American Madness 5

Flickr pictures here.
Warning, incoming wall of text.

So yeah last week was American Melty 5.
The flight was from JFK to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Orange County, then ride from Orange County airport to Temecula.
Met Rithli at JFK.
Flying sure has changed, only one bag now and they counted a backup and a laptop as two bags.
I had to pay 15 bucks for basically taking a pillow and a Standard Edition Joystick with me.
Also fagged out and brought along the sadlife Touhou plushies because I smelled stupid photograph opportunities.
Rithli actually had an 800$ or so camera along he wanted to try for his freelance graphics design work so he has some of the stupid plushy pictures as well.
Flight delayed (standard), we basically hit Orange County at rush hour time.
In California.
Awesome timing.
A thing about California traffic vs New York traffic, they are both terrible, however they differ in their terribleness.
Where as New York is windy ass streets and one way signs making it so you can never go directly to where you want, California is FIVE LANES of cars not moving.
Seriously.
Also we have to pick up HF-Blade who suddenly decided even though he has a car he does not want to drive.
Well actually he didn't have his car.
EITHER WAY the ride took entirely too long and we ended up arriving really late.
Stopped at an in an' out along the way, burgers were really decent for the price!
Never seen an in and out before in New York by the way, fast food franchises all seem different there.
Also Californian weather is amazingly amazing.
First thing I noticed was how warm it was, when I was going to JFK in the morning I left something in the car (receipt and directions!) by mistake so I had to walk back from the train stop.
My hands were going numb from the cold.
So yeah sort of a blur I remember playing SFIV and IaMP and watching Bellreisa rage play Comic in IaMP right off the bat (bad idea.)
Korean BBQ the next day, Bell's table destroyed the place, they started bringing out frozen meat.
Bleah it's been a week I don't quite remember the games, I just remember killing Swedish in Iamp, then Malty killed me a bunch while giggling, then holy shit Sp00ky is better and won more than he lost against me.
Didn't play Bell, probably for the best.
Oh right played against Comic some but I was sort of out of it then, didn't want to think.
Pho for dinner I think?
Poverty East Coast games, someone brought out Power Stone 2.
Then Bushido Blade 2, which it seems I missed when playing IaMP with spooky, though I came after and destroyed tempered.
Aika was harder plus whenever we went into mashing game I forgot you could back off so we would beat the ever living fuck out of the sticks until our arms hurt.
I was winning more than I lost though, then I settled into watching tempered do two hit frog combos.
In Bushido Blade 2, there's a girly kid whose projectile is a frog which makes any female character DROP her weapon and fall down, practically guaranteeing an instant kill.
Aika insisted on using a female character so tempered kept frogging her.
The funny thing is you could reversal frog, a sword could be going toward your throat and the frog would deflect it, make her drop the weapon and fall down.
All in all though aika seemed to be better, even with cheesy counterpick 2 hit kill tempered frogs.
Next poverty game was PowerStone 2.
I sat out for a little before playing but I noticed a trend.
Basically, XIE WOULD ALWAYS WIN.
Hustler.
No one else would go for him either, he'd run around collecting gems then supering the fuck out of everyone.
And then ANOTHER hustler joined, Malty, giggling the entire time, and for the first time Xie was losing games regularly.
Both of those clowns knew the broke characters too. (ninja girl and main character)
Last poverty game was Project Justice, which quite a few people knew.
I was really tired by then though so I only played one game with my scrub tennis loli.
Unfortunately Rithli and I forgot to play Vampire Savior.
Woops.
We hit the Korean BBQ place again the next day, but our table didn't go for the all you can eat this time, instead we all ordered SooDoonBu.
Unfortunately I find tofu very bland so I learned that SooDoonBu really isn't for me.
The Bul-Gok-Ki was good though.
SFIV tourney this day.
Sucked, went 0 and 2, I played 2nd place (jeffm, using balrog) first round and second round I played Dippy, using Chun Li.
Balrog is already terrible for Rose, and I had never played Dippy's Chun Li, or any Chun Li for that matter.
Not sure what normals are good against her, she was beating a lot of my pokes out.
Ironically, the guy who would have won the entire thing free (Justus, using Gen and random), left the day before, along with Stormlocke, who used Balrog, and who I thought was better than jeffm's rog.
In the end jiyuna the clown car won using Sagat.
Dohoho.

