Wasshoi In Europe (Stunfest 2013)

[Icarus]

Definitely "she". That was a request of her to be referred as such, since she's been living completely as a woman for more than 3 years. And my wife who has been helping for the whole duration of the player's stay in France tells me that Kamui's probably even more girlish than herself :p

Ahh, didn't know that. I'll keep that in mind from now on. She's awesome fun to hang around with regardless. I think her energy is infectious.

I can only imagine what you said when you introduced me to KAMUI, because KAMUI seemed quite surprised and very happy. ^_-

I explained her you did a lot to promote Garegga in the West with your guide, which is definitely something that rings a bell with her since she's also kind of doing the same in Japan. I wish I had re-read the Guide before to highlight the role of Plasmo in perfecting it, too...

Yeah, Plasmo and a number of other contributors (thanks guys!) had a big hand in helping me get the guide to where it is currently, as my original goal a long time ago was to translate the Garegga Handbook (which is sadly no longer on the internet, now only available on the Saturn disc and as the INH DVD book) and add extra bits to it. I still consider it relatively incomplete though, it's probably about 50% where it is currently, as it is missing a lot of data for bosses, and I wanted to add ship-specific techniques to it as well, as well as rewrite things for simplicity.

If anything, the reason why I write guides for Raizing (and Yagawa styled) games is to try and dispel the notion that they are unintuitive to play. Once you get your head around their various systems and techniques, they become incredibly intuitive. It's just getting over the first hurdle: personal preconceptions.

As a Garegga player, my intention to attend Stunfest was to primarily see and study her play up close, and to meet the person behind the ability, and I wasn't disappointed on both counts. (Meeting NAK, TAC and the rest of the international contingent was icing on the cake.) If anything, it's inspired me to take up the game again, forsaking all other gaming distractions (sorry Dodonpachi Saidaioujou, I was looking forward to you, but you'll have to take an extended back seat now). I'll probably use my time with the game to flesh out the guide a bit more, as I want it to be the definitive Garegga Handbook.

She already followed me on Twitter, so I hope I can keep in contact with her and keep her up to date with our progress with the game in the West. But here's something interesting:
https://twitter.com/kamuneko/status/329877529345277952
https://twitter.com/kamuneko/status/329878837313818625

Particularly this line:

わたしの知らないことまで調べてあったので、本当に驚いたよ。

I machine translated the tweets with both Google and Infoseek (as I suck at Japanese) to work out what they say, and this line interested me, so I asked blackoak for clarification. Apparently she's read the ST thread, and learned some new things from it. o_O

I hope too. I highlighted many times that suiciding is a very core part of Garegga's gameplay, so at least I have good hope the spectators understood at least this part But I'm glad we could see such deep play, and that we did some in-depth commentary during the runs. Of course, I know most non-shmuppers haven't paid attention to 10% of it during the runs, but now these runs will have a second life on the net when the recordings, so I prefer them to be the most informative possible for people who might come to take an interest into the game through them.

I think you guys did a good job. Hopefully it'll help those who were on the fence take up the game seriously, as it's a vastly different challenge to what people will be used to.

[PROMETHEUS]

I think my main worry was that it might have been difficult for the casual spectators at the event to understand just how high the level of play that KAMUI was demonstrating was, given that they would have seen her die with regularity, thinking it was accidental, and as a result would have regarded her as the weakest of the three players. I think I mentioned it to one of the French players there, that the tricks do look impressive to a casual, but you really have to understand Garegga's workings in order to appreciate just how hard some of KAMUI's demonstrated techniques are to execute. Not only that, there's an extremely high level of improvisation and precision required. Hopefully the casual crowd got a sense of that through the commentary.

I hope too. I highlighted many times that suiciding is a very core part of Garegga's gameplay, so at least I have good hope the spectators understood at least this part :) But I'm glad we could see such deep play, and that we did some in-depth commentary during the runs. Of course, I know most non-shmuppers haven't paid attention to 10% of it during the runs, but now these runs will have a second life on the net when the recordings, so I prefer them to be the most informative possible for people who might come to take an interest into the game through them.

I really like that thinking !

[Animaitor]

Thank you all for taking the time to share your stories, pictures and videos. Reading thought the last 4 pages was like being there Also a big THANKS to Adversity1, Prometheus and everyone else who was responsible for this to happen. You guys made it! Jon, next time you should come along ;D Unfortunately I couldn't make it but I'll try my best to attend next year if I'm still in Europe.

I'll probably use my time with the game to flesh out the guide a bit more, as I want it to be the definitive Garegga Handbook.

I'm sure you got lots of inspiration from KAMUI but is there anything else to add to such awesome guide?!

[Erhune]

I machine translated the tweets with both Google and Infoseek (as I suck at Japanese) to work out what they say, and this line interested me, so I asked blackoak for clarification. Apparently she's read the ST thread, and learned some new things from it. o_O

Yeah, I showed her the guide when we were relaxing after the Stunfest was over. She didn't read it whole (at least at the time :p) but at least she discovered the real differences between Euro/Asia/US/Japan versions of the game in terms of rank (she just knew the settings were different, but not that they were harder on non-Japanese versions).

[CHI]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ3WbUZA ... e=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwxIfc9m ... e=youtu.be

Not much but Enjoy

[PROMETHEUS]

An edited video of NAK's Sunday Mushi Futari BL run, by DamDam.
Historical moment ! :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXwZB72xLkc

[CloudyMusic]

NAK moves through those patterns like they're not even there.

Thanks a million for recording those amazing runs!

[PROMETHEUS]

Garegga Friday video edit released :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL7Bbo-Y ... e=youtu.be

Note that this was the very first demonstration by the Japanese players. We were all pretty anxious to see how the crowd would react and what would happen. I think you can see there is a bit of nervousness in the air which releases slowly as it is obvious everyone is having a good time, even though Garegga is one of the hardest games to understand for non-shmuppers.

[pestro87]

Thanks to everyone at TeamSuperPlayLive for recording this and uploading it to youtube! NAK's and Kamui's runs are absolutely amazing!