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PBnJamo posted:So, what was special about that plush pikachu compared to other ones? It's wearing a dress. I ended up having to pick up a couple of the other ones, as well.  Today, I headed to Ueno Park with an old friend. He wanted to go see the Attack on Titan exhibit at one of the park's many museums, but the only tickets available were for late in the afternoon. So we had a bunch of time to kill, and some of that time was spent at my home away from home: The nearest Quiz Magic Academy machine.  Trivia is one of my passions, and I love the QMA series for allowing me to indulge in it in a different language, which adds an extra degree of difficulty. Trolling is also one of my great loves, so this is what other players around the country saw on their screen when my avatar came up to challenge them in the mental arena:   Why yes, my handle on QMA is in fact "American". I feel like it makes it even more satisfying if they know who beat them. No, it's not a cowboy hat, but I really wish it was. The name can be a handicap at higher levels when more people start choosing Japanese history or classic literature, but I can hold my own in pretty much every other category. As for the Attack on Titan art exhibit itself, the highlight of the whole thing was seeing Isayama's inspiration for the series, as well as the humorously self-deprecating notes that accompany some of the original pages. This particular page comes with the note "After this page, I swore that I would never draw without a reference ever again." (  Warning: Attack on Titan is gory. ) Tomorrow I have meetings at Comiket. That should be "fun".
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Dec 28, 2014 14:28
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The latest Pikachu gimmick is quite literally making it cosplay. It's adorable and I can't believe they're not selling Lucha Libre Pikachu.  Out of curiosity, does the tail have a black heart at the end of it?
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Dec 28, 2014 15:06
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vibratingsheep posted:Trivia is one of my passions, and I love the QMA series for allowing me to indulge in it in a different language, which adds an extra degree of difficulty. Trolling is also one of my great loves, so this is what other players around the country saw on their screen when my avatar came up to challenge them in the mental arena: I'm kind of fascinated by everything about this game, actually, and don't know anything about it, so if you're looking for an excuse to talk about Quiz Magic Academy at great length, consider this your chance. 
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Dec 28, 2014 15:37
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BlitzBlast posted:The latest Pikachu gimmick is quite literally making it cosplay. It's adorable and I can't believe they're not selling Lucha Libre Pikachu. Yes. It's a trait of the specific Pikachu that does adorable cosplay. I am pretty shocked by how useful, or at least fun in a novel sort of way, they managed to make it for actual in-game play.
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Dec 28, 2014 15:47
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D3m3 posted:Yes. It's a trait of the specific Pikachu that does adorable cosplay. I am pretty shocked by how useful, or at least fun in a novel sort of way, they managed to make it for actual in-game play. I think he was asking about the actual doll.
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Dec 28, 2014 16:04
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Rogue 7 posted:I've encountered it several times here. You know how as you get older, you lose the ability to hear higher pitched sounds? Some places take advantage of that to deter teenagers by playing it at the entrance of their stores. I'm 25 and I can still hear it, it's like a nail being driven in your ears every time. It's similar to the high and slightly grating mosquito-like whine that electronics often emit when turned on. Here's a page with the sound available to listen to. I can still hear it at 34, though I think it's fainter to me than it used to be.
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Dec 28, 2014 17:03
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Japanese arcade games are some next level poo poo and it makes me wish American arcades had survived enough to get to that level.
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Dec 28, 2014 17:07
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BlitzBlast posted:The latest Pikachu gimmick is quite literally making it cosplay. It's adorable and I can't believe they're not selling Lucha Libre Pikachu. They do sell Masked Pikachu, actually. It was on the next shelf over. 
