Everytime I do one of these get togethers, I am reminded of Stephen Fatsis's "Word Freak", a novel about the world of competitive Scrabble playing and the intense people involved. It's the level of competition and dedication that always blows me away in that novel and here at these meets.
I always learn so much while simultaneously being pushed to work harder and be better. Which is evidenced by the fact that at each meet, I have set new personal bests on games I work on - Sky Shark, Batsugun, Dodonpachi and for this meet, Raiden and Ketsui.
Raiden, I cannot seem to get away from it. I've never been a huge fan of the game but for some reason, I am compelled to keep playing it. I'm sure it has to do something with Seibu's love for Toaplan, but the point blanking from the side fields still sucks. I did happen to get to the 4th stage - something which I have never done before - and now I think I kinda like it.
I posted a 78,220,694 score for Ketsui, ending at 1-5 and during the run, I made some impressive moves which I probably shouldn't have gotten away with, but I did. Awesome. My patterns for 4 are coming along, but I really need to start working on five as I can get there often enough that I need to do something other than bomb.
And as usual, I'm always impressed by the level of respect everyone brings - nothing was broken, stolen or even left dirty, save for some glasses. This is a great community.
As for the meet itself, Zerst killed everything. He made a 523,160 score on Nexzr Special 2-Minute Mode and pretty much led from the beginning of the competition. He also destroyed the Super Secret Midnight Scoring Competition, which was Zoo Keeper this year. He posted a crazy 3+ mil score and I don't think anyone even went near the machine after that.
We did Livestream the event, which was very cool and pretty fun. Next meet, we'll do the same. We started around 2pm and showed the Nexzr competition and then some DDP, Twinkle Star Sprites, Ketsuipachi and Zoo Keeper. It was cool to see people watching and being down for staying signed in the whole time.
Andi was pretty much the MC of the event, getting people organized at dinner and corralling people for events. Big thanks to you homeboy.
Thanks again for everyone who attended and I look forward to doing another this fall!
