London Meet @ Stunfest 2015 (22-24th May '15 +extras)

[DEL]

Will do Mr Mills.

[ratikal]

ptoing wrote:

I'll arrive quite late, around 11pm. But Plasmo will arrive super early. So if you arrive earlyish you should call him and so you guys can hang out. See you tomorrow evening

Right. Tell Panther Plasmo to hang out in front of Rennes Station swinging his handbag so we can spot him.

How early? I should be at Le Liberte at 11:30am, noon at the latest. We could check out Rennes together.

[DEL]

I think Panther Plasmo's arriving at 11am. So you two should meet up.

[Aquas]

I'm in Montreal canada and I ate a yummy chicken wrap. Waiting another 4 hours or so for my flight to Paris.

[CHI]

SORTIE to da LEFT for STUFNEST... innit BRUV

1 day and counting...

PS: Sir ICR practicing... Welcome to DEL's world

[Erppo]

At the (first) airport now. I should be arriving at the Liberté around 14:00.

[Softdrink 117]

Just met Aquas for the first time at CDG airport by total coincidence!

Unfortunately we booked different train times (damn) so could only chat for a few minutes.

I should be arriving in Rennes in about 5 hours.

Also holy hell the free internet at CDG is terrible.

[Icarus]

Currently at Paris Montparnasse with CHI, waiting on the train to Rennes.
Also, 4G mobile connection. \o/

[ptoing]

Got home a while ago. It was a lot of fun this year again and really nice to meet all new people. Great stuff all around

[T4N3]

It was a pleasure and a huge privilege for me to be able to meet everyone at Stuffnest, with some of the most prominent stg players from here and its french counterpart. Being able to comment on Ratikal's Eschatos runs along with Prometheus and Palgork was a huge oppurtunity for me. Kinda had the stage fright on the great scene with Prometheus, so I think I might have seemed rude to him while trying to compensate my cool for all the spaghetti I was dropping.

Anyways, definitely a delightful experience for me. Thanks to everyone (too many to list) for the nice memories!

[ratikal]

This event was honestly one of the happiest experiences in my life.

I'd like to thank the French STG community for the amazing accomidation throughout the event. Being a scared American in a foreign land, it was nice to see friendly faces such as Prometheus and HUmar (and friend whos name escapes me...) greet me on Thursday. Also, Old Rennes was awesome, those churches were really something.

It was an absolute treat to finally put a face to players I have talked to on stream and on forums for the first time. Being able to eat dinner and share drinks with one another was awesome, and I never would've thought I would have such an opportunity. That alone, made the trip for me. I love this community! <3

I wish I could've performed better in my Eschatos run on the main stage, and I probably should have reset on the first stage, but I felt like I would've gotten a serious nerve attack if I had. 47.5M isn't a bad score to be honest, and the demonstration could've gone a whole lot worse. I heard the reception was in general positive, and so far 3 people have told me they were going to pick up the game again thanks to my demo.

My only gripe with the convention was the small scene. They really need to step it up for next year as delaying the Batrider run for an hour w/ no stream/sound is ridiculous. Also, because of that slow TAS of Ikaruga, my buddy T4N3 couldn't perform his Metal Black demo which I was really looking forward to.

But overall, this weekend was amazing and I'm really sad that I have to go back to normal life tomorrow. This event really showed me how far this community has come and I hope as a member to help it grow even further.

That's all I can really think of to say. Thank you all for the warm memories!

SHOOTING GAME NEVER DIE

[Erppo]

So yeah, it was pretty cool. Was nice meeting people from here and from the French side in possibly the best Western STG gathering to date. Getting only one play attempt in front of a huge audience was one of the scariest things I've ever done and I'm amazed every one of the invited players still managed to do rather well in the big stage.

Thanks to everyone for the company and especially to the organizers for the invitation and the arrangements (I hope they read this thread). I'll probably try to make it next year too.

[CHI]

[Mills]

Would have nice to know who's who in the photos, apart from DEL 2nd standing on the right, and again standing 3rd on the right.

[DEL]

^Ok Mills - 1st pic: Jaimers, Erppo, Softdrink (all the way from Cali), Icarus, Ratikal (all the way from Boston), ptoing, T4N3, Plasmo, Y'om, some guy from Minnesota, BD, nuskool and christcat.
In the 2nd pic I can add Prometheus and HUmar. Again both top-notch French hosts.

[Icarus]

Will post something longer after I finish work.

^Ok Mills - 1st pic: Jaimers, Erppo, Softdrink (all the way from Cali), Icarus, Ratikal (all the way from Boston), ptoing, T4N3, Plasmo, Y'om, some guy from Minnesota, BD, nuskool and an excellent French guy who I am embarrassed to say I forgot his name and must thank him for the Bordeaux.
In the 2nd pic I can add Prometheus and HUmar. Again both top-notch French hosts.

pic #1:
- top row: Jaimers, Erppo, Softdrink, [me], Ratikal, T4N3, Y'om, Aquas, Grumpy Old DEL, christcat
- bottom row: ptoing, Plasmo, nuskool

pic #3:
- top row: Erppo, Jaimers, Prometheus, Rechiku, Plasmo, ptoing, T4N3, Y'om, HUmar, Grumpy Old DEL, [?], [?]
- bottom row: [me], Ratikal, Aquas, [?]

Someone fill in the blanks for me, I'm terrible with names. :3
Also, it's the first day back at work and I can't be arsed. Thankfully my job is pretty easy and today is flying by, lmao.

