Keeping Up With The Past
The 18th of July
FREE GAMING ROUND 2

That day I was in Rotterdam with two friends of mine to get some fun at Free Gaming Round 2. It is an outdoor video game convention in Rotterdam and you don’t have to pay a dime for the entrance. It is freaking free !!! There were a total of 13000 people at that one-day convention. For a summer day, it rained A LOT at the beginning of the day. It kind of ruined the atmosphere for some people (not me, really). I don’t know where to begin with (laugh laugh XD). I got it!

OPENING OF EVENT (and the Cosplayers):

The opening of the convention was presented by Dutch comedian and LARPer Raymon Rodeburg and Dutch presenter and producer Charlotte Meijer. At the opening there were a lot of Cosplayers on the podium. Yep! A bunch of people planned to Cosplay at FGR2 by planning it on Aniway forums (I guess). I saw there people who Cosplayed characters like: Poliwhirl, Leaf (Female Pokémon Trainer from FRLG), Bridget (Guilty Gear), Ryu (Street Fighters), Dr Wily (MegaMan), Kairi & Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Reno & Cloud (Final Fantasy 7), Lei Fang (Dead or Alive), Yuna (Final Fantasy 10) and Rouge (Sonic the Hedgehog).
It was great. I have camera recordings of the FGR2 Opening on my youtube account ([link]), so you can see how it was (but it is Dutch… so yeah). The presenters had difficulty to recognize characters. They absolutely recognized Pikachu which Raymon called ‘a lout/yobbo’ and they recognized a girl who Cosplayed Midori from Guitar Hero. After some other stuff they Cosplayers disappeared and separated to random places on the event.

I really wanted to go on the picture with one of those female Pokémon Trainer Cosplayers, but sadly my friends wanted to immediately play some games and after a while we couldn’t find one of them (because she changed back into her normal self after some 15 minutes… I guess … it’s not funny…. The next time I spot a female Pokémon Trainer or Leaf, I am totally going to ask her to go with me on the picture before she can change back or before I am going to the games that will not go away for more than 5 hours.

After some hours, I managed to go on the photo with: the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time crew (Link, Zelda, Malon), man and women from the Castlevania crew, the Final Fantasy 7 crew (Cloud, Zack and some ‘very unknown’ FF7 complication characters), Roxas and Professor Oak with Pikachu :3. And I made pictures of a Peach Cosplayer that looked very much like Peach. Very professional indeed XD


VIDEO GAMES:

There were a lot of games that I played, saw and did not played. So I guess, I will list up all the games that were to be seen or played there at the event. I will put the abbreviation ‘d.n.p.i.’ (= did not played it) under the title of the game. The games are placed in separate groups just like at the event.

BACKGAMES (it is a retro and present Video Game store in Leiden, yes you could play Retro Games in the BG tent and they showed at the top of their retro game boxes the infamous SEGA Megadrive/Genesis game: Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker! Too bad you couldn't play it)

Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA Megadrive/Genesis)

I played the game for a short while (I played the game sometimes if I was bored, on the PC *Sonic Mega Collection PLUS*) because the TV had big issues. It was flickering a lot and I could barely see retro Sonic. So I thought... screw this! Anyway I know I like this game

Super Mario Kart (SNES)

I played the game one or two times on the SNES Emulator on my PC before I played on a SNES at the event. It has been a LONG time that I’ve touched the SNES controller. I barely remember how it felt to play SMK on the SNES, but I have the certain feeling that the controls were better and not hard to do, because on the PC you will expect awkward problems with direction moving and on the SNES less. Great game for its time. But I guess, I am going to stay on Mario Kart Wii for a while XD.

Vectrex Minestorm, the NEO GEO games,

d.n.p.i.

BONAMI

I have been in their tent, but I didn’t play anything (okay! I looked for a few seconds in the Virtual Boy console with the game ‘Red Alarm’. But I directly took distance from the console out of fear to get eye headache. Anyway, the VB stinks. It is red and black. A very dark and frustrating colour scheme for a console. I would rather buy the black and white colour scheme from the first Game Boy.

