After playing one too many rounds of the 1999 arcade game Golgo 13, the idea was simply irresistable to me, especially since I was looking for a quick and easy game idea to code into existence.

(Download Cirno 9 – The Strongest – Vista-compatible version here)

As usual, said idea was neither quick nor easy but it was still amusing to think about.

Basically, it’s what you get when you crossover random Touhou fandom memes, and a precision-based sniper game. (sans lightgun, unfortunately)

It’s just a one-level demo at this point, and by the time I got to programming the level, my head hurt so it’s kind of simplistic, but I thought it would be interesting to see the reaction to something random like this.

Also, thanks to KirbyM of Walfas for all the art I stole off his create.swf, but no thanks for him for not having any way to put overly bushy eyebrows on Cirno. It’s just not Golgo without the eyebrows.

-CCY

Just some random notes on Fanime 2008. Inside, a look over on some of the cosplays (although, no pictures yet), the dealer’s room, my elitist side at Fanime, some random games, and the video rooms.

I wonder if writing a blunt, short, dull preview while mentally dead will help drive more people to read the actual article. It’s an experiment. Or something.

Man, I miss KimiKiss at times like this … although my rewatch of it has stalled out.

Danbooru is down, so I have to go off old images. Also, this represents cosplay.
Cosplay Watch
Fanime is educational, too. It taught me not to major in photography, as clearly one year taking it as an elective is still no match for a shaky hand.

And as I embody the blushing, stammering “H-hey, y-you’re from…” fanboy photographer quite well, I tend to only take one or two pictures and get out. It wasn’t until my second or so day that I realized that I could barely make out a lot of the cosplays clearly in my shots.

Still, I got a kick out of seeing many of the characters there that I did, both those that I took pictures of and those that I didn’t. Many more obscure (or less mainstream) anime were definitely represented. Among others, I saw …

… two or three Yotsubots – I don’t know what they’re called, but the cardboard box robot from Yotsuba&. It’s an easy costume and one that’s very popular, especially due to the cute acting of the cosplayers.

… a good KyoAni pair of a very well done (or at least cute) Tsukasa Hiiragi, and a good Misuzu Kamio as well. I think I might have seen some more AIR cosplay around but not as quality (in the real, not the internet sense) as this one.

… quite a few people wearing around the Lucky Star sailor-uniform print T-shirt from the Bandai LE release of the first R1 DVD. I was surprised as I thought most people believed it looked ridiculous…but hey, anime fans look ridiculous sometimes. One of these guys even did a little curtsy in their serafuku T-shirt. Very valiant, and it made a great picture.

… the wolf from Okami. It’s a complicated costume to get right, with both quite a few props, a full body suit, and a lot of paint involved, but the end result was good. A daring outfit that worked well.

… three Kaijis (one Kitami) and one Itoshiki-sensei. They were the two cosplays I considered doing but decidedly to push back, so I was happy to see someone else thinking the same way.

… Amu Hinamori, for real this time! After being so frustrated by seeing a million people with pink hair and a million people with gothic-lolita skirts that resemble Amu’s, I finally found the right combination on Sunday night. Made my night, considering that Shugo Chara is quickly rising in my book of awesomeness.

… and undoubtedly many more I didn’t notice.

No energy to shop Kotomi + briefcase from episode 14 into a Deal or no Deal guise …
Dealers or No Dealers
With far too much cash to burn as a teenager, I was looking forward to the Dealer’s Room for an excuse to burn money on frivolous but still adorable merchandise.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed, but I’m sure many people were happy.

There was a decent if not outstanding range of merchandise, but none of them were quite the kind of stuff I was interested in. The DVDs I could get cheaper online, I’m not a figurine person (although, I must say, figurine collectors would be in heaven at this Fanime), and the artbooks were overpriced.

Saw a couple keychains I was interested in, but the Miyuki (yes, someone likes Miyuki) Takara one was only sold as part of a set, and the Nagato one was three dollars more than any other Haruhi keychain. I laughed a little yandere laugh at that amusing manipulation of supply and demand.

Overall, the selection wasn’t really horrible, but there just wasn’t anything that stirred my impulsive side that much. That’s probably a good thing, though; most stores were local or had equivalent online retailers, besides.

