TMMN Travel Log: A Look Back at the August That Was

This year has certainly been different than I thought it would be going in. If you’ve been wondering why posting around here has been a bit different since January, well, that’s the short of it.

I need to get the wheels turning again, and figured that maybe writing about it would help. Fortunately, a good chunk of what’s gone on has involved Mega Man in some way or another, so I thought maybe I could talk about it here. Take out three Copipis with one charged shot, as they say. (Okay, no one says that. But they should.)

Aside from trying to find paying work in a dwindling market, I’ve been picking up some jobs for UDON here and there. One — which took a lot more time and energy than I expected — took place over a few months earlier in the year, as I set to work digging up art to be used in the upcoming Mega Man Legacies Official Complete Works art book.

In some ways, the scope of what I was seeking out was very limited — basically, nothing that would have been in the previous Official Complete Works collections. So for Classic, that meant anything that came out after Mega Man 10, for example. But other series are being covered as well, such as Mega Man Legends and Mega Man ZX.

I wound up talking about what I did on Twitter while waiting on a flight last month (more on that in a bit), and Protodude rounded that info up here, if you’re interested.

I do want to emphasize that I was basically working autonomously from a sort of guideline, but there’s no guarantee that everything will make it in. In fact, I wound up coming across so much stuff that it’s probably more of a guarantee that all of it won’t make it in, but here’s the thing: Time will tell. I have no idea what’s making it in, and what isn’t. A lot of it is down to Capcom, and if high resolution assets are available for so much of what I found, among other factors. It’s out of my hands now, but I tried to include everything within the overall scope of the project. And did I mention that there was a lot?

To put it another way: I grabbed them all, and I’m letting UDON/Capcom sort them out. (I will be so thrilled if one treasure cache I happened across in my digging makes it in, though!)

Oh, and there’s no Mega Man X DiVE in there, either. That’s because it’s getting its own dedicated art book, and I recently had the pleasure of copy editing that.

Many talents I have, yes?

447 words, and I’m only now starting on the stuff that came up beginning in August. Y’know, the title of this piece.

It all began on August 1st. With timing like that, you’d think the universe was trying to keep to a schedule.

As we made our way to Washington, D.C. for Otakon, we had a stopover in Montreal. Unfortunately, during the flight there, we were informed of a six-hour delay in our connecting flight, after being told at boarding that we should be able to easily make the connecting flight. This would be the start of a trend of delays and cancellations of virtually every flight we would be taking this month.

Better still? They lost our checked suitcase on the way down. Fortunately, they were able to quickly find it and get it to us at our hotel the next day. Problem solved, and that’s that, right?

We’ll come back to that.

After finally getting to our hotel and crashing in bed before others from our group arrived (I’d been awake for some 24 hours and counting at this point).

Otakon was fun. I got to meet some people, check out some neat panels, and even see some Tenchi Universe for the first time in more than two decades.

For the occasion, I brought some Mega Man stuff to wear.

This was my first Otakon since the pandemic, and I just wasn’t quite up to doing a full cosplay this year. But just before the convention, I saw an episode of Style Theory that talked a bit about anime influencing fashion (and vice-versa), including some looks based on “Disney Bounding” — basically more casual garb inspired by colors and such from different characters that try to evoke the look, rather than mimic it.

After our suitcase arrived (I had my stuff in my carry-on, but I held off in solidarity with my wife), I wore my own sort of attempt/take on the concept, which you can see above at left. And by “attempt/take on the concept,” I mean I probably overdid it and made it way too obvious, what with my MegaMix Mega Man shirt, plush Mega Buster, and vintage Mega Man hat from the Consumer Electronics Show. Which was on purpose, but I don’t know if it vibed well.

Oh well. It was a fun experiment, but after that, I decided to stick with my more normal look, as seen on the right. Yes, that’s how I normally tend to look. All of it. (Okay, it’s not always a Mega Man-related shirt, but still.)

I also got a small haul while I was there, too!