vibratingsheep fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Dec 28, 2014 |
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Dec 28, 2014 23:28
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FractalSandwich posted:I guess this outs me as a non-arcade-going dweeb, but the idea of an always-online arcade quiz game is new to me. It seems super interesting. It's not like it's especially sophisticated technology, but it seems like it would let you do cool things with the format. How deep do they go with that stuff? I can imagine a version of this that has a ridiculous number of super-specific leaderboards that'll tell you, like, which prefecture is the best at answering questions about European geography, but I don't expect they actually go that far. Oh, you wanted rankings by prefecture, subject, game mode, and day/month? http://p.eagate.573.jp/game/qma/10/p/ranking/index.html?rid=101111 I can't talk too much about it right now, but it's amazing and I love it so you can bet I'll update this after my next QMA session. For now, I should probably run over to get packed in like a sardine 
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Dec 28, 2014 23:34
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vibratingsheep posted:Oh, you wanted rankings by prefecture, subject, game mode, and day/month? http://p.eagate.573.jp/game/qma/10/p/ranking/index.html?rid=101111
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Dec 29, 2014 11:44
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Waffleman_ posted:If you're in Ikebukuro, watch for flying vending machines. That ship already sailed, I think. 
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Dec 29, 2014 16:09
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The Comiket Experience This is Chris Ling, an old friend of mine. He also happens to be the licensing manager of Sekai Project - a company known for localizing visual novels for the English market. I took this picture after two days (three days, for him) of running around Comic Market 87 meeting with his friends, clients, and business partners. This is how we got here. Comic Market is a one-of-a-kind experience, though not one I would really recommend for anyone other than the truly dedicated. The event drew around 560,000 people over the last three days, and day 3 (affectionately known as Lewd Day) had an estimated 210,000 people in attendance. Every other time I've gone to Comiket, I've had a circle ticket that lets me get in early. This time, I decided to experience the true face of LineCon. Lines to get in the big line to get into the smaller lines again. On the morning of any given Comiket day, there are three waves of people who get in line before the doors open, wanting to beat the crowd to their favorite doujin circle or industry merchandise booth. First, there are the Tetsuya-gumi or the Overnighters, who stay near Tokyo Big Sight after hours. They're technically breaking the law, but no one does anything about it. Chris estimates that there are 10,000 or so of them who camp out in the cold. The second wave is the First Train folks, the people who make sure to get on the first train that stops at Kokusai Tenjijo station -- this train gets so full that it starts swaying due to the incredible weight involved, so gently caress that noise. The third wave is pretty much every train afterward, between around 5:30 AM when that first train arrives and 10 AM when the doors open to the public. I got there at around 6:30 AM, just to see what it was like.  The line to cross the street from the train station to the giant parking lot that would house the East Hall line was 10 minutes when I stopped there. And then it got bigger behind me. The entire time, Comiket staffers were directing traffic and making sure there was no shoving or running. These days, the show is criminally understaffed, but the staff does their best to keep the lines orderly.  After I managed to cross the street and head toward the East hall, we were all directed toward a parking lot, where the line was neatly organized and people were free to sit and rest for a while. Pictured above is the line to get into that line.  A lot of Americans grouse about their local convention being LineCon, to the point where a 15 minute line invokes the derogatory name. Those people are entitled brats. This is LineCon.  About 4 hours later, my part of the line started moving, and I ran toward the East hall, the most popular part of the show floor. Comiket staff spends a lot of their advance time working on traffic flow, and so the ~4400 booths there are divided into Shutter Circles, which face out of the loading docks so the lines can be outside; Wall Circles, which get the lion's share of walkway space around the outside; Edge Circles, which face into the aisles; and then general circles with regular tables. But this is where the lack of staff came in. East Hall was a madhouse, with all sorts of pushing and shoving and elbowing as people made mad dashes to their favorite artists and circles. Imagine being at a trampoline gym, and telling all of the people there to come and tackle you. That's pretty much what it feels like in there. The crush of people was so bad, two of the buttons on my coat broke under the stress. Anyway, my goal was to hit two circles for friends: Mix-ism, a wall circle headed by Sekihiko Inui (RATMAN, Comic Party, Date A Live), and m-m-m, a shutter circle headed by Miwa Shiro (Dogs). So I had to shoulder my way through two full halls to get there, and by the time I got to Mix-ism, all of the items