What I did like, though, was the amount of old or unique material that I got to browse through; doujins from the Cardcaptor Sakura era, old movie posters, and the like. There was even one booth with a large overstock of Geneon DVDs for $10 each, but unfortunately no Shana or Higurashi.

I did pick up the second DVD of Kare Kano for $5, just to test if I’ll like the show. One of the better deals I found.

Nayuki plays a sad song for the lack of Kanon
Endangered Anime List
Of course, my elitist side was still a little sad at the lack of floor presence for many of my favorite shows out there, and as the weekend wore on I began to form a little list of five ‘impulse purchase’ anime, that I would buy any reasonably-priced merchandise of on sight if I saw some.

Kanon unfortunately had a poor showing even compared to any Key show; I saw a few AIR and Clannad cosplayers, but absolutely no Kanon ones, and no Japanese Key merchandise either aside from the Kanon 2002 artbook.

ef ~a tale of memories~ doesn’t exist outside of my Chihiro T-shirt … clearly it’s been more than 13 hours since the show finished airing.

Ditto with KimiKiss. I want to start breaking out some factions for this show, or something. I’m a preemptive Yummy Yummy Yuumi member.

Touhou (is not an anime lol) was understandably invisible in the dealer’s room and 99% of the cosplays (barring a poor Reimu … or perhaps just a generic shrine maiden) were found in the Saturday meetup, but at least I found a nice $4 full-page color print featuring Marisa and some random characters, along with some bookmarks, in Artist’s Alley. Now to find something to do with them.

Shuffle!, for a eroge, was surprisingly not as merchandise-spammed as most games of that type are, at least not at Fanime. It’s not particularly popular in the states or anything, but I was hoping for at least some cosplay or trinkets or something. Nope.

Tsukihime was surprisingly underrepresented for having such an easily cosplayable character (Shiki Tohno). I’m not sure if there’s a lot of Tsukihime merchandise around, though, since it was one of Type-Moon’s first works, but I saw a Sacchin plushie online once and I think I’ll hunt it to the ends of the earth. On the plus side, Dr. Master (I think) had the manga on display (although they wouldn’t let me have their promotional poster, thanks for trying), and I picked up a Ciel keychain at Artist’s Alley.

Why Ciel? I like Akiha, Hisui, and Kohaku more but their poses were poor and the appeal of ‘normal Ciel’ with glasses is simply irresistable. Also, the artists drew every character but Sacchin. The irony is so blatant it hurts. Sad Sacchin is sad.

There was a lot of Marisa Stole the Precious jokes. A lot.
Niconico Panel
How about something relevant and interesting, eh? One of the attendees of Fanime (who I later saw at the Shira Oka panel), a diehard fan replete with Gao Gao Stegosaurus shirt, hosted a panel about Niconico Douga, essentially the Japanese equivalent of Youtube on crack.

It was a bit stiff at some points compared to other panels I attended, but he showed off some interesting videos, including an incredibly sexy AIR MAD called Polyphonie and two Niconico Medleys (the famous one, plus the most recent one, Meteor Swarm). Incidentally, the latest Niconico medley includes much more Touhou and a mash-up of God Knows (Haruhi) and JOINT (Shana II) … it’s certainly something to listen to.

Apparently I missed lk by the skin of my teeth here too, but this panel was still strong with an enthusiastic audience, an informative tutorial on how to use Niconico, and lots of random references that make you feel smart. I caught Silver Forest’s Kero 9 Destiny being used as the example video. Kerekerokerokerokero…

A different kind of bullet hell, except with 100% more nekomimi.
Radiant Silvergun
The devolving into a STG mindslave continues, beyond the universal appeal of armpits and pedophilia and into the more professional, traditional ’spaceship’ shooters.

Never heard of Radiant Silvergun before Fanime but now I can’t get enough of its amusing Engrish, strong gameplay, level structure … and $200 price tag.

Incidentally, my 2007 laptop can’t run a game from 1998.

I very much like the presentation of this game for some reason, it just exudes that futuristic, ‘cool’ feeling to me, but maybe I like scrolling text and dramatic Engrish sentences.

(WARNING -data install- NO REFUGE … Encountered an assailant – Be attitude for gains: be praying / be praying / be praying …)

Definitely want to play more of this when I get the chance.

