I was gone for 4 days and now…god, what happened. At least most of you guys have taken good care of this BBS while I was away so thank you for doing that. I am not going to post responses for each thread but instead I will state everything here as a cumulative response.
I guess the main concern is absurdist’s thread. First I would like to thank his suggestions, some are valid, but unfortunately many are not…and many of the frequenters of this BBS have pretty much wrote what I wanted to say, so thanks for doing that. As stated, ladyphoenix countered the arguments right on the nail, but absurdist, it’s not because she is a female, but it’s because she starts to understand the genre and how the industry works. Also, please note that the primary purpose of peach princess is to promote and expose this neglected market that is so insanely popular in Japan, and not to make something fit for the english market’s tastes. Making say a first/third person shooter from scratch defeats the purpose…it’s like asking companies here to make up their own english-favored made-in-USA anime from scratch; it’s just wouldn’t be the same compared with “authentic” Japanese ones. Please keep in mind that anime is ultimately a Japanese thing; it’s something that is “imported” to the english market.
Now, a very long diary on AXNY. Note that this is the first US con I attended.
I drove to NYC from Toronto via the best route mapquest told me (Toronto - Buffalo - Syracuse - Binghamton - Scranton - NJ - NYC). The trip there wasn’t too nice since I was being held up by US customs at the border, mainly because I told them I was going to AXNY as a visitor but found the LMM stand in the trunk of my car. Anyhow, I got away with it eventually. Next, I-90 (the major interstate highway that runs through all over NY state) had a big traffic jam which slowed things down by a lot, but I got out eventually and fortunately my route didn’t require me to be in that highway for the entire trip. Mapquest said it should take me 8.5 hrs to get to NYC (6-7 hrs for me since I drive at 80mph :P) but it ended up to be 12 hrs because of all these problems; I didn’t arrive at NYC until midnight friday.
The dealer’s room was much bigger than what I saw in Canadian cons, although I was told that the dealer’s room in AX long beach is much bigger than this. I was impressed with some of the items being offered in the dealer’s room.
Moreover, I was impressed with the sales; I never expected peapri to be able to sell that many stuff given that all the stuff on the table is adult-oriented. Interestingly, the sales of the games in this con reflects the overall sales of each title. X-Change was sold out by the end of second day (stares at nandemonai), and TCI had only a few copies left. Maybe people are buying it because XC is the least expensive title and just want to try it out. I was surprised that SnowDrop didn’t do as well as I expected though…I don’t know if it’s not “hardcore” enough and the people there just wanted “porn” so to speak. I was also surprised that people are buying WC…well, there was a guy who ran up to us (literally) and said "give me the dirtiest thing you have"
The VIE towel is now officially out of stock and out of existence (for sale). They are all sold out at AXNY and we don’t have any more in stock, nor do Will Japan.
I didn’t look at other events other than the dealer’s room and art show/artist alley. Artist alley was a total disaster; only 2-3 tables are occupied. Maybe AXNY didn’t do enough advertising?
Quite a few people were asking about when LMM and BS are coming out. Guess I’d better get back to work. I might actually work on LMM too in addition to BS.
Here’s a quick rundown on the status of a few of peapri’s upcoming games:
BS: thesis. Go bomb my school for me. But I will get to it soon.
LMM: there is actually more progress than I thought. They actually got hold of the pics (I thought they had difficulty finding the data in the first place), but the japanese staff are ahem “too lazy to get to it”, and the programming staff wants to fully coordinate with the graphic team to ensure a perfect port for this title.
XC2: preliminary testing is done and completed, we are getting there.
PS Peapri has already registered for a booth for BAAF next year, so we will be in NYC again in 2003.
PPS My war trophies. Since I have plans to travel to Japan this xmas I didn’t buy any “imports”. Some stupid dealer beside our booth was selling a carnelian doujinshi for 12 bucks (obviously they didn’t know carnelian is one of the hottest bishoujo artists in Japan). Dumb dumb dumb. I bought it immediately. That’s pretty much all I bought. In addition, peapri gave me 3 japanese games (8,800yen x 3 value) from Will as “graduation present” (although I won’t say I graduated until I get my hands on my diploma which will take 2-3 months to process?!). So I got Maple (Sweet Basil), Kanoha’s Challenge (Rouge) and Slave Bazaar Renaissance (remastered DVD version).
The good: All these 3 games I haven’t played and I’ve always wanted to try out Maple
The bad: Renaissance is DVD-ROM, and I have no DVD-ROM drive
The ugly: 2 days before AXNY (and got the games) I bought myself a new cdrom drive (and a new cd burner) because interestingly my plextor died because I overabused it as a reader. I was thinking if I should get a dvdrom drive instead but thinking that I will rarely touch a DVDrom I decided against it…and 2 days after I was given a DVDrom game (renaissance).
Now my stack of unplayed games just grew magically…
[This message has been edited by Lamuness (edited 09-04-2002).]
