I noticed a post in the shmups forum a while back that gunbird18 was planning on having a meet down in Central Missouri and kind of shrugged, thinking it would be cool to do something like that here. Then I looked at the distance to drive it - 6 hours, give or take a bit. I had just driven 7 for the CAGDC contest and that only had one shmup - made in 1986!
I had to do it. First of all, gunbird18 is a very nice and respectful forum member, whcih carries a lot of weight in my book and knowing that we could bring a cab to up the total of cabs to 2, I thought it would be a great idea. I asked Dave if we could bring his cab down as he has a first floor place and all we would need to do is unplug it, wheel it out to the Element and go. He was down. I realized that we could probably fit in the newly acquired Aero Table in the truck as well, if I could get some regular Sanwa sticks into it and maybe some buttons that didn't stick and actually registered all the time. I hacked one of my Astro City plates, used a bunch of leftover bits when me and Dave had bought our cabs and it was ready to go.
The list of boards that were going to the event was epic: Muchi Muchi Pork!, Guwange, Fixeight, Outzone, Ketsui, Deathsmiles, ESP RaDe, ESPgaluda II, Ibara, Dragon Blaze, Battle Garegga, Fever SOS, Battle Bakraid, all 3 Strikers titles, Dimahoo, Raiden Fighters 1,2 and Jet, Armed Police Batrider, Progear, DOJ, Raident Silvergun, Soukugurentai, Mushihimesama and Strikers 1945 Plus - plus every good shooter for the Saturn, Dreamcast and PS2. Unbelieveable. I barely got a chance to play half of them!
We got there Friday night and met up with Todd aka gunbird18, who really is a nice guy in real life and unloaded all the cabs, pcb's, the tv and luggage and ended up playing until 2 a.m. that first night.
The next day, I woke up early, so stoked to play some of the titles I had been waiting to play for years and made coffee, played SOTN on my PSP and started in on some of the console titles while people arrived, like Raiden III, which I had never played and ended up enjoying for a bit.
Almost everyone was there by 1 p.m. and people swapped games in and out of cabs at a pretty prodigious rate, trading Raizing titles for Cave, Cave for Psikyo, Psikyo for Toaplan and on and on.
The Aero Table got a lot of play, which I was pretty stoked about. In fact, caldwert like it so much, we worked a trade for it as he needed a jamma cab that was easy to turn horizontal and I needed room! I ended up with Dangun Feveron and Battle Garegga - two pcb's that have been on my want list for a while now. Glad I brought it!
For me, the best game that made it was MMP, a title which I hadn't paid that much attention to - even owning the OST/DVD combo didn't get me that stoked to play it. But playing through it for the first time I realized that it is a really deep and fun game with a great art style and soundtrack.
I also set a new high score for myself on Batsugun Special Version at 4mil+, which was a great accomplishment for me. But, shortly there after, stuminator set at it and killed it with a second loop run that had a number of people standing around watching in amazement.
Some surprise hits of the get together were the Simpsons pcb, which, if it didn't need to be swapped out for Guwange shortly after it arrived in the cab, would have probably been in for the entire meet!
The Wii and 360 also got a work out when people were taking a break from STG-ing, with Tennis and Golf the favorites. Dave certainly got into it and his curses rang out louder than those of any other gamer. I also got a chance to play Bomberman Live, which, being a huge fan of the Bomberman series, was awesome. Multi-player Bomberman is just stupid amounts of fun.
Kudos to Todd for putting on such a great meet and to all of the attendees who brought pcb's to make this - in the words of szycag on shmups - 'THE MEET EVER!'
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