Watching Nodame with 3 other people felt like this
Anime Screening Rooms
I didn’t really spend much time in the video rooms this convention… I was expecting to, because even though I could watch these shows any time, the entertainment from watching it and commenting it up with fans sounded like a lot of fun.

Unfortunately anything I wanted to watch either overlapped with something else or was at an ungodly time of the day, so that plan was scrapped.

Apparently the School Days marathon was great fun according to lk, but it was literally minutes after my senior prom, so that’s a no, even for someone as crazy as me. I still insist that something as manically dramatic and ridiculous as School Days would still make a great after party, but I was sadly overruled … by sleep.

Additionally the entirety of H2O ~footprints in the sand~, one of the more intriguing and unique visual novel conversions, was apparently screened over three separate days. I would have liked to drop in at least for the acid-tripping episode eight, but all of the screenings took place from 6 AM to 8 AM. Considering I had a 20 minute commute to and from Fanime … it was another no.

Nodame Cantabile was the third one up on the list, and considering it would be at about the halfway point when I got to Fanime on Monday, I decided to hit it up and maybe complete a bit more of this great show.

Well, I got there, and at the end of episode 13 there were four people there. Including me. Four. That’s just doing Nodame a disservice. Luckily later on the theater became more crowded, but by then it was too far in the show for me to watch.

Clannad the Movie was the last shot on a Monday afternoon, just to make sense of the ZOMG Key plot in the last third, and to go warn people to not watch it if they wanted to keep After Story unspoiled … but the Naruto movie ran long, and that was that.

So video rooms were a fail as well, but it’s not a huge loss.

Those are some more of the points I wanted to make from Fanime … perhaps more later, perhaps not. Not enough mental capability to continue right now, so I’ll go watch something really mind-blowing and get broken.

-CCY

Someone who doesn’t suck at Beatmania … and at melting fanboys into “moe”-chanting piles
(Oh, and I suck at Beatmania … but at least it went to show the wide variety of games the gaming room had. Very pleased with that.)

It’s been two days since quite possibly the most hectic weekend of my life, and I think I’ve finally shaken off all the sleep deprivation and worn off that tasty mix of adrenaline and insanity, that anime conventions tend to impart upon an otherwise normal person.

As such it’s time to immortalize my first Fanime (do note that the phrase “my first time” has been beaten to death at the convention already) in literary form by going over some of the more entertaining events that made my weekend and my $55 worth it.

Additionally, in the next few days I plan to make a broader coverage of the convention as a whole with more general info and more griping, but until then I’ll stick with the starry-eyed wonder that makes all the seasoned, hardened anibloggers jealous.

It might be perhaps a bit self-indulging in a sense to brag about all the cool stuff that happened, but on the other hand, I hope I can inspire and encourage future entertaining events like this in the future.

OK, yeah, it’s just wankery. But it’s entertaining and hilarious wankery. Trust me. It’s apparently not just a coincidence I was wearing a Cirno shirt around. I make a lot of idiotically awesome stories.

A lot of the entertainment at anime conventions is provided not by the events and things to do, but rather by the people themselves. As negative a stereotype as the reclusive, escapist anime fan (or wildly, disturbing outgoing popular shonen show-tard) can appear at times, there’s still an undoubtable sense of belonging at these gatherings.

I’ve always believed that it’s kind of silly to try to distance yourself from society with the excuse “you’re not like us”, but I’ve got nothing against embracing those that share your particular brand of insanity, and so I had quite a bit of fun at Fanime just seeing the crowds of fans, from the shonen fans to the gamer half-breeds to the truly obscure.

Granted, I admitted myself that I was going to run around being all “cool and elitist” mentally sneering at all the orange jumpsuits and giant swords, but really I was overall impressed with the attitude of the fans there (although I can’t help but question some of their fashion). Perhaps that’s because I’m rather passive, or because while there were annoying people, they were far apart, but most people were really civilized, or, at least, wild in ways that entertained me.

I’m still amused by the little things, like random 30-people breakouts of Caramelldansen, or people sitting around holding signs that read “informative sign is informative”, and most of all I get a little kick of when I see something vaguely obscure that I recognize. Or, of course, the converse where people recognize my obscure shirts. (Thank you, the one person who figured out I was sporting a silhouette of Chihiro from ef for Monday.)