I'd been asked to pick up were already sold out. On the plus side, his books were still there, so I picked a couple up for myself and my friend Ken, who works the International Desk at Comiket and spends a lot of time translating for tourists and press. Then I stepped outside to take the less crowded route to the other side of East hall. And by less crowded, I mean this:  After those two stops, I decided I'd had more than enough of this bullshit and met up with Chris Ling to meet with a large number of indie developers and visual novel companies. I can't really divulge too many of the details of those meetings. People at Comiket are generous to a fault once they know you. When the folks at the International Desk found out that Ken's friend Dom had tried and failed to get a t-shirt from the Mix-ism table, they handed me one of the old K-On! shirts and posters that he made a couple of years ago.  This also extends to the larger companies in the industry area, and Baba-shachou was especially generous--when he found out that I listen to I've Sound, he slapped a ticket for the 30-person autograph session in my hand and insisted that I meet Takase Kazuya, the producer for their music. Their bassist was also there, so that was an awesome bonus.  Basically what I'm saying is that all you jerks should buy Clannad when it comes out because these guys are all freaking awesome.  This is the haul from Comiket that I can show you. It's much smaller than the old me would have come away with, because I am old and don't want too much stuff cluttering up my house. But each of these comes with a good story, and at this point, that's what really matters. vibratingsheep fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 01:10
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My only convention experience also featured a ridiculous line, but it was more organizer incompetence than anything. Hundreds of people and you only bring four laptops and one printer?  The line was pretty drat absurd though. It also took me about four hours; first I had to get through this line,  then an intermission line to the room where you could actually register.  As mentioned, they only had four laptops at the end of this. Halfway through the organizers realized that everyone has a smartphone now and told people near the end of the line to register through that. After that, there was another intermission line to get to the part where you pay, and then finally one last line to the lone printer to get your tag. It was an awful experience and the main reason I never want to go to another convention again. Everything was overpriced anyways. <  >
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Dec 31, 2014 01:24
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BlitzBlast posted:My only convention experience also featured a ridiculous line, but it was more organizer incompetence than anything. Hundreds of people and you only bring four laptops and one printer? Fanime 2013?
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Dec 31, 2014 01:30
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BlitzBlast posted:My only convention experience also featured a ridiculous line, but it was more organizer incompetence than anything. Hundreds of people and you only bring four laptops and one printer? Fanime has a reputation for being poorly organized, on the other hand, there arn't very many other cons in Cali where you can watch fansubs in the video rooms.
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Dec 31, 2014 01:32
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vibratingsheep posted:Fanime 2013? Was trying to remember the name. Yeah, that was it. I got MG Turn A out of it for close to base price though, so I guess it wasn't all bad.
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Dec 31, 2014 01:36
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vibratingsheep posted:The Comiket Experience
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Dec 31, 2014 02:25
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A couple of the folks I'm staying with here were headed for Comiket on Monday, so I decided to go as well to check things out. We got to the site around 10, and the train was not actually super-crowded. We waited in a line for about 45 minutes all told, but things weren't too bad. Once inside, it was a madhouse, though. I mean, geez, that was a ton of people. I'm curious to know just how much porn there was on "lewd day", given that it was about half porn when I went. We checked out the cosplay area, which was super-cool. Tons of awesome cosplayers. We left around 2 and then hit up Akiba- my friend wanted to buy one of the Touhou games just because half the people walking around the hall were cosplaying Touhou, and so much of the hall was dedicated to it. Then we met up with a few other people for dinner and karaoke. It was pretty interesting to get Japanese fans' perspective on things, even if my Japanese sucked. We discussed an interesting theory popular in Japan that Galactus is said to have devoured Krypton. Overall, it was definitely worth seeing just to understand how it works and how many people there were, but I don't think I'd have the steel to wait in line like that for hours upon hours and work my way through a gauntlet for fanstuff myself.
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Dec 31, 2014 04:54
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Rogue 7 posted:We discussed an interesting theory popular in Japan that Galactus is said to have devoured Krypton. Haha, what?
