Chicagoland Winter Carnival 2011 - March 4th-6th

[stuminator]

And we're off! 8+ hours in the car, here we come.

[drboom]

It begins...

Got everything i need to have set up, set up, I 've tested all my systems and I will be returning home with beer and snacks and soda and water at around 3 p.m.. Very stoked - this is going to be fun.

[gunbird18]

gunbird18 and E2 enroute. 6+ hours. Not quite as bad as the KC crew.

[t0yrobo]

Sill at home dicking around at home, should be able to make it there by around 6 or so, but it could be later.

[TLB]

you bastards had better drink a LOT of beer and a LOT of whiskey for me. i'm going to see a movie and fixing my old laptop tonight, so even if i had some, i'd be SOL on actually drinking it. that and i work in the morning.

HAVE

FUN

[handsome_rakshas]

Woohoo! I'm getting ready right now! Loading up the old Beretta with Hydra rounds. TAKE THAT GAME STORE CLERK.

Nah JK, I have to stop and get beer and cough medicine. The cough medicine is for me.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Please take some cool pics to share with the rest of the shmup gang on your cool shmupmeet, drboom. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[croikle]

On the way out soon, will probably end up arriving 10-ish.

[drboom]

Got a pretty full crew here tonight - three cabs, one NEC XM29 with the Tupper Gun (TM), crazy good scoring runs by a bunch of peoples. Almost doubled the loop on Sky Shark earlier, stuminator has hit the second loop on Strikers a few times. I'll post some pics tomorrow for sure.

[drboom]

Here's some pics from the night's festivities. All the guys and gals are asleep right now and got in a good day of gaming.







...and I got a new high score and almost made the double loop on Sky Shark. Not bad for my first game of the day!

[TLB]

Hot.

[drboom]

Battle Garegga bracketed scoring contest turned into a high score contest as my board is glitching, with croikle getting the high score with a stunning 7,854,120.

Final Soldier ran a bit cold for the first day with few putting in scores, but today, it became a crazy, impassioned crew hovering around the Duo-R, calling next. Andi brought home the high score honors with a truely amazing 706,100. There were a ton of good scores and I'll post the complete list later when I am not A) tired and 2) drinking a lot.

The midnight scoring competition is Donkey Kong, sponsored by Mark Alpiger's Classic Arcade Gaming Dot Com website with a King of Kong DVD and Steve Wiebe interview disc to the winner. BTW - the interview disc has never before been seen! Stuminator is currently leading with a 53,800 score but szycag is comming back hard, plaing a bunch of credits when the rest of the crew is getting ready for bed. It will be called at 3:30 and its about 2:50 at the moment. Damn, I have to go to bed.

Will post a whole munch of pics tomorrow. Very tired and hard to type.

Oh, and Davey is again winning the informal Hudson Shot Watch competition with 119. Amazing twitch skillz.

[handsome_rakshas]

Glad to hear the contests went well, wish I was there! Thank you for your hospitality on Friday Doc.
And tell mrtie thank you so much again for me! He literally made my entire Saturn library playable by fixing my Hori Fighting Stick right in the middle of the party. I owe him BIG TIME!

[TLB]

yeah, mr tie's a cool bastard like that :)

[gunbird18]

A big THANK YOU goes to drboom for hosting this awesome meet! He is a gracious host and doesn't even let the fact that there are 10 people sleeping on the floor in his apartment even rattle him one bit. Kudos!

The game list was amazing, AGAIN! Lots of Old School love with the Duo R, Saturn, and now the MAME box.

It was nice to see everyone again, and meet some new players, too!

Thank you for taking my friend Doug into the fold and allowing him to enjoy his first visit to the Windy City! I hope he didn't scare anyone!

A HUGE thank you to all the guys that helped bring the E2 up and down the 20+ steps of drboom's apartment. I don't think we will try that again. drboom will just have to purchase a few more Astro's.

Later!

[handsome_rakshas]

yeah, mr tie's a cool bastard like that

I'll say! I can't wait to see the picture where he's working on my arcade stick and I've got a really "oh my god!" look on my face!

A HUGE thank you to all the guys that helped bring the E2 up and down the 20+ steps of drboom's apartment. I don't think we will try that again. drboom will just have to purchase a few more Astro's.

Later!

No prob man thanks for bringing it, I thought I was gonna drop that sucker. Mrtie came in with the super strength and scotch powerz.

[drboom]

First off, I have to give a big thank you to gunbird18 from bringing his Egret II all the way to Chicago for the event. A second big thanks to Dave for brining his cab and a huge thank you to mrtie for helping bring the cabs up and down the stairs and bringing with his massive amounts of gear, including the 360 to jamma set up that looked like it could launch the shuttle. Hella good guys.

Prodigous amounts of soda were consumed, but they were a distant second to the amount of credits that were played this weekend with an average of 4 hours of sleep each night and non-stop gaming the rest of the time. On more then one occasion, players were trying to get into the bathroom and if it was full, going back to playing another credit to maximise their gaming time. Dedication for sure. On Saturday, the cabs were turned on even before I got my coffee made and the sounds of Ketsui rang through the apartment as the rest of the neighborhood came awake.