Specific cosplays I’ll discuss next time, while I’ll focus on two meetings here. First of course would be the one that I planned – albeit very poorly – and that would be the animeblogger meetup. It was supposed to be three or four people – me, lolikitsune of not dotq, Author from Ani-Nouto, and perhaps Mei of Jiii~.

Predictably though I did what I do best, and got horribly lost, meeting up with lk but entirely missing Author. (I think if there is one thing that’s bad about moe characters, it’s that I’m slowly absorbing their traits, becoming clumsy, dense, and spacey. Or maybe that’s why I like moe.)

Still, it was interesting and perhaps a bit scary meeting the face behind the flames. What strikes me is that lk is very lax – the fact that he doesn’t have green skin kind of disappointed me. Really it goes to show how people can have very different faces, and it was entertaining talking with him for a little bit, especially when I got a few glasses-orientated jokes fired back at me.

Apparently I met up with Mei twice as well and didn’t even know it, thanks to the fact that she was the one Clannad cosplayer I caught and a Kyonko (presumably the only one) that was hanging out with some Touhou characters.

Segueing into that there was a Touhou meetup on Saturday, which I attended with my real-life friend and his two Touhou internet friends. It was a fairly strong turnout, with two Kaguya / Eirin pairs, most of the popular characters, and even a Prismriver sister and PC-98 character. I was personally impressed with both the diversity and the quality of the cosplay, since about half of them were guys, a fact that took me a while to discern (a good thing). Remember, this is Touhou – there’s about as many guys as there are Tsukihime animes.

(One. The Tsukihime anime is (not) a lie. How many references is that?)

The photoshoot lasted for about half an hour and included all sorts of entertaining poses, including a parody of pretty much every IOSYS flash with dancing, some psuedo-yuri stuff, and more.

I guess the reason I brought this up was for the same reason as the lk meetup, that it surprised me how sane anime fans can be and how insane they can be. I met up with my friend’s two friends again on Monday and spent a good five minutes double-taking how they look in plainclothes. You would never guess.

That’s what I like about anime conventions, is that all of a sudden I’m tempted to pull a cheesy analogy to violent videogames and say “they give you a chance to release your crazy side”. Not that it’s good to be all conformist and ashamed of your nerdy side (if you remember the Otaku Girl rant), but we’ll just say that there are certain times and places for carrying around dakimakura.

Moving on to the second event that stuck in my head, the Shira Oka panel was just as enjoyable as I had hoped for a fan of this English-made visual novel in the works. So let me put on my advertising cap and get to work here …

Shira Oka, as mentioned, intrigues me because it’s a professionally made English visual-novel by Okashi Studios, a start-up that’s local to where I live. It’s a cross-breed between a Tokimeki Memorial stats-driven game and a Tsukihime plot-driven game, kind of a mix of lighthearted and dramatic elements.

It sounds to be pretty powerful stuff, mainly because the developers started talking about endings and how some of them are bittersweet, right in the middle of the panel. When they started counting off exactly how many we started plugging our ears and shouting ’spoilers!’.

That’s what made the Shira Oka panel so great was the casual aspect about it, how everyone was very lighthearted, joking around and having a good time yet really being able to have a meaningful conversation as well. At some points we’d be joking about all sorts of alternate endings (harem or boat), and then the next having a candid discussion about the game’s content, the focus and the layout.

It really was a great atmosphere that was both informative and really enjoyable and I really came out of the panel in a energetic mood and impressed with the game. They actually demonstrated the beginning portions of the game live for us (complete with ’shout out which choice’ interaction where we made the lead guy into a total jerk), which seemed pretty solid and professional.

Shira Oka is the story of some generic male (we actually did mention how he had “eroge face”, that is, lack therof) who is a complete loser, and one day, is sent back in time, or something, to redo his four years of high school, except better. The intro struck a bit of a sour note with me personally for being so “I’m a loser, life sucks, I have no life, etc.” that feels like it’s trying to reach out to certain members of the anime fanbase, but the writing itself once the characters are introduced (such as the angel who acts as both your guardian and embedded tutorial character) was more palatable and occasionally quite amusing.

