Wondercon 2009

This past weekend I went and checked out WonderCon — the local comic, movies and video game convention that’s put together by the Comic Con people here in San Francisco. I went all three days and really had one of the best times I have ever had at a non-all gaming convention. There wasn’t a huge gaming presence there; Capcom had playable Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 4 and Bionic Commando systems there. EA was there with Nvidia showing off Nvidia’s new Dual GeForce GTX 280s card that is compatible with Burnout Paradise and makes the game a 3D experience. Honestly, playing a videogame in 3D is very impressive for about 10 minutes, after that it just gives you a headache. In 3D there isn’t much detail and it actually dumbs down the graphics by a lot. Cool in theory but not so much in practice. Also, Nintendo had a pretty cool set up for the new Fire Emblem.

The highlight of the show was definitely the shopping. At Comic Con you really can’t maneuver your way around the show floor too well because there are just so many people everywhere. WonderCon was busy, but not enough to be an issue, so shopping was not hard at all. There was this great t-shirt booth that I had shopped at while at Comic Con and I bought some really kick ass shirts. The shop is called Stylin Online and they have the biggest selection of gaming/comic/movies t-shirts I have ever seen. I picked up a new Star Wars shirt, a Zelda shirt, and a Serenity shirt.

There was an amazing selection of action figures and little toys everywhere. It was all about finding what you want and shopping around to see who had the best deals. My favorite booth for toys and things was Tao’s Toys. The booth had so many different Star Wars toys, gaming toys and just random things I wanted. The guys were awesome too and let me cut some deals with them. Here I picked up some Star Wars plushies I had been needing (Darth Vader, Boba Fett, Chewie and R2), the Yoda backpack I had been wanting since Comic Con and Yoda’s Force FX lightsaber. I also picked up some cool Resident Evil and Star Wars patches at a few other booths.

The second day I dressed up as Supergirl and walked around in the “celebrity” section of the show. This was another part of the convention where I prefer WonderCon to Comic Con because the celebrities were not being overrun by fans since the crowds weren’t insane like at Comic Con. At WonderCon things were more personal. I was able to meet Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb from Firefly and Serenity), the original Michael Myers, the actor who played Jason from Friday the 13th part 6, Ray Park (Darth Maul and Snake Eyes in the new G.I. Joe movie), and Daniel Logan (young Boba Fett in Episode 2) who was very nice and I had a great time talking to. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were there as well but charging $35 a piece to meet them and $100 for a signature, so needless to say I didn’t get to meet them. Everyone was super nice, except the guy who played Jason, he seemed like he thought he was way above us “geeks” at the nerd-fest.

There was a lot of great cosplay, and of course there was a lot of bad cosplay. The best costume I saw there was Bumble Bee from Transformers. The detail in the costume was just amazing and the thing even lit up.

My favorite costumes of the entire show had to be the guys dressed up like the “Yep Yep Yep” guys from Sesame Street. They were so funny and never broke character.

Other costumes that were worth mentioning were the Fairy Godmothers from Sleeping Beauty, and an adorable little girl dressed as the Joker.

I will definitely be going to Comic Con this year, but WonderCon is just a better convention for a more personal and smaller crowd where you can see what you want to see without having to elbow your way through crowds. I had a great time and I already can’t wait for next year.