Flight back was delayed some 2-3 hours again, thank you America Airlines.
Got back way too late to take the last train home, stayed at Sp00ky's, didn't go into work and took and extra day (tuesday) off.
Tinshi and Zar came by later, got to watch the hilarity as both insisted on using pad because the first two rounds of the gamestop tourney I had missed going to because of AM5 were forced on pad.
Tinshi played blanka vs Zar Sagat
Then got to watch hilarious pad zangief vs pad sagat, which was making Zar rage so hard.

Anyway I've probably forgotten tons of shit but that's it for now.
Oh right, kijea (mech mbac player/aba ggac player/gilgamesh fuc player, best mbac in the usa at the moment) kept moving my plushies over to the Guilty Gear display.
Lost to Dippy in the sad life competition however as he brought a dakimura.
That eyepatch girl from Ikkitousen lol.

U MAD?

Something I knew before but only realized yesterday.
I have played the old school Street Fighting games VERY LITTLE.
I have played a grand total of TWO GAMES of Super Turbo in my life.
I've almost exclusively played new poverty/doujin fighting games.
You know, air dashes and stuff.
Even Vampire Savior feels like it belongs in the "new style" of fighting games because of its movement and play.

And you know why i only realized yesterday?
CAUSE I FUCKING SUCK AT SFIV.
Like never have I raged so hard at a fighting game that wasn't IaMP.
Freaking clownface EDIBLE, of all people, was going random select and basically destroying me while I was trying to play somewhat seriously.
It was really really idiotic.
Really unsafe move into ex anything all day.
Mashing reversals when I fucked up the c.mp qcb lk link (yes it's a weird link, not a buffer, feels odd)
Mashing reversals after getting hit on the ground by c.hp because THAT MOVE IS INSANE NEGATIVE ON HIT.
On and on.
My first round online in this game ended with me getting perfected by spin stick Zangief.
I lost like 15 matches in a row before I even scratched Edible's random roster win run. (How is that for alliteration?)
Towards the end of the session I was like fuck it let's see if I can do this shit and picked random.
Got Honda, and proceeded to basically destroy his mashy Rufus with equally mashy Honda.
EX butts EX Ochioed EX hands and headbutts all day, I completely crushed him.
Hell if I can win with Rose when I'm trying to think against that character.
Fucking terrible and just made me rage more that I could win with spazz hands.

Man, I fucking suck.
U MAD?
YES, I'M MAD.

Also, got the SE stick, took out the fucking washer of doom that scratches the PCB (thanks again MadCatz), took like two hours or something and cut myself.
I actually unlocked almost all the characters (except Seth, fuck him) with pad first, but like my thumb started hurting plus XBOX pads are the shittiest shit you will ever play fighting games on.

I need to play at least 1000 more matches I feel before I begin to get anywhere near competent level in this game.

The "truth" of TGA

This post is so real it hurts to read.
To have everything you worked for just die like that, I can't imagine how it feels.

Edit: He removed the post, probably because it was insanely depressing and suicidal and angry.

50% of charges dropped against Pirate Bay on second day

What has been shown in court today is that the prosecutor cannot prove that the .torrent files he is using as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker.

Woops?
You know, they really should have...figured that out before the trial started.

I'm all for nuclear power but...

So yeah, a British nuke sub and a French nuke sub COLLIDED in the Atlantic.
Both had sonar but of course both had awesome sonar jammers so we're back to square one.
Seriously though just makes me a TAD uneasy.

American Iamp 5?

I've made a terrible mistake.

Doujin Rice

Zepy reports circle Tsudoitei will be selling doujin-made rice.
As in Akita Komachi rice with a picture of Komachi on it.
The circle owner apparently is a farmer, so it will be grown by the circle also.

Rocket science

Now this is pretty cool, seems like China has built the highest suspension bridge in the world.
Their choice of cable spanning?
Not kites (Niagara Falls), not a helicopter (Akashi Kaikyo), not boats (Brooklyn), but rockets.

Poverty Ball Z

Welp, what can I say?

RIP Tokyo Game Action

Tokyo Game Action is officially closed forever. With no income and other problems due to the flood, we are drowning in bills it is impossible to recover and reopen.

