Welcome to hell!!!

The above pic is an easy summary of how much fun I had at the Daryls. I just finished up my nice five day break from work and returned to the joys of Target last night. The first two days of that five day break I spent hanging out with buds though. On Wendesday I hung out with Scott for a few hours and we played a bit of Guitar Hero so I could practice up against the GH-pro that is King Moe. Later gamed it up with Joe and Jake and then called it a night. Thursday I got around to hanging out with Matt for the first time in a damn long time. We hit up Fargo with his wife and checked out some comic shops and other stores. I picked up Idiocracy on DVD which we watched later that night. It's from Mike Judge, the man who brought us Beavis and Butthead and Office Space. Overall a pretty good movie where an army experiment gone wrong has Luke Wilson wake up 500 years in the future. Some parts in the middle seemed to drag a little bit, and this is certainly no Office Space, but it still gets a solid recommendation from me. I'll rate it a 7.5/10.

Friday started the lonq quest to the Daryls. Like I said in my last blog entry, the Daryl's are hosted by Team Fremont, which also hosted the Beer Extravaganza I went to last summer. If any of you are wondering why I really don't post on GameFAQs boards too often anymore its because this site has the best forum community out there with none of idiots that plague the GameFAQs boards. I was a bit cautious and hoping the road conditins would be in my favor for the journey to Wisconsin and back. Other than being blistering cold and some snow on the last hour to Wisconsin, I got real lucky with mostly favorable driving conditions. I met up at TFL headquarters in the Twin Cities on Friday night around 7pm.

The Daryls were in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday but I previously made arrangements to meet up with the TFL crew (Moe, Hilden, & John along with another forum member there Ashteroth) the day before for a "packing party." There was mostly partying as it was a night of drinks and stories to be had until Midnight when we realized we didn't even start packing yet, so we blazed through loading up the trailer at midnight while in the midst of being drunk and in 5 below weather. That cold killed my buzz pretty quick to say the least. We took off the next morning around 11am and checked in at our hotel in Madison around 3pm. The Daryls didn't officially start until 6pm but everybody needed time to set up as the TFL crew had their stage presentation for the Daryls award show and other forum members were bringing their own gaming systems for everyone to play, and a few other people were assembling a video game museum table which consisted of such collectibles from gaming past such as old school gaming magazines, and systems. Longtime former EGM alumni Trickman Terry contributed a lot to the museum and had a lot of classic EGM issues (back when the mag kicked ass) and Super Famicom imports to show off.


Check out this cool youtube video above that TFL forum member Jaydog made highlighting the event where you can see all that was showcased at the museum as well as other gaming rig setups and highlights from the event, as well as your's truly in some shots.

Lots of people brought plenty of food and drinks to the event so there was never a moment of hunger. It was like a grand buffett that consisted of portillo & italion beef sandwhiches, BBQs, 'lil smokies, and all the fixings and desserts. My Special K bars I brought seemed to have been a hit too with a few people. The event started at 6pm, with everyone making their way in to the event. I want to say somewhere between 30-40 people made it there. It was pretty decent sized venue where the back half was blocked off for the gaming museum and gaming stations and the front half was the setup for the Daryls award ceremony. I played a lot of games and met lots of cool people from the Team Fremont forums (of which a decent amount live in or near the Wisconsin area).

Forum member, Torgo brought a lot of stuff including a couple televisions which he used for his Jaguar, Playstation 3, and Neo-Geo. It was the first time I got playtime with all three systems. I was really excited to finally get my hands on Resistance for the PS3, and I got to spend about a good half hour with it on an amazing HDTV. The game looks amazing, and I enjoyed my time with it, dunno if I can say if it is the killer app for the system just yet, but from the time I had with it, I was left wanting more. Also got to see Alien vs. Predator and Tempest 2000 in action for the Jaguar. I remember in gaming mags of old that those two were the most critically acclaimed games for the Jaguar and it was awesome to to see them in action finally. I got to play King of Fighters '98 on the Neo-Geo, where I got creamed in a tournament by forum member Captain Rawkenschpiel. Speaking of tournaments....



