An angry Mach review as of April 30th, 2009.

As everyone who knows me knows, I’m an avid video game player. I like heading to new arcades to take in the scenery of the new area as well as possibly try some games that aren’t available in my area and stuff. It’s kind of fun like that, right?

I don’t normally do reviews on arcades, since I don’t really travel to arcades other than the two I main at all that often, but this place… I couldn’t help but NOT talk about it.

You know… I never thought it was possible for me to rage at an arcade, but my experience yesterday totally reinforced this conversation I had with Hojo the other day. I’m a sucker for going to new arcades and playing a different selection of games that’s different than the arcades I go to. My friends and I ended up going to funfuzion in New Roc City, NY, Not too much further from New York City. So why would we take the hour drive from Jersey to go to this arcade here in New York?

DJMAX Technika… Although 8 on the Break (one of the two arcades I main at) has this machine already, this place picked one up as well. Plus, on Wednesdays, they have this “Wacky Wednesday” deal that provides unlimited gaming for four hours as well as unlimited pizza at their cafe and unlimited Lazer Tag.

Intriguing, am I right? When my friends and I walked in, it looked to be a really promising arcade.

This is the first image you see on their website. This place prides itself on having an amazing arcade as well as being able to provide unlimited gaming on any games that aren’t ticket redemption games. It was intriguing to me and my friends as well, but oh man… This was only a set up for disaster.

(more…)

About time I posted this up. It’s about two weeks late, but who’s counting?

It took a while to get everything compiled usually due to my own laziness and my friend’s laziness since it took me a week to get the necessary picture from him.

And post this many short lines, you could only tell it’s a shameless filler just so this part looks reasonably well against this tall avatar.

But anyway, I hope you enjoy my little what I did/Impressions/review of Katsucon15.

In a quick nutshell, the convention itself was held on February 13-15th at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia.

Day 1 – Friday

Friday the 13th… You could only expect shit to happen on a day like this… Aside from the release of another crappy Jason movie of the same name.

Sigh… My morning was already off to a crummy start. I overslept and hour and half and then kinda rushed to get ready. I had a feeling I was probably gonna forget something on the way, but I figured it wouldn’t have been too important. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera. Ugh…

I arrived at my friends place about a half hour later than I had planned, but it didn’t really matter much anyway since the one driving us came another half hour later than I did.

Around 9 AM. We finally take off from Jersey and make tracks to Virginia. Pretty lax most of the way there. Just before we reached Baltimore, a cop car suddenly trails off and we’re suddenly pulled to the side of the road.

Fuck, what the hell did we do this time? Apparently we were going 82 MPH and never realized it. This is what my friend gets for having a really tall truck to ride in and having a speedometer that misjudges how fast you’re actually going. So much for our lives. Luckily for us, the officer had only let us off with a warning. Afterwards, it was pretty much smooth sailing from there.

Katsucon was being held in Arlington, VA, but that wasn’t our first destination. As I had mentioned many times before, we were going to head to a Cici’s Pizza in Ashland to play some beatmania IIDX 16: EMPRESS. While we did do that, it’s Friday the 13th! Something bad has to happen, right?

You bet it did! The machine kept getting multiple errors and we ended up losing our game. We attempted to restart the machine, but to no avail, the machine wouldn’t work in our favor. I probably got one full game in, but that was about it.

Fortunately for us, there was a mall nearby that had a couple of good games. Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune 3 for my friend and Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA2 for me and my two other friends. To ease the pain of not being able to play EMPRESS, I drowned my sorrows in some Wangan and SuperNOVA2, for the most part, it held me over pretty well.

After some time in Ashland, it was about time for us to make our way back to Arlington to where the convention was being held. We were staying at the Hilton Crystal City at National Airport for only a cool $90 (Yes, a cool 90 bux. Sneaking people into the room for the win). The hotel was about a 1/3rd mile away from the convention center. We quickly put our things down and got ready to go down to the convention.

Around this time, it was probably be about 9 PM. Around 11, it would be time for one of the reasons we had gone to the con in the first place.

Aural Vampire

My god, what an amazing show. On top of that, the main singer was pretty damn hot. I didn’t feel like busting 30 bux on a CD, so I skipped out on that. If my friend ever uploads the videos or anything, I’ll be sure to link them.

