Spent the 27.7.2001 - 29.7.2001 weekend on two things :
1) Travelling to a collector meeting by train
2) Being in a collector meeting

There was this collector meeting thing this (that?) weekend,
thought up by the kindly ones at Pkp, and I attended.
The problematic bit was that the meeting was practically on the other
side of the country, so I had to take a train trip there.
Problems arose as the customer support of the VR (The Finnish railroad company)
fucked me over with false information that nearly cost me the trip. Bastards.
No tea for them.

Luckily, I did finally end up on the way to the meet, against all those odds.
The way consisted of 8 hours of sitting in the train. Most stimulating.
(Fortunately, I did bring a book with me, but unfortunately I read it through on the way there.
It all just always balances out and ends up on the negative side time after time.)

So, I finally got there. And hey - it was fun.
I met a bunch of interesting people I know I'm going to have to kill later on,
saw a bunch of highly interesting devices that I also know I'm going
to have to acquire later on (Perhaps after killing the said individuals!).

I got to try out a lot of Mega-CD and Saturn titles,
and I managed to play the best titles of the respective systems, too :
Road Avenger and Doom! Wow, that smooth gameplay!

I also won a neo-classic gaming competition! (And there was much rejoicing.)
The other two, "current" and "classic" I tried to win too, naturally, but, um,
they made me play Gran Turismo 3 in the "current" one;
I knew that exact instant that I was so very screwed.
I probably could've handled the two other "current" games; Soul Calibur and Bust-A-Move 3DX,
but as the elimination rounds were through GT3, I indeed had little hope.
I still find myself clumsy with the Dual Shock analogue mushrooms.

The "classic" bit consisted of elimination rounds through IK+ on the C64
(If you ask me the regular IK would've been the better contender),
in which I 0wn3d j00 up the @$$.. then, we went to A2600 River Raid,
a pretty fine game, and one that I'm also fairly well skilled with,
but I managed to screw it up despite my years of playing it on C64,
complements to that bastard plane that came from the right, with the pilot probably
hellbent, with the taste of blood in his mouth, on ruining my chances in one
blazing kamikaze attack. He succeeded. I did not. The final game would've
been a match of Vectrex Wormhole, which I've personally never played.

Anyway, the neo-classic compo started with eliminations through Virtua Fighter 2
(A generation of fighter games per compo! Yay!) on the Sega Saturn,
and I won my fight. The next game would be a score-based bout of PC Engine Parodius,
and hey, of course I 0wnz Konami shooters! Of my two bloodthirsty foes,
candidate one was seriously outclassed, since the candidate two
not only 0wned Parodius like me, but he also actually -owned- the game..
and we, the two, ended up battling it in a duel of Megadrive Columns racked up on hard,
where my individually moving eyeballs proved too much for him as I kept clearing
my stack whereas his little gems just kept on piling up. I hope they never
learn of that handy glue I introduced to the innards of his controller..
I won a Jaguar Wolfenstein 3d cart!! And such amazing cover art it has!

Oh, all those games I carted back there also won me a "Rarest game of the show"
title (And a lefty Saturn game!), but I had hard time taking that kind of a nomination
all too seriously when the guy sitting three meters from me seemed to have every
fucking Konami MSX game ever created with him.. ;)

All in all, it was great!
The only thing missing from a total euphoria was, umm..
Chicks! Yeah, that's the ticket! (Semi?) Naked chicks!
And free snacks! And Cary Elwes!

But all good things must come to an end, and finally, I was on the way home.
Of course, I had to take another eight hour train trip to get back.
Without a book. Without refreshments. Without a damn thing to do
except for looking out of the window to see the landscape slide
into the wrong direction. Oh, and listening to some retarded kid mutter
incomprehensible shit in a particularly loud manner. Fucker.
I should've fed him that Wolf-3d .. rectally.

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