To pay our creditors and to prevent my family from being thrown out on the street (literally), I am left with no choice but to auction all of TGA's assets.

TGA will be auctioning everything we have in May to pay our bills. Every game, pcb, poster, keychain, chair, plate, fork, Arch stand, figures, software, bowling ball, everything in TGA has to be sold.

Why him, of all the arcade operators in the US?
It's a terrible thing but I wish Planet Zero burned to the ground in retaliation, just to even the karma scale.
You owe us at least that, fucking cosmic deity of your choice.

I always get shitty housemates

So, anyone who somehow has heard me ranting about housemates will be familiar with the story.
First guy was a scumbag, didn't pay rent, then managed to get the entire place labeled as an illegal boarding house and shut down.
Went and found a new place.
Second guy was a stoner, brought over tons of friends who stole my shit, got evicted.
Now once again, the OTHER housemate (there were originally 4 of us, one got evicted, now three) is inviting friends over to sleep, and they are stealing my shit.
Yesterday they emptied out my orange juice jug and then, get this, FILLED IT HALFWAY WITH WATER.
Like wow, just wow.
Hell they'd have left a better impression if they left it empty.
But filling it halfway with water is just a fucking insult.
I'm sick of this shit, once again, another shitty housemate or maybe it's his shitty friends I don't care anymore.
GTFO.
Done.

Edit: Ahahah oh WOW. I didn't even notice until I went out for groceries this week.
They stole the two Breyer tubs of ice cream in the freezer too!

Star Ocean 4

Haha, "research papers."

Hard to tell if it's the same as SO3 Welch, I don't think she is.

Goonswarm wins Eve Online

http://www.kugutsumen.com/showthread.php?t=3604
Long story short, in a game where corporate espionage griefing is tolerated and even encouraged, where people will make internet friends over the course of years just to lure you somewhere and blow up your internet spaceship and take your internet corpse, the largest alliance in the game was disbanded from within by a traitor working for Goonswarm.

Eve always looked too boring on the micro-level and too serious on the macro-level, but the faction interactions of the game are truly fascinating.

Season 2 Haruhi a huge troll?

J-cast news reports that they have contacted Kadokawa for comment regarding the revelation that Haruhi TV series is starting in April, and Kadokawa says “Oh it’s a repeat telecast of the first season”.

So yeah, I was going to post on the announcement that Season 2 would start in April.
Now it seems like I was correct to wait on this!
But man, that's just too mean Kyoto Animation.
Too mean.

Plushies

So these came in the mail on Monday from a friend.


Sakuya just uses IRC at work.


Remilia hates Lipton but she'll drink it anyway.

Oh God I'm already posing them in cute situations.
Arghhhh.
And then also I heard that they released TWO MORE plushies.


Patchouli


Alice

Ugh Yen exchange rate SUCKS so much right now I know these will cost a shitload again (not saying how much Sak and Remi cost.)
I don't really care about Alice that much but Patchouli will probably be bought regardless of how expensive she is.

How to play Chun Li in SFIV

All you really need to know.

EXAMU does it again

So the upgrade from Arcana Heart 2 Suggoi! (called 2.5) to 2.6...
Will be a PAY UPGRADE AGAIN.
And it's 102,900 yen (about 1000, but more with the current exchange rate)
Adds balance changes and training mode and NOTHING ELSE.

Ok, so Examu pulled this shit before with Arcana Heart to Arcana Heart Full for SBO.
After lots of protests from arcade operators, they lowered the price to around 80K yen instead of 140K.
Then...they waited until this year's Super Battle Opera announcement and went ahead and did it again!
The full PCB is 176,400 yen.
Which means that if you had waited and never bought AH2 or Suggoi! until now, you'd have saved something like 2000+ dollars.
Operators are understandably livid, including the ones I know in the USA.
Training mode doesn't help either, arcade operators in Japan hate that shit as it increases credit time from 2-3 minutes to 5 minutes, plus in Japan everyone is polite so people don't interrupt training mode.

There's already bokutari (ripoff) threads on JPBBS, but more than likely arcade operators will bite it in the ass again and pay for the upgrade, as it's required for SBO.

[11:28] <@fubarduck> they have a way to fund Demon Bride now!
[11:28] <@fubarduck> since THAT'S not going to be purchased