The con by then was pretty much over for that day. We spent a little more time in the game room and then proceeded to the 7/11 across the street for some midnight snacks, made our way back to the hotel and rested up for what would come tomorrow.

Day 2 – Saturday

Today would be the day where we would be doing most of the bulk stuff inside the con. Dealer’s Room, whatever events happened that day, and then some. It was also no longer Friday the 13th, there should be no more bad luck, right?

So we make our way over to the hotel by about 11 AM. We decided to browse the Dealer’s Room to find some stuff to buy. I figured, I’m at a convention, might as well buy something since I probably won’t find it for a good while back in Jersey.

Here was my haul:

The most kick-ass Kirby shirt ever. For dignity purposes I actually wanted to get the pink one. Unfortunately, it was only available in ladies sizes, so I had to settle for the red one. It was either that I would blast some money on this shirt or a TWEWY shirt. I would’ve actually gotten a red TWEWY shirt, but they only had it available in a limited amount of sizes. The shirt was too awesome anyway, so Kirby wins.

I also bought a piece of flair to balance out what I had missed from purchasing the shirt. Bet you saw that Wolf Sticker coming also.

Money status: $22 down, $33 remaining.

I was also on the hunt for a plushie. This is the one I walked away with a kick-ass Sky Forme Shaymin plushie. My friend bought the original Land Forme one, so I figured, what the hell, might as well get the other one.

Money Status: $23 down, $10 remaining.

And… That was all I bought.

Now, another thing that I had mentioned that I was going to do while at this convention was to meet fellow Backloggery member, KasumiBlue.

I’ve actually been mistaken this whole time. I’ve been referring to KasumiBlue as a guy, when in reality, KasumiBlue is a girl (Sorry about that T_T).

So I attend the Tales of Fandom Panel. I was probably the most clueless person in that whole room about the series, Consider this, I own only Legendia, Symphonia, and Vesperia, and on top of all that, I only progressed a short distance in all of the games.

Overall, I did learn a couple of things while I was there. Not enough to enlighten me, but just enough to inform me. Hopefully, Kasumi, if she’s not busy, could type up a little thing about what happened at the Tales of Fandom panel.

Well, because of the panel, I missed out on an autograph session with Aural Vampire. I was the only one out of my friends to not actually get an autograph.

So much for my life.

LUNCH TIME! What to do now? McDonalds across the street. Nothing eventful.

So we arrive back at the hotel where the convention is again. Honestly, the Shaymin plushie wasn’t my first ambition to buy there in the Dealer’s Room. Of course, I was on the hunt for a Lucario plushie. Didn’t find one.

But, in turn, me and my friends run into the most awesome Lucario cosplayers ever. Really well made and stuff as well. Definite favorite costume I’ve seen the whole time I was at the con.

Surprise. Click the link to see the picture.

Around this time, it’s about 2 PM. We decided to kill off sometime (and by some, I mean a shitload) of time in the Game Room. we had already gone in there a little bit before, but this time, someone actually brought beatmania IIDX 15: DJTROOPERS! Beatmania times aren’t finished yet!

Well, kinda… The controller was a Japanese home controller and it was modded. The turntable was loose as hell and the buttons stuck. Despite the suckyness of the controller, I managed to finally pass Dazzlin’ Darling on Hyper… Twice.

What the fuck? Why can’t I do that at home.

So 4 hours pass, we were supposed to go to another panel thingy for my friend. It was an Initial D panel and stuff. To our dismay, the event was cancelled and some Bandai thing replaced it. We ended up coming in a little later, but it did introduce me to a new anime I’m actually pretty interested in. They showed two episodes of Kurokame: The Animation.

So by the end of that, we decided to kill off some time and watch Death Note II: The Last Name. My god, what an interesting movie. The live action thing actually helped it’s cause. It was a pretty awesome movie. Watch it when you get the chance.

That ended up taking a bulk of our time. Just before we left, we decided to go back to the game room one last time and play our respective games.

If anything good came out of that night, the 7/11 broke the street date of Street Fighter 4. They picked up a copy for the PS3 and made it available for play in the Game Room. Unfortunately the line was long, and I didn’t feel like waiting.

I just played some more DJTROOPERS and then called it a night.

Long, boring drive back to Jersey.

