I’ve got a confession to make: I once dressed as a video game character for Halloween... as an adult. Although there’s a (somewhat deserved) stigma attached with cosplay, I’m not embarrassed to admit to this act, because I’m a nerd and I had a great time dressed as this character. Plus, it was for Halloween, and I don’t really count that as cosplay.

Enough excuses. I will now reveal the one piece of visual evidence from my night dressed as a someone from a video game. I’ll also show you the one special touch that made my costume cooler than the average person dressed like this character.

Oh, you had better believe I’m making you click “read more” to see this picture.

Hint: I’m the one on the left

It’s-a-me, Mario! A few years back, my fiancé and I decided it would be fun to attend my friend's annual Halloween bash as Mario and the Princess. I didn’t want to half-ass the costume, but I’m ultra-lazy so I put Erin in charge of the outfits.

She found the overalls (apparently it’s tough to find cheap, used overalls for dudes), made the cool-looking cartoon-like gold snaps to them, and then made the hat. Well, she made the patch for the hat and then spent quite a bit of time dying the hat red.

Her costume was a bit easier to put together because she was already cute, and princess-like dresses aren't that difficult to find thanks to some terrible choices by prom-going teens back in the '80s.

The coolest part about our costumes was that we each had a Game Boy Advance SP attached. Mine had Super Mario World and hers had Super Mario Bros. 2. People could come up and play the game, and we’d reward their effort with a gold chocolate coin. It was a lot of fun, and it was also a great way to meet people, though for some reason she had lots of dudes that wanted to play and I didn’t have a ton of chicks waiting for the “Aaron Thomas Mario Experience.”