[Icarus]

Well, another year, another Stunfest, and this one was just as much fun as the last two I've attended. It's been a pleasure meeting up with old friends, and making new ones, and that has always been the reason why I've travelled to so many meetups the past decade and a bit. Getting to see the Western STG players strut their stuff was a big highlight this year, and I've said on many occasions over the weekend that, unlike when Japanese superplayers come over, having a player who could be a local up on stage gives the crowd a better feeling that these games can actually be tackled by the average joe, and it was pretty fun seeing guys invade the shooting game scene after the big stage runs.

As usual, there was a lot going on outside of the two stages, including a Touhou area, the huge fighting game tournament section, Team SuperPlayLive doing their speedruns, a night club, and all sorts of other stuff going on around the venue. I took in some of the other things going on, but mainly hung out with the guys, chatting, watching people play, and just enjoying the atmosphere.

It was a great pleasure to finally meet the guys that I speak to on the forum and on Twitch: Aquas, Ratikal, Erppo, Jaimers, Softdrink, T4N3 - you guys are awesome, and I hope we can meet again for more meets very soon.
CHI, DEL, Plasmo, ptoing, nuskool, Prometheus, Y'om, HUmar - always a pleasure hanging out with you guys, and having a laugh and a (lot of) joke(s). I always look forward to catching up with you all, and hopefully we can do it again next year.
Thanks to the French STG crowd, and also non-STG players (Qlex!) for stopping by for a chat with me. Always happy to talk to you guys. :>

Highlights:
- Meeting up with everyone on Thursday afternoon for a pre-event drink and a chat.
- Ratikal asking me if it's possible to get addicted to smoking from just one cigarette.
- Ratikal getting wasted on one pint of beer. (Granted, it was 11% ABV…)
- Teaching Plasmo and Ratikal how to play Pink Sweets high-rank style. Also finding out from playtesting the board that there's way more slowdown on the PCB, making high-rank routes totally viable.
- Doubling S.L's score on his Pink Sweets PCB.
- Almost clearing Garegga (D.2 to Glow Squid) on my third attempt, on a board that doesn't have the rank reset patches.
- Watching Aquas dominate Batrider and Guwange on stage.
- All the Western players rocking it over the weekend on stage.
- "Border DEL". You know that t-shirt has to happen next year.
- christcat putting his hat on DEL to keep him warm as a joke on Saturday evening, then nuskool turning around and saying "he looks like the Man From DEL Monte", and sending me and CHI in to fits of laughter.
- "Table for 26 please" on Monday.
- 18-20 of us invading the same fancy restaurant "La Taverne" on Sunday for a nice long chat and a good meal.
- Plasmo in social smoking shocker.
- CHI catching Aquas with a cigarette in his hand, and everyone turning around to stare at him, making him very self-conscious.
- Ratikal unsure of how to hold a beer goblet.
- Jaimers being the civilised one with a glass of Riesling while the rest of us are beering it up.
- DEL keeping everyone up until 3.30am on Saturday with his "testing it out" credit of MMP! 1.00 Harahara that nearly cleared the game. :O
- MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW
- A great chat with Plasmo, ptoing, Ratikal and Jaimers about games and other things over Sunday evening's dinner.
- "DEL. Just play 1.00. Seriously. *rolleyes*"
- CHI and I hanging out with Alfarabi in Paris on Monday, heading to Alfarabi's friend's private arcade with two (!) DariusBurst ACEX cabs, one switched on with freeplay (!!), and then to Arcade Street for even more DBACEX.
- Appearing on STGWeekly with Plasmo to help Softdrink commentate on Batrider and Eschatos. It was a great honour to be back on there, and hopefully my commentary was decent. :3 (I'm aware I sound very quiet on stream…)

Way more highlights that I am still recalling from the weekend. So exhausted.

Disappoinments:
- I do agree with DEL and CHI that it felt we were shoved into a small room out of the way of everything else. While it was generally quieter, the amount of stuff we had available to play was far less than last year, and the selection on the cabs themselves was really limited - the majority of it was Cave, the hori selection was lacking (AK, Blazing Star, Last Resort), and there was very little variety. There were hardly any consoles for us to play on, so a lot of us were standing around doing nothing besides chatting and watching.
- Organisation on the small stage could have been better - I attempted to help Aquas get set up for Batrider, and while we found the emulator and ROMs pretty quickly, there was audio-based technical issues that caused a schedule overrun of nearly 90mins, which was really bad. In the end, he played the game with no speaker sound, and with this really loud D&B club blasting its music next door.
- There was no need to run the Ikaruga TAS at 1/3 speed, which itself messed with the Sunday schedule, and as a result, T4N3 couldn't do Metal Black, which would have been a great end to the show.
- It was difficult getting the games in the cabs rotated into a decent selection - for me, I would have been happy with either PS, Batrider, Garegga or Cyvern, but they always seem to be instantly removed in favour of some Cave game, and out of the seven cabs, five of them had Cave in it. Not a good selection.

They're just minor gripes though. The whole event itself was amazingly fun, and as usual, I'm glad to have made the trip down to be a part of it.

I posted a bunch of stuff on Vine and Twitter.
https://twitter.com/IcarusFW/media
https://vine.co/u/1072283492920004608

Until next year! SHOOTING GAME NEVER DIE

[T4N3]

Contributing with some pics from my crap phone.

[Mills]

Found this on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi5QwEn ... VpNksAlcjO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4P-IqA ... VpNksAlcjO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii3veyK ... VpNksAlcjO