LUNardei's cave

The homepage of AST-LUN, italian STG and Street Fighter player.

18.10.09

New blog and stuff

Please follow me here:
+ http://lun3s.blogspot.com/
+ http://twitter.com/lun3s

I don't know if I'll post again in this blog!

5.10.09

Videogames History 2009 weekend

During the last months we had several ranbats/meetings in Milan, but this event was special enough to make me feel like writing about it in this dead blog. First of all, what is VGH? It's an annual exhibition about the history of videogames, with a very nice "museum" (which I didn't care much about, but it was indeed nice) and a lot of space for gaming-related communities, shops and such. Me, Jck and Nev put together a stand for Arcade-Extreme, with STG arcade boards, a 3rd Strike setup and our videos going on the whole time. It was quite a success, with a lot of random people getting interested as well as well known faces getting there all the time (lol at this sentence). We even arranged a SFIV tournament but... Let's start from the beginning.
Friday was the day before VGH. I had to get to Milan that day because we were supposed to set up everything during the night. So I ended up having a whole free afternoon in Milan, because the only decent cheap train was in the morning... And it was great because I was able to join fran for a 3rd Strike session with just him. Superb practice for the following days, and great to find out some other patterns and problems with my game. Play against him is useful every single time for a lot of reasons... Well, you kinda have to have the right attitude though. Otherwise it can be difficult, lol.
The following day, Saturday, was VGH day one. We did standard stand "work" all the time... Well, I played A LOT of 3rd Strike against a lot of various people, basically. In the end we were able to run a 3rd Strike tournament as planned, the interest was high enough, and we even had to cap the tournament to 16 people only (double elim) in order to finish it on time. Fran was supposed to come at the exhibition that day but... He was a no show! Therefore I was able to win the whole thing without big troubles, except for Jck's Urien that suddendly decided to perfect me once during winner's final just to add a bit of suspance! Anyway, it was good to get some people interested in the game, SFIV players included (this is very important, in my opinion). The prize was nice as well. Oh, the after party was not bad either, good times and some beers with SFIV heads, basically.
Day two, Sunday. This was supposed to be the main day, and it was trues. Way more people joined the event, there were some tv reporters as well... Some crazy stuff happened, lol. It was good to take a picture of Rushing Monkey (top SFIV player) with a PS3 PAD in his hand while getting interview by tv about "how he got started with videogames"... That was random!
Eventually we were able to set up some 360s and run a proper SFIV tournament, which ended up being pretty fun overall for some reason. During the day I was able to enjoy Mushihimesama Futari as well (thanks Nev!), with some real time coaching by RF2 (well, AST-DGN), another owner of the board. I wasn't able to try Ultra as much as I wanted, but Original was good enough. And Ultra-easy, which is good when you have clueless people watching you play in ecstasy, lol. The 360 port is going to be region free... I'm gonna think about buying it, but I don't know. The only STG that I'd really like to (maybe) play nowadays is Futari's GOD mode, which is not included in the port. Damn.
Anyway, the day ended well and I was able to get on a cheap train in time to get home at 1:30AM after a 6 hour long stupid trip. Not too bad :/
Whatever. For full results and stuff about VGH, pleas check AEX's homepage in a few days. We'll have pictures uploaded soon as well, so watch out for our galleries as well.
Geez, this post was long... Not going to happen again soon, I guess!

28.5.09

[SFIV] Italian official OFFLINE tournament



Capcom is having a series of national tournaments in Europe in order to send the winners to the EU official championship. The only problem is that 30 spots out of 32 of every national tourney are given via ONLINE qualifiers (Championship mode, pretty much farming until level G1 or something), xbox360 only.
But, and here comes the news, I'm kinda proud to announce that Arcade-Extreme will be selecting 2 wild cards that will be able to enter the italian Capcom tournament without having to qualify online!

Here are the details about the incoming offline qualifier:

Milan, June the 6th 2009 @ Casa dei Giochi (via Sant'Uguzzone 8)

+ MOARRR INFO

Last but not least... We're having a 3rd Strike 2on2 after that. It's gonna be sweet.

Thanks so much to: GGM, Halifax, Capcom.

11.5.09

『シューティングゲーム攻略軍団参上!』

"Shooting game kouryaku gundan sanjou!" will be a japanese TV show by Nakano Ryuzo (producer of the DDP DOJ BL superplay DVD). Details here: http://www9.plala.or.jp/nakanoryuzo/syuukan/78.html

Now let's hope for some kind of western translation ^^

Italian thread here: YUM
Thanks to powerfuran & Kotaro for this news!