There were some other things, namely some various snacks and foodstuffs that I can’t get in Canada, but for Mega Man stuff, I got a pretty good score… if completely by accident.

First, there was this infamous little DVD set. I never got a copy, because as much as I love the cartoon, I already own the original ADV releases, and without the bonus content that we were going to put in it, the only reason to get it is the really nice box. So, it just became a low-priority thing for me.

A friend wound up picking it up, I think he said as a gag gift for another friend, but upon hearing I didn’t have this already (and after a few rounds of “Are you sure?”), he gave it to me. Score!

My other big get… hoo-boy. I’m finally starting to get over my guilt over that one.

I’ve been wanting this Mega Man 11 Kotobukiya model kit for a while — especially after my wife absconded with our Mega Man 11 “Cable Guy” controller holder over into her workspace. Both to have a figure of some kind of the 11 design, and to have a helmetless Mega Man figure (yeah, I know Jada is making one, but that’s only one of the two things I liked here).

So naturally, when a friend who’d found a vendor in the dealer’s room carrying Kotobukiya Mega Man kits (that I’d missed) texted my wife (I forget what I was doing to not see it myself) to say that they had one left there for $9.99, I urgently and enthusiastically asked that he get it for me, and we’d pay him back, and then some. And so he did.

Unfortunately for me, I missed the “90” part that prefaced the $9.99. I’m pretty sure my face paled. Not that it’s a bad price for it, once you factor in shipping and other such things, but… as you can see, my enthusiasm might have been a bit misplaced. I was hoping to get lucky enough to find a deal, and thought I had. Whoops.

Still, after some reassurances it was okay, it was coming home with me. I packed it in our suitcase, along with other stuff like the DVD set, some business cards I’d picked up, and more. After all, what were the odds that they would lose the same suitcase twice in the same trip?

Getting home was probably even worse than the trip there, as we had a stopover in Atlanta and found out right as we were taking off that our connecting flight had been cancelled. When we arrived, there was no one at the counters for the airline to help accommodate us or anything, and I wound scrambling all over the place, in and out of security to try to get something figure out so we wouldn’t be stuck in the airport terminal all night.

On the bright side, at least there was a Bojangles in the airport. Less bright-side is that they were basically out of most of their menu when we got there, and ran out of even more between when we ordered and when we got our food. I have no idea where the chicken thighs suddenly materialized from, but those were an acceptable substitution for the wings, at least. It was all but cold by the time we managed to make an attempt at a shuttle to our hotel before just calling a Lyft or something, but I relished it just the same.

And if you’ve never had Bojangles? Imagine something like Popeyes, but better (and I like Popeyes).

After eating and collapsing until the next morning, we returned to the airport, and I went back to the Bojangles to get us breakfast, but they were out of the country ham biscuits they told me they’d have. Damn. So, I got some other food, and we ate that on the plane.

We finally made it back to Toronto, got through customs and such, and you’ll never guess what we soon discovered.

They lost the same suitcase twice in the same trip.

So bye-bye Mega Man DVD set, Kotobukiya model kit, Megamix t-shirt (a favorite of mine), and all that other fun (and business) stuff. Air Canada had no idea where it was, and it wound up getting bounced back and forth between them and United for a while there. Let this be a lesson, kids: Never check your luggage if you can help it. At least not anything valuable. The odds something will get lost are always high, apparently.

We got a few days to relax and catch up on a few things before we had to head out again, this time to Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. But before that, a special package arrived.

It was my prize for winning the #MegaMayChallenge hosted by Mega Man World!

Picked for me was none other than a copy of the very same Rockman DASH demo that I’ve spoken of here before, the one that made me fall in love with the then-new (and unreleased) series instantly. Even though I had no clue what they were saying, at that!

The funny part is, I had already been looking at getting a copy of the demo already, purely for sentimental value. So I was thrilled to be able to finally have it in such a way.

But that wasn’t all! As a bonus, they sent me a display piece for the Rockmand DASH 2 gashapon figures, which each came with a part for a Volnutt build-a-figure! I may still have no MegaMan Volnutt figures in my collection, but at least I’ve got this now, as it sits displayed proudly over my desktop workspace.

