty balancing issues that I have to fix and one bug regarding the health that had to be addressed for the next Anime Fest. Funny thing was when my Steam Deck would go to sleep, I would accidentally push the power button causing it to enter a deep sleep when most players can just push any button to wake it.
My seat at the event was perfect – I got to see all of the panels that were taking place, including Anime Trivia, the Lip-Sync and Karaoke Contests, cosplay gatherings, and discussions relating to the guests’ experience of working in the anime industry. In between, they also showed a bunch of anime openings and theme songs.
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