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Cybil and I left to go. waffle turned out having things to do that weekend so he didn't
make it to this (actually he just hates listening to Cybil sing all the way top a place
^^;) We arrived around midnight to find Ben was over at Genes playing fighting games (hes
a fighter yo) so began the games! Gene showed me how para para works and since I had already "practiced" most routines I was already scoring massively! its not overly difficult and its so much fun. after about an hour I was already scoring nearly A and S's on some of my favorite eurobeat songs. Genes place was really cool. he had his kitchen decked out with tons of pokemon figurines and videogame collectibles (Um Jammer fridge poster!) he had an entire table for Lego toys. castle, spaceship, and giant vehicles. Oh man, his computer was the bomb! Macintosh OS X and it had such wonderful graphic effects. very clean and really fun to use, it was like an interactive Flash movie for an operating system. who gives a fly about windows? hehehe. Gene had a really nice sound system in his apartment too! speakers wired nicely around the house, and a keyboard in the back of the living room which he showed Cybil and I his skills. he played some final fantasy, zelda, and other really great songs. Gene man; you got talent!! fast foward to Jacon. we left early but before arriving we just had to get a banana shake. it was so rich oh man, its addictive! haha. The con was located on a college campus so finding it required you to really know where you were going, but I love UCF so finding it was no problem. the first thing we went for; DDR! ^_^ they had two topway (ack!) pads all set up and the game playing on a projected screen with pretty decent sound. most people haven't played the game before and were slipping up a lot. Gene and I arrived and got CRAZY reactions from the crowd. some people were a bit miffed that we showed them up, but the general audience gave us really exited comments. "Oh wow! look at all the perfects!" "They're so FAST!" "How do they DO that?!" it was truly great to find appreciation like this. we didnt even play to get a high score. we just played to impress the crowd with spins and playing in reverse. there were a few really cute costumes at the con. nothing extremely great but a few nicely made ones. My fav would be the little girl who made a Vivi Final Fantasy IX costume. she had a giant hat for it too, and she even had a staff! Other fun costumes were a MALE Ulala from Space Channel 5, Yuna from FFX, and Jill of Resident Evil. I talked to a few people from AFO and a few spotted and talked to me. it was good to see the few faces I knew again and now that I know them better we can hang out more at this years AFO2. Dealers room was pretty much like AFOs. there were a few deals here and there but no major gets. I snagged the LAST GameBoyAdvance + MarioAdvance there. I also found the DDR Disney Rave soundtrack which I had been looking for for a long time. I even emailed disney.com trying to get it and still couldn't find it. Met up worth several people at the con I didn't expect to see. Carie, Hex!, David (and his KA-Boom box), Mesaza, Jen, and a few others. I had planned to meet up with Calistrisa and we finally met each other in the dealers room where she was in her kitty costume (even though I had been looking for a Garnet costume). She was going to be in cosplay later on but unfortunately we had other plans. DDR tournament was coming up soon, but so were cosplay photos. I met up with Gecko and Mara of FLCosplay who said they were going to get group pics, but unfortunately I would have to sit through dozens of other groups in order to get to it. Ranma group, FushugiYuugi group, FFIX group.... I just didn't have time; a tournament awaited me. I got a few pictures of individuals all outside (lighting and scenery was great. again- I love UCF) but no group pictures unfortunately. There were 2 tournaments. first was reeked. it was run by mr "Up Yours" man who had never seen DDR before. he was saying the tourney would be score based and you CANT play Paranoia. Why? "Because its too hard" (Puh-leeze). ok...well Gene and I step up and play a song on "Another" mode (which is EASILY harder than paranoia) and we stun the crowd. but we ended up not playing in that tourney because the mat was just way too ghetto and didn't respond well (no wonder everyone sucked at that game...heh, just kidding). Second tourney was much more lax. The bandanna girl running it was really cool. she actually WANTED me to be in this one to "Showoff" my freestyling. she signed me up for me and ran to the dealers room when it began so I could be in it. I picked the working mat this time, heh. It all went well. funny enough the younger crowd kids (ages 11-15) were better than the older kids. One kid I was talking to even knew Shin! that's how he got into DDR actually which was really cool. Well it came to the final round... me versus Male Ulala of Space channel 5. one girl was even taping the tourney which probably looks really dumb because I cant look good on the mats =P. The bandanna tourney girl was all "Cmon, do a showoff song! I want to see more showoff moves" (gee... she even took pictures x_X) well we had fun, and though i didn't win squat it was really cool to just get responses from a new DDR crowd. if only more of the people watching came to Rockys later on to play with us. Rockys Replay is Awesome! Ive never seen such a friendly crowd and cool manager. Free water, complimentary cookies. its got a bar, restaurant and a nice selection of games. they actually have people who know what DDR is there too! So much better than the snobby Atlanta crowd. Few by few more people showed up to play, but unfortunately most of the random people we told to go never showed (Calistrisa and Keyla got sick =[). We stayed there all hours of the night playing Korean 3rd Mix. Diana, Terra, and Mattie were already there playing when we showed. David, Hex!, Carie, and DDRei crew showed up later through the night. we had our little routines and such worked out. not near the same reaction as Jacon but there wasn't that large of an audience at the arcade anyway (the place isn't that big really). They had Police911 which I pulled a few rounds in. Another game closely resembling CrazyTaxi on Dreamcast was so much fun Gene and I spent some major time playing. we were playing against each other in a race so whenever our cars came close we would quickly bash each other offroad! ^_^ it was great. They didn't have 4thMixPlus like they planned, but I had lot of fun anyway just playing Korean 3rd Mix with friends. Heh, Dyo and Zarr Sadus; the guys from ddrei.com showed up, and we got to talk about our websites and such. They played on SSR mode and did pretty well, although I'm more freestyle than score player so I didn't really find a reason to get much pics because they would all look the same. I hope next time Rockys Replay will allow us to videotape because id love to get some footage of us playing on tape! Most of that night I spent going through alllll of Gene's Bemani games. Drummania took
a bit of getting used to but in all...its just like guitar freaks and I don't quite have
the curve for that. Keyboard Mania is the same way. I like it about as much as beatmania,
but 24 keys compared to umm...5 ^_^; its gonna take a bit getting used to. Dance Summit
2001 was fun as always but after awhile I just got bored with it. its much better with
more people to cooperatively play with. TV DJ was very very strange. Genes knowledge of
japanese language helped me getting started on the game but eh...how to explain... its
like mixing SpaceChannel5 with JetSetRadio graphics and Parappas controls. I liked the
characters and idea of the game though. Samba Samba! Gene really didn't care much at all
for this title but I just HAD to play this before I left, and oh gosh I like it! Es Muy
Bien! I took to it even faster than ParaPara, getting As all the way once I got the rhythm
of the game. It was the import so no Ricky Martin or ReelBigFish. i gotta get 2000 version
now and Maraccas!
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