Andi, stuminator and croikle tore up a number of games, with croikle taking first place in the Battle Garegga scoring contest with a 7,854,120 run ending at the triple planes on the Base. Andi took top honors at the Final Soldier contest with an amazing 706,100 in what turned out to be the most hotly contested scoring contest of the weekend with a constant line for 6 hours. Caravan games are truely STG crack.

stuminator captured the top score on the super secret Midnight Scoring Contast sponsored by Mark Alpiger and CAGDC, taking home a copy of King of Kong and a never-before-seen interview disc with Steve Wiebe, done by Mark Alpiger. szycag made a great last minute charge, but couldn't topple stuminator. He did win a copy of the interview disc, which he seems really stoked about. stuminator also almost made a 1CC a few times of Dangun Feveron, dying on the last boss each time that I saw. szycag and mrtie even started recording his runs to try and get a successful run on tape. Davey also won the informal Hudson Shot Watch contest with a 119. Just crazy. Had had the rest of the field by at least 10 shots.

I had a lot of fun and got some good gaming in with a no-miss of the first loop of Sky Shark which I have been working on on and off for two weeks. Also got to within two pixels of killing off Tyranosatan in Deathsmiles, almost making a low-rank clear on a game I have about 20 credits into. Great game, have no idea what I am doing for score.

I'm really happy with the way it turned out and I'm always impressed with the way everyone held themselves - very respectful and well-mannered. At some point someone dropped a few chips on the floor and came up to me to let me know and ask where the dust pan and broom was. Very cool.

I'll be posting the full list of scores in a bit, especially for Final Soldier where I think we captured 7 out of the 10 spots with ease on the shmups scoreboard.

Photo album of the event is here on photobucket. It's unedited (so some really bad photos remain) and I will be adding more photos later.

Thanks to everyone for comming and I hope to see you all at the next one - Chicagoland Winter Carnival 2010.

[mrtie]

What a meet! First off thanks Boom for having us all out crashing at your place, you have an awesome location(2nd story not withstanding) and the surrounding area is beautiful. My girlfriend and I had a an awesome time, even if she got a bit burnt out on it by the end. I have a one pretty nice vid of SPS rocking the Feveron, which I'll get up on the youtube Tuesday as I have to work tonight. I came prepared to grab video but I really slacked off on that one, sorry guys, would have liked to have grabbed Croikle's BG run. It was a lot of fun hanging out with you all again and some of you for the first time, I look forward to Winter Festival 2010.

@Fred: No problem man.

@gunbird18: Thanks for bringing your Egret that was awesome.

@Stuminator: You are an absolute monster, I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to much this weekend, is there anything you can't play?

[drboom]

Final Soldier 2-Minute Mode score contest

Screen Name Score

Andi 706,100
stuminator 699,200
szycag 662,200
(dave) 652,300
croikle 645,200
gunbird18 633,400
Davey 623,200
mrtie 608,600

Battle Garegga high score contest (top two) scores:

croikle 7,854,120
Davey 5,370,430

[Davey]

Big thanks to drboom for hosting and to anybody who brought cool stuff to play with. Perhaps in the future I'll build a tuppergun and have some PCBs to bring.

[t0yrobo]

Another big thanks to drboom and everyone else there. I had a great time, and everyones enthusiasm seems to have sparked some interest in the genre in my friends. Hopefully I'll be able to make the trip again next year!

[szycag]

Great meet, thanks again everybody! Geoff you're an awesome host as always!
Thanks Mrtie for showing us Pink Sweets... even though I'm not the biggest fan of Yagawa I loved the weird dialogue and the music. (Did you make that Bronson shirt? It's badass)
I'd love to see a forum-wide caravan competition like STGT. The scores in Ghegs's thread with the exception of that Luciole guy obviously aren't pushing the upper limit of what's possible.
Geoff do you know when Mark's interview DVDs will be ready? Remember me if you guys stop through Springfield!

one more thing... got a tiny clip of this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXDeGSxf2RA

[TLB]

hot raizing shirt :D

[jonny5]

glad everybody had a good time...very sad i had to miss it

i will make sure to be there for the next one

[TLB]

you and me both, brah :D

[drboom]

I expect you both there for the next one!

Set a new high score on Final Soldier 2-Minute Mode tonight:

[szycag]

dayummm

[Andi]

I expect you both there for the next one!

Set a new high score on Final Soldier 2-Minute Mode tonight:

Does this mean that I didn't win your Duo?

In any case, I had a really badass time. Thank you for being such an excellent host and for expending the effort and money to make this thing happen. I can't thank you enough.

The Final Soldier certificate is hanging above my game shelf.

[Davey]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ4lmAFB7d4
Beat by an old man

[drboom]

Geoff do you know when Mark's interview DVDs will be ready? Remember me if you guys stop through Springfield!

Talked with Mark last night and he's waiting to hear from Walter to see when we hit Ottumwa so we can plan the Southern leg of the trip. I think we'll be down state in a weekend or two. I'll let you know either way.

The interview DVD's are going to be on their way to you today or early next week. Mark will be signing both copies for you guys.

I also like the idea of a forum wide Carnival competition. I may be interested in starting this up...love me some Carnival titles!