MOCHI > The Scrapbook > Convention Memories > Anime Detour > 2006

The first part of the morning was taken up with goofing off during our own photo shoot, which produced some fun results. Then, it was off to the highlight of the day: a dim sum breakfast. Daifuku had spent several months dreaming of good dim sum as 1) there are no places within an hour's drive of her that serve decent dim sum and 2) even if there were, she doesn't know enough local folks who would go eat with her. Like other forms of "noshy" dining, like tapas, dim sum does not work well for solo diners. With six folks, there was definitely a chance to get a little bit of everything. [ Sadly, there weren't enough hungry people left by the time the steamed cake came around! -Grandis]

While Grandis had a dizzy spell on the way out to dim sum (triggered by what her brain saw as an attack from a Demonic Coke ), for the most part, her labyrinthitis was under control.

Back at the hotel, well-fed and fortified to face the rest of the day, Contingent B packed up and departed for home. The rest of MOCHI took Kent, who had spent most of Saturday getting his equilibrium back, on a whirlwind tour of the rest of the convention.

The big hit of last year's trip was the room with the bemani (beat-mania) games. Sadly, there was no Donkey Konga to grab Toasted and Daifuku's attention. On the plus side, there was a Taiko Drum Master game (where we heard someone make their way through the Neon Genesis Evangelion opening song). We also had some fun goggling at folks trying their hand at Guitar Hero. Instead of stomping on a dance-pad or smacking small colorful globular buttons, each person had a guitar-shaped controller with buttons along the top part of the neck. There was a strum button along where you usually strum the strings of a guitar and a whammy bar. It was interesting to see which people actually held the controller like a real musical instrument and who held it like a really odd-ly shaped bar. While there were some might fine pieces in Guitar Hero's soundtrack, without songs like "Rock Lobster", we could not be tempted into playing it.

On the other hand, Toasted Mochi had a good time tackling the rail shooter Rez. (Your character goes along a predetermined path, like a train on a rail, but you can freely rotate as you go along that path.) You play a person trying to penetrate a computer AI that has gone catatonic. The landscape that you travel over is extremely trippy and only gets weirder the further you go into the game. Missile-locking and firing are timed with the beat music. You start out with a little ball-shaped avatar made up of simple polygons; as you get power-ups that help you "evolve", you start taking a more distinctively human shape. It reminded Daifuku of Tron, while Kent thought it would make a good mash-up with some footage from 2001.

And, NO, we did not see or have an interest in the, er, special controller for this game.

After the convention closed down, the rest of MOCHI (and Kent) decided to forgo the (very crowded) hot tub in favor of playing card games all night. What kind of crazy gamer geeks would do that? ^_^

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