Points that make Shira Oka stand out are the fact that the characters are relatively animated, changing postures in numerous frames (i.e. not just fading from ’standing up’ to ‘bending over’) and with full lip-synching. Maybe this is something common to newer visual novels, but it contributed a lot to the experience for me. Additionally, as mentioned, there is a focus on stats a la Tokimeki Memorial, albeit with promise of serious plot, backed up by the fact that apparently the game has cutscenes that are animated (fully, if I recall right). The developers actually offered to show us – how friendly is that? – but we decided to keep our minds unspoiled.

It was really one of my favorite panels of the convention (although I only went to a few others), because of that real sense of community interaction, as well as a real casual atmosphere as well. To end this on a note that deserves some royalties, check out the Shira Oka website and forums if you’re interested more about this visual novel which should hopefully be coming down the pipe soon.

The third, final, and best event I’ll be discussing today is an event ripped straight from Kaiji, the Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors competition on Sunday. I was told about this the day before by my friend, and being a huge Kaiji fan (at one point, I considered holding a competition like this at Fanime as well) I was there faster than you could scream “ISHIDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

ISHI – uh, anyway, there was a group of about five people running the RRPS event, which had a capacity of 50 people but only pulled in about 40, of which probably a quarter actually recgonized the origins of the event.

For the greenhorns to Kaiji in the crowd, RRPS is basically a game of survival, for people in debt. You’re handed three stars and twelve cards; the former represent your life, and the latter your hand in rock-paper-scissors, with four cards of each sign. You face off with others, playing these cards from your hand and betting stars, with the ultimate goal being to have three stars or more at the end after having played all your cards. It’s a simple game that can have some very intense psychological action as the fate of a person lies on the turn of a single card.

Luckily the runners of RRPS created a rather faithful representation of the event, with a realistically pretentious and lengthy speech from the Tonegawa-alike, and threats of people sent to the ‘loser corner’ and promises of prizes to the ‘winners’. Additionally, tissue boxes from the final gamble of Kaiji made a guest appearance as the card collecting boxes. They did make sure to keep count of the cards, like the real show.

They started by forcing us all to play one match against a random opponent, something that confused me, until I found out later that this was to prevent people from using the strategy of ‘just tie 12 times to win’. It’s a smart move, although I wonder how many people would think of that.

After all it seemed like many people were either not very bright or not very serious, depending wholly on luck to win the game (or at least, it seemed that way to me). My friend and I tried more to pull off some conniving tricks, which led to a lot of the fun we had.

I devised a strategy myself which I am hoping was in the bounds (or else the internet might come to my house and take away my winner’s prize) of the rules … unfortunately, it was a strategy so dumb that even Kaiji would break out laughing (so hard that he would cry manly tears, naturally). I don’t think he ever laughed once in the anime.

The strategy was, I hide most of my cards on my person somewhere, leaving just one card out visible in my hand. I then tilt that card at a low angle so that it could be easily seen by prying eyes, who would then challenge me to a duel. I would accept the battle, play that card, and beat them. Easy stars.

It took me two battles – one of which, somehow, I still won – to realize that I was missing a key part of the strategy, and that was to actually play a card that would win, instead of just tossing down the card that my opponent saw.

My friend and I were doubled over laughing for a minute after my discovery of how my strategy truly worked … or didn’t. I think it was a plan that required a double-switch, which I obviously forgot. That’s living up to my Cirno shirt right there.

It turned out that we didn’t really get to use any strategies, because most of them required a level of cockiness that nobody really had at RRPS. Either they were too casual to notice our double-crossing strategy, or familiar enough with Kaiji to not fall for our conniving plans.

So we sat around for a few minutes, waiting for the cards to unbalance themselves. Five minutes later, we were the only ones holding cards on the floor.

Obviously the game progressed a bit quicker than I expected, taking less than half an hour to get to its final stage. I was in peril after a messy bunch of random battles and failed strategies, having five cards and two stars, while my friend had one card and seven stars.

The gears began turning in my head again, which told me that I had all the power here. I knew what his card was, and I had him in the palm of my hand, since if I didn’t play him, he would lose. As such, I could give him two of my cards so that I could play all my cards and win, theoretically. And holding most of the cards, I could rig his hand to be as poor as possible.

