I always got a kick out of how my French friends called it "
The Stunfest", but this year I understood why. It's unique enough to warrant the article. There's nothing else like it!
Obviously this year was a huge success and I have to first thank both Prometheus and Erhune for an intense 5-6 months of organizing to make it all happen. We started with only a vague idea about how to proceed, but through a process of discussion and proposals we cobbled a bunch of funny and interesting ideas together (and with a little more room to spare this time!). The actual event days were an "Infinite Burst" of stage set-up, schedule coordination and moving around with our Japanese visitors, really exhausting but we made it through. Erhune held us down on stage at every step of the way and I'm very grateful for that. The only downside was that I barely got to hang out with either of them!
Next let me shout out the players yo. All three had pretty much not been overseas before (two had been to Korea once), and were dropped orbital shock trooper-style into France for most likely the most jam-packed week of their lives. We did everything possible in the short amount of time we had, from ascending the Eiffel Tower on foot, walking all around Paris, visiting an arcade in a warehouse, eating Udon, doing press interviews, doing superplays, signing stuff and playing Puyo Puyo. Their demos were excellent, my personal highlights being SPS's day one run against the Ura loop and Hattori's first double play. I also had a lot of fun watching SPS and Hattori battle it out on Puyo Puyo upstairs on the Superplay Live stage (here's one:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1szqi ... start=6606). When we got back to Japan, the guys stuck it out for a final closing interview with Narita city television that dragged us out into the middle of Narita city for 2 hours after a 22 hour trip via Hong Kong. Hopefully that will air sometime next month.
Oh, shout outs to Kan too, that Tetris run was amazng!
Next I gotta shout out all the French players who looked after us. Without some of them, we'd probably still be in France!(somebody let me know if I'm getting names wrong): imaliplusRAM and his friend whose name I forget (urgh!) who took us all around Paris, Oli-san (who volunteered to walk around with Sakari-san for a Denjin Gecha segment where they asked girls whether they would prefer Takahashi Meijin or Chiyomaru Shikura and helped me out a lot), Bruno (without his help we might have missed our train to Rennes), James (who brought all the cabs), Alfarabi (a true gentleman, and the man who set up the PCBs all weekend), whoever the guy with the big hair was who said Bonjour! to me every morning and painted amazing art, Lemonlie for commiserating on my Streetpass French region quest, Frank and all the guys at Coin-op Legacy (
http://coinoplegacy.com/) for throwing an amazing welcome party for the players on our first night. We were actually getting pretty impatient with the bus ride just because we were so tired, but once we got inside and saw how great their arcade was, we forgot all that. A must-visit if you're in Paris.
System11 folks of course represented all weekend. Really enjoyed Icarus' Crimzon Clover play and can't wait to see him on World Ignition, watching DEL on dat Manpuku (still have yet to see the stream run gotta watch this weekend), mind-melding with WTN and Plasmo about Donpachi (translation coming in like two weeks!), talking shop with Spadgy, reminiscing about Tokyo pizza/Ebisen dayz with Eaglet and meeting CHI, Endokarb, Ptoing, Smraedis, nuskool and other folks whose forum names I forget but whose faces I don't!
There will be a segment on
Stunfest going up on 電人☆ゲッチャ (Denjin Gecha) at 21:00 JP Time Friday May 9th (i.e. today!) which is a weekly video game show with Takahashi Meijin as one of the hosts. The link is here for anyone that wants to have a look though it's likely less visuals and more talky talk. Still hopefully they'll present the results of the Takahashi Meijin vs. Chiyomaru poll
:
http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv176903695
Anyway that's about enough rambling for me. Back to the grind as usual, and only 6 more months before we have to start organizing
Stunfest 2015.
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