Friday came, and we headed out, but guess what? Our flight was delayed! Enough so that we couldn’t make the scheduled time for Nadia’s panel, and it had to be postponed to the following day.

At least I got to start the day (sort of. After clearing airport security and customs, anyway) off right at Wahlburger’s with a Super Melt, tater tot poutine, and a Coke.

We arrived that night, had Arby’s for dinner (oh, how I’ve missed their style of roast beef sandwich since they left Toronto over a decade ago), and spent the following day checking out the con, with her panel that evening.

It took no time at all before I wound up with some swag from one dealer’s dollar bin to carry around with me:

At the top, we have some variants of a Street Fighter comic and the Sonic: Worlds Unite Battles book from the big SEGA/Capcom crossover that mainly focused on Sonic and Mega Man, back in the Archie days. I believe both of these came from some sort of loot crate-type deals. You can see a bit of Sigma in the background on the left there.

I also nabbed a Proto Man air freshener (now sitting above my computer), a paracord bracelet in my two favorite colors, and a not-Speak ‘n Spell magnet for Nadia that’s apparently tied to E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. Then there’s that weird Mega Man plush from Monster Factory. I kinda waffled on getting it, but decided to go for it, once I realized it sort of reminded me of the crude clay Mega Man figure I made (and spoke about with crude illustrations here).

Then there’s the “Multi Pass”. I didn’t realize it was something from The Fifth Element at first glance, and that isn’t why I got it. Rather, it reminded me of some sort of Battle Chip from Mega Man Battle Network — or perhaps the Synchro Chips from the later seasons, kind of. Enough that I thought maybe I could do something with that someday, and it might be worth the buck to possibly find out, rather than saving the dollar and never knowing.

I had an eye on some other stuff around, too. I’ve been on the lookout for a copy of Mega Man 64 on the cheap, just to have one for the collection. There was a Blockbuster light-up sign and a prop Hookshot from The Legend of Zelda I missed out on (I was more interested because it inspired a piece of Nytetrayn’s equipment in Legends of the Halcyon Era) I missed out on, both because they were all sold out before I could return with money.

But one of the best stories I got out of this whole series of events was because I missed out on something.

Nadia had our cash on her, and she was recording an episode for Retronauts while I was looking around (whoops). One item I spotted at one booth was this:

The Mega Man Fully Charged line was never given a proper Canadian release, and I’ve been trying to get my hands on the toys from that line where and when I can (as well as Bandai’s line based on the Ruby-Spears toys from way back when). So far, I’ve only got two of the Drill Schematic Mega Man figures. So when I saw this going for a cool $30, I knew I wanted to go for it. Alas, it was not to be. By the time Nadia was done, we’d met up, and made our way back to the booth, it was gone.

And I’m not even the slightest bit bothered by it.

See, when I asked the guy running the booth about it, he told me that there had been this little girl of about six years of age who had been there earlier. Apparently, she had managed to convince her parents to get it for her, because she loved Mega Man so much.

Yeah. I can’t be upset about that. Heck, I’m glad she got it, and I hope she’s enjoying it. I think it’s going to see more of its intended use from her than it would have from me. I hope that maybe this means we might even cross paths as a part of this fandom someday.

With the rest of the day, we met some people, made some new friends, did the panel, played some games we’d never gotten to before (Super Mario Bros. Special), and went back to our hotel (sharing a ride with the My Life in Gaming guys in the process!). And then came some more strangeness that, yes, is somehow relevant enough to warrant inclusion here.

As we all got out of the vehicle, I noticed a bag left in there. It didn’t belong to any of us, and the driver hadn’t been to the convention before picking us up that day. And yet, it had inside an odd assortment of items that seem like they’d have come from that very dealer’s room, including a copy of Mega Man X7 and a SEGA Saturn controller.

Wild.