Unfortunately, neither of us were friendly enough to arrange any sort of deal where he would lose two matches and win one, so that both of us would win. He wanted eight stars, oh yes.

So there it was, the epic final showdown, me with two rocks and one paper versus his evenly split hand (one card of each). I had to figure out how to win two matches and lose one, and to do this, I decided to figure out when he would play his rock, and beat it with my paper. I would then lose rock versus his paper and tie rock versus rock, for a net gain of one.

But the question is, when?

I’m not sure if he was thinking quite as hard but I chose the first match to play the paper, to lower the tension. This way, the fate would be set on one match.

Set.

Check.

Open!

I turn over the paper, and he turns over…

ROCK. Mentally I am screaming YATTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA as I take his star. The other two matches go just as planned, so after all the planning and all the stupidity, this roller coaster was going to settle on three stars, just enough to pass by. I look down at my star holder and see…

TWO STARS. This is where it cuts to any one of the numerous scenes where Kaiji screams ANDOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU while a close-up of his eyes goes through a funny wavy Photoshop effect.

Impossible. How? Why? What was going to happen now that I was relegated to the loser’s corner?

As I was beginning to accept my fate and playfully punch out vending machines after making sure there was no buy-out, my friend comes up to me. “Hey, is that your star on the floor over there?”

…

… hey, there is a star where I was standing. “If I find a star on the floor and think it’s mine, can I have three stars then?”

“Yeah, sure.”

YATTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

At this point I was getting into it far too much (although I did not scream as you might infer), but I didn’t care, because it was exhilarating amounts of fun and I was a winner.

The punishment came before the prizes, and was a suitably mad endcap to the event: the losers, headed by the event organizers, would have to do the Motteke! Seerafuku (Lucky Star OP) dance.

What’s great about an anime convention is that nobody has any shame anyway, so while the very talented dancers in front led, all the ‘losers’ in back still danced with enthusiasm and pride, unlike a school event where everybody would sit in the back and mime moves. (Although, I’ve never seen anyone dance to this song at school.) I have a lot of respect to them for being so into it and letting loose, and so I danced along a bit as well in the winner’s corner.

After that, the winners were invited to pick their prizes from a box of stuff the organizers brought, from wallscrolls to figurines to magazines and more. The ones with the most stars got first crack (I think the big winner had 12 stars), all the way down to little me at the end with 3 stars (barely). As a result I picked up a random pencilboard from some show I don’t know on the basis that it looked like something I would watch. It’s apparently from a visual novel, not an anime, so I guess I was right.

Graciously, the organizers allowed the losers to pick a prize as well, which I thought was a good move. Really, although the gameplay might not have been the best for everyone, the event was run very well by the group of Kaiji cosplayers (replete with pointy noses) who made it possible, and I wouldn’t hesitate to attend this event again or help hold it next year. If there was one event of Fanime deserving of internet-phrase praise, then the Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors event was truly epic win, full of win and awesome, and had a awesome level of over nine thousand.

More from Fanime when the next post comes down the pipe.

-CCY

(P.S. If you’re reading my blog and saw a guy in a “quiet unsociable person”, nine-ball (a.k.a Cirno), or Chihiro (ef) silhouette shirt at Fanime, congratulations! You ran into me without knowing! Let’s talk sometime.)

For a while it was up in the air between the previous news (broken in the preview for the Novemeber issue of Japanese magazine Tougeki Damashii) of a possible sequel to the hit 2D fighter and the consequent removal of the title from the preview page, but now it’s confirmed:

Hot meido-on-unlucky-osananajimi action is back, baby.

OK, maybe that is a bit of a stretch for the purpose of random innuendo but the fact of the matter does remain that the Tsukihime universe does contain a lot of seemingly-cliche characters that actually are pretty in-depth and have emotional storylines … which is why we’re having them fight to the death. Or something.

I’m sure there’s some sort of reason that could be understood if I could read Japanese but the point still remains that Melty Blood remains one of my favorite 2D fighter series if only because it’s one that leans more towards the pick-up-and-play end, with only 3 attack buttons and a shield to worry about.

As such 90% of the attacks can actually be pulled off by someone with little experience to the game; the movesets are relatively simple and as always the combo potential is still very complex, which is evidenced by the fact that I get completely wiped whenever I try to play someone over the age of 10.

