Super Pinny Bros.

Since PAX East 2017 is just a little over a month away and because I received a special little package in the mail today (no, not my badges) I felt like a little mini-PAX article was warranted. I’ll save my bigger PAX rants closer to March, but in the meantime the delivery I opened tonight has got my PAX fever at an all time high and I needed to gush about it a little bit.

Ever since PAX started doing official pins for the different PAX shows, I’ve dabbled. Some might say, well everyone on the PtC team definitely would at least, that I do a little more than dabble, but that’s irrelevant and I don’t feel like arguing tonight. Pin collecting and pin trading isn’t a hobby that is exclusive to PAX, nor were they they first to do something like this, but for me being someone who is so enamored with gaming culture and have such a strong connection with video games it’s much more than just a gotta-catch-em-all type of deal.

My pinny journey began when PAX East had their first show pin set in 2013. I enjoyed my experiences at PAX so much that I thought having a souvenir pin with the PAX logo and the year would be a really sweet way for me to not only remember the event, but I could keep it on my lanyard as a form of street cred and every year I would just get the next year’s pin set and continue that trend. Oh how wrong I was, because as you may have guessed, it didn’t stop there. Now besides the pins that Penny Arcade offers to represent the show or their webcomics, certain developers or PAX partners at each show will have their own pins, usually exclusive to that specific PAX show. Just like with most collectibles, some pins are easier to obtain, some are harder to find, and some you can even obtain by playing certain games at developer’s booths or visiting certain areas of the show floor.

So after deciding to continue my trend of acquiring the PAX show pin set year after year, I also started collecting pins for certain games that I love. This rounds out my pin collection and the point of why I do it. I get to show off my PAX tenure and show some pride in the games that matter to me. This leads me to what I received in the mail today. Finally, the one developer I have always wanted to make official Pinny Arcade pins, Nintendo, has gone and done just that. Last year at PAX Aus 2016, Nintendo released a 4-pin set representing Super Mario Bros. in delicious 8-bit style. Thankfully, they added these glorious pins to the official Pinny Arcade website so I was able to order these beauties. Now hopefully Nintendo continues the trend and makes some Zelda pins next, because you know, I hate money.