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Dec 31, 2014 05:16
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Sheep I'm jealous of your life wanna swap? E: No backsies. The_Frag_Man fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 05:43
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BlitzBlast posted:Haha, what? Yep. We tried to explain the whole "DC/Marvel" thing but I'm not sure how much got through. And honestly, if you're doing a crossover, it's a good place to start.
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Dec 31, 2014 05:50
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vibratingsheep posted:People at Comiket are generous to a fault once they know you. When the folks at the International Desk found out that Ken's friend Dom had tried and failed to get a t-shirt from the Mix-ism table, they handed me one of the old K-On! shirts and posters that he made a couple of years ago. To what extent does I've really still exist? I know their name is on something once in a while (most recently the Sora no Method anime, opening song performed by Larval Stage Planning, wtf name) but at least most of the big vocalist names have gone the way of big labels and lost the "I've Sound" name.
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Dec 31, 2014 12:23
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BlitzBlast posted:As mentioned, they only had four laptops at the end of this. Halfway through the organizers realized that everyone has a smartphone now and told people near the end of the line to register through that. After that, there was another intermission line to get to the part where you pay, and then finally one last line to the lone printer to get your tag. My experience with American conventions has taught me two things are required for you to have fun. 1. Preregister. Get all your poo poo taken care of two months before you go. Prereg lines are almost always a tenth of the length, if that. It helps cut costs down, too. (Also, be sure to book any needed hotel rooms at least two months in advance, if not more, if the con is even slightly big.) 2. Have friends to hang with. A convention is boring as poo poo if you don't have a crew to do stuff with there - it's a social event more than anything else, after all, and you need folks you know you get along with. It also helps to at least have some sort of a plan as to what you're gonna be doing so you don't spend your time wandering aimlessly. Cons can be really fun, but you have to go in with a plan. (Also, you want to be sure the con you're attending isn't lovely.)
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Dec 31, 2014 12:34
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vibratingsheep posted:Comiket Also, seconding that everyone should buy (or at least watch) Clannad, it's pretty good.
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Dec 31, 2014 13:23
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Mors Rattus posted:My experience with American conventions has taught me two things are required for you to have fun. Fanime had a couple of disastrous years with registration, although one of them wasn't entirely their fault (the convention center's power failed, so for several hours the lines weren't even moving). They finally got their heads together this year and made a process that actually worked resulting in an empty registration maze with a few lost souls standing around holding "LineCon Cancelled" signs. DragonCon is a monster and has been known to turn into single-file lines throughout the whole multi-hotel complex (connected by tube bridges) while the convention is still going on. That is, you try to walk into one of the buildings and are sucked into a line, which security won't allow you to leave, and are forced to shuffle along to wherever it goes, which may simply be 'out the door of another building fifteen minutes later'. Sorry, were you trying to reach a panel room? Tough luck. It's quite a culture shock compared to gaming conventions of less than 500 people where most of them know each other by sight.
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Dec 31, 2014 16:40
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Mors Rattus posted:My experience with American conventions has taught me two things are required for you to have fun. I second all this, this year at Anime Central I decided to preregister the night before I went and it turn out to be the smart thing to do as when I got there there was already lines around the whole con building(for those who don't know ACEN is like the US 3rd biggest and the biggest con in the Midwest) so I was kinda worried until I ask one of the Con staff who told me to go to the preregister line inside. When I got there I found only 6 people ahead of me and I found myself waiting for the main floor to open than standing in the registration line.
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Dec 31, 2014 19:06
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Poil posted:Also, seconding that everyone should buy (or at least watch) Clannad, it's pretty good. Buy and play first. The anime somehow makes it so much better by making Tomoya an interesting protagonist, but the game whilst overshadowed by the anime still has its merits.
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Dec 31, 2014 19:34
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Buy and play first. The anime somehow makes it so much better by making Tomoya an interesting protagonist, but the game whilst overshadowed by the anime still has its merits.
