Cartridge Art – My Famicase Exhibition 2019

I was very happy to selected to be part of My Famicase Exhibition again, this year with『 ねるTHON! チャンピオンスリーパー 』(NERUTHON! Champion Sleeper) which was displayed at METEOR at its new location in Nishiogi-kita, Tokyo along with over 200 other works from artists around the world! The exhibition ran from April 27th to May 26th 2019.

For this design, I came up with the title first, a play on words combing ねる (meaning to sleep or lie down) and marathon. I wanted to do something cute and comfy and was inspired by slice-of-life manga and anime I enjoy like Azumanga Daioh and Nichijou. Falling asleep under a kotatsu while playing the game felt perfect and I was really happy with the end result.

I also tried to make this design more “authentic” Famicom-looking in how I arranged the labels, many of which are playful references to real logos like the Hudson Soft bee, classic IREM game number, and Nintendo and Famicom itself with 金天堂 “Kintendo”, the Pulse Line design, etc. I also put a lot of details into accurately drawing the console setup with the two extra pads based on the Hudson Joycard and a real multiport adapter.