The Daryls played host to several gaming tournaments throughout the night. Each tournament had around 8-12 participants. As I said, I lost in the opening round of the KOF '98 tournament. Up next was a Wii Sports bowling tournament which was a blast to play in my bracket against Torgo, Fireproof Neo, and Hilden. I started off strong with a Turkey, but Torgo proved to be too much of a bowling pro and annihilated us all. There was then a Mario Kart DS tournament, which had about 12 players I think. I raced in a four player mode against 9-Volt, Captain Rawkenschpiel, and Dan of goatstore.com where the player who won three rounds first moved on to the finals. I came so close to winning a few rounds but I kept getting robbed by those damn spiny shells!

The next tournament was of the best Bomberman of them all, Saturn Bomberman. I never played this much talked about gem until this moment, but I can see why it is loved so much....10 players! That is all of us playing it right there in the picture above, we played up until whoever won three round first. I didn't win a round, but I do recall being mighty proud of being the runner-up in a couple of sessions in the midst of all the mayhem. The last tournament was to see who could fair best against Moe in Guitar Hero 2. As stated above, Moe is king at that game, and at least a dozen people tried to knock him off this throne but failed, in the end the person who won was the person who lost to him by the lowest margin of difference in score, which happened to be by over 40,000 points.

In other noteworthy gaming moments of the night, I managed to pull aside Fireproof Neo and boot up one of my favorite Dreamcast games Marvel vs Capcom 2 and throwdown in a few matches of that. The Goat Store guys were selling some merchandise there to, I was always interested in the re-tooled NES dubbed The Messiah and after playing it at the Daryls I enjoyed it so much that I decided to plop down the $50 to get one right then and there. The Goatstore guys also work on developing their own Dreamcast games and I got to try out one of their upcoming games, Dynamite Crash (I think that is the right name) which is a team based Bomberman style game that was a lot of fun. Finally I got to try some Turbo Grafx games out off the Virtual Console I hadn't played yet like Alien Crush and Soldier Blade. Alien Crush was a very unique take on pinball and I think I'll have to download that one after playing it at the Daryls. There were many other great games that were getting plenty of playtime by other people that you can see in the video above as well. I just wish I had the time to play a lot of these gems. The Dreamcast dance/rhythm classic Samba de Amigo was there, also classic shoot-em-ups like Radiant Silvergun had its presence known as well.

The actual Daryls awards ceremony was pretty damn cool in itself. Moe hosted it as he counted down the TFL voted Top 10 games of 2006, with running game footage in the background. Between each countdown pick, there were some hilarious imitations of Sony's Ken Kutaragi and Microsoft's Jay Allard played in paper puppett form. The #1 game of the year ended up being Oblivion. You can go here to see Team Fremont's voted Top 10 Games of 2006. Near the end of the Daryls, Goat Store gave away lots of cool prizes to everyone who attended, and I scored myself a Tempest 2000 soundtrack. There was also a grand prize winner who was drawn from all the people who submitted top 10 entries for the Daryls, somehow I was drawn as the grand prize winner, and as you can at the top of this entry I won a Turbo-Grafx 16 system along with the Keith Courage game. Very much thanks to all John, Moe, and Hilden for that prize! To end the Daryls we all got together for one big group shot that I will bestow upon you below.



After the Daryls there was a nice after party at the hotel we were staying at that lasted from around 1am until 5am in the morning. Lots of brews and drinks were consumed, and some of us had a few too many with the Captain and John making some grand exits. Thus ended the Daryls Experience, and overall it was a damn good time. Imagine an E3 but on a much smaller scale where you feel like you know everyone there and just have that amazing feel of a community that all knows each other. I had to endure a 10 hour straight drive home the next day, but it was worth it for the killer experience I had. Thanks again to Team Fremont for putting on this awesome event and everyone else who made it out there!