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