31.3.09

[3rd Strike] Necro: db HP x6

24.2.09

FightStick 360 (standard edition) - review (ITA)






Un case veramente molto buono. Oh, anche un discreto stick. Ma andiamo per ordine. Il FightStick base monta parti fatte in casa, imitazioni delle Sanwa presenti sul cab originale e sul Tournament Edition. Buone imitazioni? Discrete... Certamente migliori di quelle dell'Hori EX2, il concorrente diretto del MadCatz, considerando la fascia di prezzo. I tasti in particolare non sono male, anche se forse sono eccessivamente "secchi", duri. Lo stick non inganna neanche per un secondo riguardo la sua natura di imitazione, è tranquillamente utilizzabile ed è certamente meglio di tutta la fuffa montata sugli stick di questa fascia di prezzo, ma va tenuto in conto che l'inesperienza nel progettarlo ha portato ai giocatori un difettino non da poco. Parlo della famosa rondella della morte, che se eccessivamente ballerina puo' allegramente rovinare le piste della PCB dello stick stesso.

Sistemare il problema è una questione certamente non improponibile, ma da decisamente noia a chi non è abituato a questo genere di interventi. Per fortuna almeno l'organizzazione interna del case è divina, gli spazi sono razionalizzati e tutto è stato fatto in previsione di eventuali modifiche. Perchè cambiare lo stick con un Sanwa e cambiare i tasti sono operazioni realmente alla portata di tutti, in questo caso.

Il discorso case continua abbastanza in positivo guardando lo stick dall'esterno. Le dimensioni sono sufficienti a garantire una certa stabilità e il peso aiuta. L'inclinazione nella parte finale del pannello sarà sembrata ai progettisti MadCatz una genialata all'insegna dell'ergonomia... Invece no, è inutile, ma se non altro non da alcun fastidio.



VOTO (assoluto): 7

VOTO (relativo): 9

NB: assoluto si riferisce a tutti gli arcade stick per console, relativo tiene conto della concorrenza nella console in questione, del rapporto qualità prezzo e della predisposizione alle modifiche.

11.2.09

Random update

It's been a long time... I'll try to write down some relevant (?) stuff in random order:

+ Prometheus has improved his DDP score! Hot stuff indeed:
http://arcade-extreme.forumfree.net/?t=5103716&st=960#entry302189013

+ I won the 3rd edition of ISK, the Italian Shmups Knockout. Tournament was fun and Kotaro ran it flawlessly, but the games were OLD, lol. The only one I enjoyed playing was Change Air Blade, somehow. So I guess I was particularly lucky on winning over Jck:
http://www.arcade-extreme.com/post.aspx?id=2d0783a2-b2dc-4ae2-b203-dd8f0e0ebf13

+ SFIV is coming and yes we're going to play and support it. Unofficial news (atm), we're trying to run the first SFIV tournament in Milan on March the 14th, during the last 3rd Strike Ranking Battle of season one. Keep an eye on the official Ranbat thread for more info:
http://arcade-extreme.forumfree.net/?t=26972590&st=0#entry228763905

+ Oh. We're trying out HD Remix too, because - breaking news - now we're open minded. Kinda. Here you can find some matches between Mitsu and TM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC-DZ5TbkQc

Final note: lately I've been thinking about Wordpress... Just because it's better. But changing URL is always a pain, I guess. Anyway, I'll try to post any news about the hot stuff of the moment, Street Fighter IV. I'll try to cover everything SFIV-related that happens in Italy, so stay tuned...

4.1.09

[Dodonpachi] Prome's 2-ALL video

"After a long wait, we can finally be proud to release the video recording of the first documented western DoDonPachi 2-ALL run!"
+ VIDEO @ AEX

Please note that the video is available in 3 versions. The most important one is the superplay-like enhanced version, which I highly recommend. Good job Jck and bviously Prometheus!

3.11.08

[Dodonpachi] western record from Prometheus

Tell me whatever you want, but I'll consider this the new western record in DDP until proven wrong. Anyway, it's a great score and one of the best achivements ever reached by a western player, so that's more than enough to say congrats and keep up the excellent work mate ^^

PROMETHEUS - 488'838'900 - A-L - ALL - 852
+ info and mame replay available HERE

AEX, or better Jck Teh Video Master, is working on a video release for this run. It's going to be an awesome video, and not just for the run... Stay tuned!

15.10.08

[3rd Strike] SGGK: Oro / Makoto / Q / Twelve

I've covered basically the characters I'm into, nothing more. The Chun Li SGGK is well known, so I didn't consider recording it. Anyway:
- Oro 2
- Makoto
- Q
- Twelve

Bonus: a very good option select for Makoto