And now that bag of odds and ends resides in my possession. Haven’t had any luck finding the owner, no idea if I ever will. But if I don’t, I guess I have another copy of X7 now? Yay? Well, can’t complain about the Saturn controller, even if I still currently lack a Saturn to use it with.

Sadly, while there was one day of convention left, we were only covered for the two, and had to head back Sunday. And wouldn’t you know it? Guess which day and flight was not delayed so that we could stick around and do something!

Returning home, I thought maybe all the ups and downs would be over. Oh, how wrong I was.

Upon getting back, it came to our attention that one of our cats, Tango (yes, named for you-know-who), was not doing very well. We took him to the vet, and that seemed to only make things worse, as he went into steep decline afterward. I could deal with the delays, the cancellations, the travel, the trials and tribulations, the lost luggage and stuff… what I couldn’t deal with was this.

According to the vet, he didn’t seem to be in pain, and the best thing we could do in that case was make him as comfortable as we could until the inevitable occurred. And that’s just what we did.

It took a while, though. Weeks. We kept a close eye on him and took care of him, and had a good few scares that the time had finally come, just for him to continue on about his business, such as it had become. It was very emotionally exhausting, and that gave way to physical exhaustion as well, as Nadia and I would basically take shifts being with him while the other slept. I welcomed the opportunity from UDON to work on the Mega Man X DiVE Official Complete Works book as a means of distracting myself from it for a bit each day.

He passed quietly over the weekend, and we took him to the vet for the last time that rainy Monday morning.

One option for the urn was green, which I was tempted to go with, due to his namesake. But as long as we had him, we so strongly associated him with the dilute orange coat he had, so that just didn’t feel right. That in turn inspired me to (poorly) attempt to recolor a picture of Tango, Mega Man’s robo-feline companion, and my friend/artist for Legends of the Halcyon Era, Victor, helped realize that image as a sort of memorial:

In the wake of Tango’s passing, I’ve received some kind words from friends and members of the community, and some very kind gestures as well, some of which I’ve promised to keep to myself or can’t show just yet.

Since then, we’ve been faced with more ups and downs, probably more than would warrant going in here, but a few in brief: We lost our second of two TVs we had this year, and needing one for the work we do, needed to get a replacement. Somehow, we lost the power cord for our USB hub, which is the only way we can run the Elgato streaming device through Nadia’s laptop, and so our livestreams are on an indefinite hiatus until we can replace that (we tried getting a new hub, and it didn’t work). And work prospects have been a bit thin lately, making replacing this stuff rather costly.

As I said, there have been downs, but also some ups as well. I don’t think anything so grand as to make up for watching your cat die over a number of weeks, but maybe enough to end this on an up note.

For one, I do have some upcoming projects that I can’t talk about yet, but will be happy to share when the time comes.

For another… you’ll never guess what arrived 45 days later (and 45 minutes past the appointed delivery time, no less).

That’s right… we got our missing luggage back.

I’m still in utter disbelief. We had given up on it, and per Air Canada’s request, delivered to them an itemized listing of what needed to be compensated. I can only guess that despite being a drop in the bucket for an airline, maybe it was enough for them to tell someone to find that damn suitcase. And as we’d come to find out, ours wasn’t even a complete listing of stuff in there! For instance, I’d forgotten I packed my Mega Man X “Vampire Hunter” t-shirt (another favorite) in there! Glad to have that back, since they no longer offer it, apparently.

Hmm. I didn’t expect this to go on for so long, but I guess it was a rather eventful month (and then some). So if you made it this far, thank you for enduring me and just getting all this out there. Now I need to turn my focus back to doing other articles and reviews and things here and on TMMN’s sister site, PoisonMushroom.Org. I’ve got a lot of stuff in queue, so I hope you’ll look forward to it!

This would also be a good time to mention that I’m trying to drum up some support for the Nyteworks Ko-fi and Patreon to help cover some of our expenses, and I’ll be posting some articles there early for supporters before they go live on the site. (Not everything, mind.) We would really appreciate the support!