My Famicase Exhibition - 2014

10 years of creativity.

My Famicase Exhibition is a Famicom-based art exhibit held in Tokyo. The first one was in 2005, meaning that this is the tenth consecutive year. The premise is simple: design your own Famicom label for a fake game. Work can be created by teams or individuals, but only one submission per entrant is allowed.

This is such a great idea. And the fact that you only don't actually have to create the game itself is pretty nice. The only limitation is your own creativity. Entrants also come up with descriptions, characters, gameplay, and backstories for their fake games. Some of the entries are serious in nature, others rather humorous.

Check out the link at the top for the whole exhibit.

The exhibition is held in METEOR, a store in Tokyo specializing in retro gaming. It's not the biggest place in the world, but there's a lot of neat stuff inside (including a lot of those ridiculously expensive The King of Games clothing items). I am quite content with checking out submissions from here, but if you're super curious, feel free to take a virtual tour.

There's a wide range of submissions every year. Some entrants aim to replicate a certain style, others pay very obvious homages to existing carts, and others choose to be completely original. It's all good stuff, and the only rule is that you can't use existing copyrighted material (characters, etc.).

Every year has a lot of great art, so I would highly recommend checking out submissions from 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005.

When I was first exposed to Japanese retro cartridges all those years ago, my initial feeling was straight-up jealously. Why the heck are we stuck with all this boring gray stuff? And it hasn't always been that way. The Nintendo of America series Game & Watch boxes were way more colorful and artistic than their Japanese counterparts (although I still really like the Japanese boxes). All I know is, I'm envious of all the cool Famicom carts, while I'm stuck here with my dull gray monotony.

Wow. It is so exciting. I can hardly contain this bottomless well of energy.

Celebrating video games is cool! Nintendo is cool! Combining the two well is really cool!