Still, 2D fighters have always had sort of an appeal since they are one of the “cooler-looking” genres; if you’ve ever seen some of the special moves in Melty Blood, you know what I mean. (Sacchin’s Blood Heat Arc vs. Shiki, or Ciel’s Seventh Holy Scripture)

Or, maybe I like this game because it is with established characters, and it is always win to see and hear Hisui & Kohaku being Hisui & Kohaku.

And now, Hisui can actually moe people to death. Almost.

Rant aside, here’s what’s new in “Actress Again”, from what I’ve read:
- 2 new characters, Riesbyfe Stridberg (she shows up in one of Sion’s Arc Drives, the rest is Japanese to me) and Roa (Far Side version)
- New character select art
- Some new “Guard Crash/Crush” system (this is probably why I keep losing)
- More than one playing style per character
- “5 buttons;” whether this includes shield / heat activation buttons, I don’t know.
- More Nasu-tastic storylines

Sounds good so far, although a lot of it is lost on a casual player like me. Look forward to more news on this sequel coming to arcades in 2008 (and hopefully to a home release too.)

-CCY
(Thanks to Beast’s Lair for the news.)

The anime community and the Dance Dance Revolution community aren’t horribly far apart. With both things being mostly Asian fads given strange looks by most Americans, it’s not suprising that a large amount of anime fans enjoy DDR as well.

DDR as one might surmise is mildly lacking in official anime songs; while they feature enough Eurobeat, techno and J-Pop (and for lucky Americans, silly 30-year-old songs as well) to keep a mildly Japanophilic dancer happy, sometimes one just has the urge to bust some moves to Hare Hare Yukai (one can already bust some drums, but that very well doesn’t count).

Enter popular DDR simulator Stepmania, pretty much a free DDR clone for your computer. The default interface is pretty much a carbon copy of DDRMAX, although the program can be reskinned in all sorts of fantastical ways. The program is pretty obvious and easy to use once you get the hang of it, and if not, I’ll be sitting here with my Tech Support cap on backwards.

But for those new to Stepmania, you’ll notice one thing; there’s no songs.

Haven’t found a place to put the jump yet so I’ll leave you on a cliffhanger; if you’re still interested in DDR on your computer, or if you just need a few more locations for songs, march onwards.

Yeah, if you ever wondered why that download size was so small it’s because Stepmania doesn’t come with a default song set. And it’s probably better than way.

Customization is once again the name of the game, and this time it extends to songs as well. Like home versions of DDR, you can create your own steps for songs, except in Stepmania, you can create songs from the ground up!

The fact that pretty much anything can be stepped is evidently shown in Stepmania song sharing communities such as BemaniStyle (one of the largest, featuring what has to be thousands of songs). The variety of songs is staggering; American rock and music, anime theme songs, video game tracks, custom remixes of DDR songs, even a few joke tracks (This Is Spartaaaaa! Techno Remix). It’s really endless and if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself gigabytes deep in Stepmania.

However if one is a mad anime addict and is looking for more of that and less of Sparta, it might be a bit tricky. There is definitely an established anime simfile (as they are called) base at BemaniStyle – I’ve even created four and uploaded them there myself (look at the top) – but there are certainly other places out there which are far better.

Otaku’s Dream, I’ve found, is one of those Best Places, and it may say something that I only have one source for anime simfiles. This place for me at least is guaranteed to leave your bandwidth taken up for days on end – there is probably at least 4 or 5 gigs of zipped simfiles on there. Some may be duplicates but there are so many files on the site I can hardly check them all.

The simfiles are very high quality as well, usually, featuring full videos as well as steps. I would give them a reccomendation if you’re in the need for more Stepmania simfiles here. A lot of these are not uploaded to BemaniStyle as well; my only complaint is that a lot of them are in huge (like, huge zip file is huuuuuuge. like, Mikuru huge.) packs of more than 400 MB so it’s not exactly for the faint of connection. If you have the time, the urge, and the bandwidth, it’s a great place though.

That’s my 5 minute rant on Stepmania. If you have alternate sites for simfiles or some of your own you’d like to advertise, feel free to post about them.

-CCY