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Dec 31, 2014 21:41
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Poil posted:Oh, right. It was based on a game. I keep forgetting that a lot of anime is. The game's even clean, just in case anyone's worried. They made it after finding out that clean games sell much better. It's good.
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Dec 31, 2014 23:18
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Karia posted:The game's even clean, just in case anyone's worried. They made it after finding out that clean games sell much better. It's good.
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Jan 1, 2015 00:02
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Karia posted:The game's even clean, just in case anyone's worried. They made it after finding out that clean games sell much better. It's good. Clean games do not sell better. All ages games sell badly in Japan, the reason so many VN's have porn is that its the only way to sell enough to make a profit. Except if you are porting to the West in which case ripping the porn out and throwing it on steam is the better option. Key(the people who made Clannad) sucked at writing porn and their fans didn't care for it so they tossed it out, Clannad selling well had nothing to do with the no porn, and in fact its fandisc does have porn so no they weren't thinking all ages sells better. Only a handful of Vn company's that are not making otome games really make any real money on all ages.
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Jan 1, 2015 02:04
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Jikorde posted:Clean games do not sell better. All ages games sell badly in Japan, the reason so many VN's have porn is that its the only way to sell enough to make a profit. Except if you are porting to the West in which case ripping the porn out and throwing it on steam is the better option. Key(the people who made Clannad) sucked at writing porn and their fans didn't care for it so they tossed it out, Clannad selling well had nothing to do with the no porn, and in fact its fandisc does have porn so no they weren't thinking all ages sells better. Only a handful of Vn company's that are not making otome games really make any real money on all ages. Huh, sounds reasonable. I'd heard that the clean version of Kanon sold much better than the standard and that's why they did Clannad, and over-interpreted from that. My bad.
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Jan 1, 2015 02:19
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Happy new year! I'm going to a shrine today. Should I pray for: 1) My sister to have a safe delivery so I have a healthy niece to come home to 2) Luck in romance 3) Academics? Vote here!
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Jan 1, 2015 03:00
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You should know this by now: the answer is always "academics".
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Jan 1, 2015 03:15
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Romance! Apply the skills you have gained in games into real life. post trip report in e/n after. But for real, I hope everything goes well for your sister, dude.
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Jan 1, 2015 03:18
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FractalSandwich posted:You should know this by now: the answer is always "academics". You have learned well, my child. quote:Romance! I will be the Capturing God
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Jan 1, 2015 03:19
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Jikorde posted:Clean games do not sell better. All ages games sell badly in Japan, the reason so many VN's have porn is that its the only way to sell enough to make a profit. Except if you are porting to the West in which case ripping the porn out and throwing it on steam is the better option. Key(the people who made Clannad) sucked at writing porn and their fans didn't care for it so they tossed it out, Clannad selling well had nothing to do with the no porn, and in fact its fandisc does have porn so no they weren't thinking all ages sells better. Only a handful of Vn company's that are not making otome games really make any real money on all ages. Aren't most japanese VNs that don't have sex scenes still CERO rated C or D? I don't know very many actual "all ages" VNs in Japan. I've heard rumors that PC VN releases in general in recent years are making poor money in Japan. There's a niche fanbase that keeps buying the shiny new things, but the overall sales figures are supposedly getting pretty bad? I saw a post somewhere with sales figures but I don't know if it was accurate. Console games have to avoid the adults-only rating and they keep being produced, so obviously someone's making money on it. I suspect console production costs are higher though so that filters it down to a much smaller number of creators?
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Jan 1, 2015 05:09
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gegi posted:Console games have to avoid the adults-only rating and they keep being produced, so obviously someone's making money on it. I suspect console production costs are higher though so that filters it down to a much smaller number of creators?
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Jan 1, 2015 05:31
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vibratingsheep posted:I will be the Capturing God I can already see the ending. It says, 'Nice Boat'.
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Jan 1, 2015 07:41
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Raitzeno posted:I can already see the ending. It says, 'Nice Boat'. Omedetou Omedetou Omedetou Omedetou Omedetou Omedetou Omedetou
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Jan 1, 2015 07:43
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