So… that was my weekend. For Katsucon being my first anime convention, it was pretty cool. It leaves me hopeful for the upcoming ones that they’ll be better and stuff.

There’s a couple things I learned though:

1. L (Death Note), Hanekoma (TWEWY), and Sho (TWEWY) are the easiest characters to cosplay. Ever. I saw more than I neede to see of these guys.
2. Jigglypuff in Melee was a fucking beast. I ended up getting killed by one in about 10 seconds when the match started. D:
3. 7/11 breaks street dates. I MUST KEEP IN MIND THAT I SHOULD ALWAYS HOLD ON TO A LOT OF CASH.
4. Money, bring more of it.

So, what do I give this convention?

Would I go back?
It depends on what they’re offering next year.
Overall, I had a lot of fun at this convention.
Check it you get the chance.

Until then, later~

This is a rather old review of mine. Probably something I typed up last year for a review blog I did with some friends. The blog itself is now being defunct. There’s another one of my reviews there that I’ll probably repost here in due time, but this just seems appropriate to post up right now… You know, because I suck writing reviews on games I just played. Really, I can’t remember for the life of me what I just played. It’s why I can’t write my Time Hollow review right now.

This game holds a special place in my heart. It’s one of the very first puzzle games that I intensely got into and spent quite amount of dedication to. Although it was the GameBoy version that I spent most of my time with on this game, the SNES version plays almost exactly the same with perhaps some exception that the GameBoy lacked one character and the same sense in competition. Because of emulators today, I’ve gotten more of an opportunity to play the SNES version, which is the obvious superior version of the two.

Originally, this game was based off the Japanese release Panel de Pon. Instead of using fairies like Panel de Pon used, the gameplay for North America was changed to Yoshi characters that were primarily featured as enemies in Super Mario World: Yoshi’s Island, with the exception of Poochy. This game didn’t see a Japanese release until June 30, 2000 through the Satellaview Satellite Modem service. Tetris Attack, ironically, doesn’t play like the normal Tetris we know and love. Instead, the game play involves rising blocks that players must get rid of quickly by using a rectangle shaped cursor (two blocks length) to switch block and match up the block accordingly. When the player switches matches three or more of the same type of block, the block is destroyed and must continue to do more of the same as the game play continues. The game is over when your blocks reach the top of the screen. A combo occurs when 4 or more blocks are destroyed on a single flip. Players can also execute chains during gameplay. Chains are instances when blocks fall as a result of clear trigger and form another clear, making a chain occur.

The game features several game modes:

Endless Mode was a single player mode that players would play until they lost as a result of their blocks reaching the top. Prior to the start of Endless Mode, players can customize their difficulty level along with how fast the block start rising at the beginning.

Stage Clear mode involved players playing up until a point where a clear line would appear. Players would have to put all the blocks below the line to clear the stage and move on. The game progressively gets harder as you advance through the stages as a result of the lines showing up at a later time in the stage.

Versus mode can be played with one or two players. Two players would duke it out against each other until one of their block stacks reaches the top of the screen. Garbage blocks can be sent to an opponent as a result of a combo or chain. The garbage blocks can exceed the stage limits, but only if the player could freeze the movement of the rising blocks (freezing the blocks are also a result of combos and chains).

Puzzle mode is a one player mode that the player must clear all the blocks off the field given a certain amount of moves. If the player doesn’t remove all the blocks, it results in a game over.

A large part of the game was also the Vs. Com mode, which was pretty much the primary battle bulk if you were playing alone. It plays exactly like the Versus mode except you’re obviously facing the computers. The difficulty can be customized according to your level, but you’re unable access the full Vs. Com mode unless you played on the hardest difficulty. The two sides would battle with each other until one side’s blocks reached the top.

Music wise, from Panel de Pon to Tetris Attack, the music is primarily identical. With the exception of the Title theme, Yoshi’s theme and Game Over music. Personally, I love the music in the game as it’s beautifully arrange to match each atmosphere presented with each chacters.

Since Tetris Attack’s release, several spin offs have been created, such as Pokemon Puzzle League (Nintendo 64), Pokemon Puzzle Challenge (GBC), Dr. Mario and Puzzle League (GBA) and Planet Puzzle League (Nintendo DS).

Pokemon Puzzle league featured the Pokemon (Kanto) cast and a 3D mode where players played in a cylindrical playing field. The game also presented smoother gameplay and advanced AI than Tetris Attack had.

