Gundam-GAF! I HAVE RETURNED!!
(I have also finally recovered from excessive amounts of caffeine on my day off.)
I left IRC last night, expecting to go to a tourney at a LAN center that some friends of mine said they had planned out. But impromptu plans have a nasty habit of falling apart at the last moment; pretty much everyone who said that they'd help set up the tourney either hadn't received the game yet, or hadn't even purchased it.
So, they all agreed to have me visit everyone's house with my copy of the game instead.
Clearly my opinion on this sudden turn of events was unnecessary, since other people's money was on the line! What was I going to do, just have people throw down $90 dollars on some random game?! Don't be stingy! (The other bullet point on their list of phrases was "what, you're just going to walk 5/10/15 miles back home at 1/2/3 AM?")
So we went by a couple of houses for the night. And the friends we hooked up with all marveled at the roster, which triggered some nostalgia over series and OVAs that they watched back in the day, or intrigued them with new suits and characters that they had never seen before. Some of us had either played the earlier games in the series that were localized in the States, or (still!) play Gotcha Force, but the rest were newcomers, so I went over the basics with them in Free Battle. I could see the gears turning in their heads while they tried out the different suits, trying to imagine out how the game might work in their mind, playing theory fighter with each other, etc.
And when they actually started running sets, they got pretty hyped. I can't remember any specific details about their impressions, but I remember bits and pieces of it: "yoooooooo, this game", "fucking BOUGHT", "Gun-god-DAMN", "Double Zeta Gundam: Launching!" (Times Infinity), etc.
Hell, a few of them invited some people over while I was there just to play the game. At 1 in the morning. And they actually came! It was crazy.
I had brought along some other games, expecting to run sets after the now-fictional tourney was over. Some people were willing to take breaks with KOF XIII or VF5, but most just wanted to play EXVS. Pretty much everyone wanted a copy of the game near the end of the trip, in one way or another, and now they're all trying to get their own copies, or at least pool together some money to buy copies and share them with one another.
Overall, I'd say that it was a fun night, although I'm still a little mad about giving up a night with Gundam-GAF over a non-existent tournament. I demanded compensation -
- and it was given freely.
The main culprits of this fiasco said that they'd run a real tourney once they have their copies in their hands, and that they want me to put up the matches on YouTube; I'm considering it, but I'm still going to wait for some proof before I tag along for anything. I'll also have to remember to bring my camera, so that I can take pics as stuff happens instead of after the fact. Hopefully they can get their hands on the game soon so that I can have some local competition as well!