Ramblings (Underdog Chamber)

I forgot to really put anything in here about the music I had playing for the UC ’11 display. Normally it is just a backdrop, but I turned up the volume in 2011, and added the iTunes visualizer on a 17″ monitor. The selection this year was mostly 80′s, with other stuff mixed in, all picked out by Erica (thanks). It goes some attention, and I even noticed some people getting into the music now and then, which is a good thing in my book. Best scene, which I think was late on Sunday, was just too cool. There was a group of gamers walking past the T/S 1500 display, with the iTunes screen, and the Birdhouse In Your Soul video came up from They Might Be Giants (yeah, there were videos mixed in with just the visualizer). This group stopped to watch the whole video, along with myself and Erica. Turned out, the group of about 5 people were all TMBG fans, and they simply loved seeing the video. That reason along will bring that feature back in 2012, hopefully with more videos, as I’ve been working on getting them into iTunes. And in case your wondering, I own the videos, they are not bootleg! I don’t pirate, which I’m damn proud of. Musicians needs to make a living too. Rock on!

The Quake LAN is the final recap for the UC ’11 display. The Underdog area itself opened at 11am on Saturday, as I have in the past, so I can shop for any hour to get some deals (not that I found much of what I was looking for – good stuff was for sale, just not what some special stuff I wanted). It was amazing when we (Greg, Erica, and myself) opened the UC doors at 11am. In less than 30 seconds, the entire 11-player Quake LAN was filled up from gamers who were waiting in the hall. Totally and utterly outstanding!

For a Mac game from 1997, and the original too (no Mods or such), this game just does better and better each year. I bumped the LAN up to 11-player for 2011, and the seats were full for the majority of the show (except for those moments when gamers leave the room, and new folks filter in). It was a bit of a bummer when one iMac lost video late on Saturday, as I just got this machine recently too (and thankfully it will be fixed soon). Sunday morning another iMac got a corrupt system disk, so it was down to 9-player Quake on Sunday, but no one seemed to mind. As long as it was there to play and have fun doing so! Nothing like fragging your friends! It is also just cool to see an old blocky looking 1st-peson shooter that is still so much fun to play. A true classic.

On that note, was this the last year for the Quake LAN? At this point, I honesty can’t say. I’ve been meaning to upgrade it (to OS X), or replace it for years now (with something a bit more modern), but it just doesn’t happen (yet). But I’ll be honest in that something will change for 2012, and not just Quake either. I’ll let folks know when it happens. It is in the works, and I’ve been getting parts in place since last Summer (better hard drives, more memory, better iMacs, and PowerMac tower units too). We shall see!

(And with that out of the way, I’ll recap MGC ’11 itself when I get the chance. May not be till this coming weekend, but it’ll happen.)

Up at the top for console and computer systems (excluding the Quake LAN), there is the Sega Dreamcast system. As I expected, this system did very well in the UC area for its first appearance, and easily topped all other gaming systems that I had running this year.

While the Dreamcast only lasted a few years, back from 1999, I still think this is an outstanding gaming console. Too bad Sega didn’t stick with this thing, but there still is a good library for the Dreamcast, even from its show lifespan. For the UC ’11 area, I ran a portion of the small group of games I currently have to this system. Crazy Taxi was cool, but it confused people, as they weren’t sure what to do, so this was not up for long. Demolition: No Exit was the favorite, as anyone could get into this cool racing game, with that nice tough of smashing into things as part of the game. House of the Dead 2 attracted teenagers like kids to candy, while Speed Devils was another nice racing game that anyone could get into. I may try to vary the games a bit more next year, but I’ve found that just a few games goes a long way for one weekend.

Will the Dreamcast return? Do pigs not fly? When though, I cannot say. I vary it up every year, and it will remain that way (more than likely). Variety is the spice of life after all.

(One more thing to recap, then I’ll post comments on the rest of the show, or that which I actually saw).

2nd from the top in popularity between consoles and computers in the UC area for 2011 was a nice surprise for me this year, that being the Odyssey2! Note once again that this was not by a wide margin, compared to most other systems, but still #2. This old system from the late 70′s and early 80′s had a nice selection of games running. People were playing Attack of the Timelord, as this was recognizable as a shooting type game. Q*bert got some play, along with Turtles and few other games. Frogger, as has been the case in prior years, got the most play on the Odyssey2. The only issue, being the Brazil version, is that you have to land at the end on land not water. This did confuse a few folks, and I honestly don’t know why they (Parker Brothers) switched this between the Brazil and Euro versions. Go figure.

Seeing a decent amount of people playing games on the Odyssey2 was a treat for me, as it is not normally a real popular system (but not totally unpopular either). Sad but true. I did get some folks asking about the system, but not many though. However, with the attention that it got, I’m more than satisfied with how it worked out. Of course, being my favorite older system, this will be at the show every year. I did par it down though for 2011, as it was just the basic console, but with real Odyssey2 joysticks for the first time. I did hear a few people commenting on how ‘new’ the system looked, and that was become it practically was (this was the cleanest and most preserved Odyssey2 I’ve ever come across). Next year, I might try to do a system Mod that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I’ve got the stuff to do it, I just need to do it.

Here’s to the Odyssey2!

Getting even higher in popularity for the UC ’11 exhibit, there is the Philips CD-i system, borrowed from JD Norman (thanks). This rather low-key system, as it did not sell that well during its time, was introduced in 1991. With a relative high price, Philips found itself stuck between PC gaming and regular console gaming of the time. Thus, it became a true underdog system, lasting for a while before being dropped by Philips.

At the UC exhibit, there was just a selection of five games. Tetris did poorly from the start, so I switched to Dragon’s Lair II and Space Ace, which actually faired well in terms of game play from those at the show (I avoided Dragon’s Lair due to the fact that it did not have visual clues, making it too hard to play). There was even one guy at various time during the weekend who did very well at these games, having played them years ago, when I asked why he was so good at them. It was rather cool to see someone get really far in these types of games.

The most surprising thing to me was the small but enthusiastic group of gamers that asked for Hotel Mario throughout the weekend. This by far was the most popular game on the CD-i, and is the main reason this system nudged into 3rd place in regards to system popularity in the UC area (excluding Quake of course). As mentioned before though, most systems were pretty close in popularity, with only the bottom and top systems standing apart more than the others. Still, it was nice to see a somewhat rare system get its due attention.

Will the CD-i ever return to the UC area. That is doubtful, but you never know.