Pokemon Puzzle Challenge was basically the GameBoy version of Tetris Attack with a Pokemon theme and a new difficulty level.

Dr. Mario and Puzzle League were two games in one cartridge. Puzzle League lacked a story mode and characters and just had a very generic set up with all the game play in-tact.

Planet Puzzle League, the most recent iteration of the series, featured Wi-Fi play that would allow players to face someone over the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Service.

Overall, the game is very easy to pick up and matches up difficulties to beginners and veterans alike. Presenting a colorful cast of characters and amazing music, it’s a game that any puzzle lover should pick up.

So it’s about time I get a review up, right? Right.

The review title is still a work in progress, but I might as well play on a couple things that make this title work. Repede Limit was literally just Dan associating me as a furry for some odd reason and a playful pun on my blog name (Repede -> Speed -> Mach [associated with speed]).

Get it?

You probably don’t. Anyway, time for a review.

Since I’m absolute shit on trying to remember games I just played the other month, I might as well try to reminisce on ones I’ve played in the past and have stuck with me for a good while. This time, the game being Kirby’s Dream Land 3.

According to Wikipedia, the game came out in November of 1997. A good few months before it came out in Japan…

Wait, what? A Kirby game coming out in the US before Japan. Word. Anyway, it was the last first party game for the Super Nintendo and what a note they left on. This game just recently got re-released on the US Virtual Console, so now is a better time than ever to and review this game.

The game plays like every other Kirby game in the series. Suck up enemies, get their powers, start from Point A to get to Point B. Pretty much the same jist. For the most part, people got on this game’s case since it’s SNES predecesor was Kirby Super Star where when you inhaled powers, you would be able to do several different things with the power instead of just doing the same attack like this game had. I suppose in a way, it was just to pay homage to Kirby’s Dream Land 2 where powers only had one use. Plus, Kirby’s Dream Land 2 is a pain in the ass and I never 100 percented it. Seriously, fuck you wind and not letting me get that stupid Rainbow Shard.

The story itself is quite simple in the fact that Dark Matter has taken over Dream Land again and it’s your job to defeat him. With the help of your allies, the game takes a whole new twist on how attacks are performed with certain abilities and how different powers could result in different outcomes as well.

Like in Kirby Super Star, you could summon a helper to assist you during gameplay. Unlike the last game where you could summon a helper based on your power, you summon a helper who has the same concept as Kirby. This game introduced Gooey as the main helper. Gooey himself was first seen in the previous game in bags when you had an animal friend assisting you in a spot where that animal friend was supposed to be at.

In addition to Gooey, the three allies from Kirby’s Dream Land 2 return (Rick the Hampster, Coo the Owl, and Kine the Fish) and three new ones are introduced (Nago the Cat, Pitch the Bird, and Chuchu the Octopus). Each had their own unique abilities with the games powers. Some combinations of friends and powers would be needed to clear the stage.

What made this game different that any of the other series was that along with reaching Point B from Point A, there was a certain challenge attached to each stage. This would range from finding certain items during the games, dodging certain objects in game, as well as using certain powers to complete the task.

One of the very first tasks you have to complete in game is to avoid flowers placed across the map in a certain area. Should you complete this challenge by dodging these flowers, you would recieve a heart piece needed to complete the game. Should you mess up, the heart piece would be missed and you would have to complete the stage without recieving it. The tasks themselves vary from stage to stage.

The music is your generic Kirby music. With a couple of new tracks, it’s nothing you haven’t already heard before.

The graphics are what makes this game stand out though. It’s like a sketchbook with wonerful pastel colors in a sea of happiness and glee. But honestly, the graphics are superb in this game. The game uses psedo high-resolution to blend the spirtes together and make the game look as superb as it did.

Besides how beautiful and straightforward this game is, there’s not really much else that could be said about it. Plays like your typical Kirby game, looks like your typical Kirby game, but what can simply be said about this game is that the game never loses it’s charm. It’s something that Kirby games have managed to do throughout the years and even back then, it still held strong.

Overall, this game recieves an:

It’s your typical Kirby game.
It looks beautiful.
Aside from the fact it doesn’t play like Kirby Super Star
It’s what you’d expect in a game like this.
Play it. It’s worth it.