Bonami is a (I am serious) Dutch ‘Video Gaming Console museum’. However, you were able to buy old and new games there. But instead of finding a cool looking adventure game or RPG game, I ended up in a long 15 minute but enjoyable conversation with two guys. We talked a little about the few infamous RPGs on the GameCube like Tales of Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star Episode I&II. Scramble (Vectrex), Duck Hunt (NES) and Space Invaders were also able to played there. You know if Satoshi Tajiri (original main creator of Pokémon) was at FGR2, he was certainly busy playing Space Invaders (because he was a HUGE arcade and Namco game fan when he was a college student).

NINTENDO

There was one indoor tent for the Wii games and one for the DS games (where also Guitar Hero DS was available to be played). I guess I shall start with the Wii games.

Punch-Out!!

I have played the boxing game, but I lost… big time . However, I had fun in it. It had a great control scheme (I was more happier with the NES control scheme !!!). It is in my opinion a funny looking, beautiful and great boxing game and worthy remake for Punch-Out!! (NES).

Wii Sports Resort

Out of all the sports I did only wakeboarding and swordplay. Some Nintendo representative Youngman told me the instructions and I was able to do it I guess . And because I do every Saturday medieval sword fighting and I like sword fighting a lot, I chose swordplay. After a moment I realized that it was more Japanese sword fighting (Kendo), but still the swordplay part of the game was very sharp and the controls were very great and fast (Wii Motion Plus xd). I still don’t have the game, but because of my love for sword fighting, I have put this game on my list of ‘video games that I want to buy and play in my life’. Anyway, I won 2-1 against someone with swordplay !!! I guess those training days with Bleach: Shattered Blade and Sonic and the Black Knight finally paid off XD. But swordplay on WSR is still NO REAL (medieval) sword fighting, even so I still like it and I would love to play in with WSR and also Frisbee and Basketball.

*It’s-a-DS-time!!!*

Pokémon Platinum

d.n.p.i.

I have the DS game since end May! I am still nowhere further, except I have played the game once and stayed at the point where I have to do my FIRST Gym match.

Rhythm Paradise, WarioWare: Snapped!,

d.n.p.i.

PC

At the Personal Computer stand there were some PC games available to be played (all who I have not played or touched [I don’t really like PC games… except Sonic game ports on the PC, emulators and Jazz JackRabbit ). These games were: Adams Venture, Qpang, Fogfighters and Call of Duty 4.

PLAYSTATION

There were a lot of PS3 and PSP stands and a lot of those games available to play. I will start summing up ALL the PSP and PS3 games that were at FGR2, BUT that I didn’t played:

Grand Turismo 5: Prologue, Infamous, Killzone 2, Motorstorm 2: Pacific Rift , PSN Games, Singstar, Call of Juarez, Damnation ,Guitar Hero ,BLUR and PES 2009.

Buzz

I played Buzz with the older one of my two friends, an Asian guy with a nice hair style and a funny but frustrating big man who leeks like a younger but still bald version of ‘Uncle Phil from FPoBA’. Because he always chose me as target when he had the choice to hit someone with pies. Maybe he did it, because I said to him that I am going to win because I had the winning hand in the beginning. At the end… I ended up 3rd or 4th place. It was a funny quiz game and It was also nice that it was in 100 percent Dutch .

Little Big Planet

I had not so much time to play it as much as I can, because others also wanted to play LBP and I had to go back home with my friends, their mother and my own mother. I couldn’t completely understand all the controls (mostly because I am not used to the PS controller) and I didn’t had the chance to make my own level(s) on LBP . But what I did know there was that the controlling of Sackboy very normal is and decent and that I have the feeling that LBP is still a great game with making own levels and stuff . And Sackboy is kind of cute XD.

XBOX 360

I think that I only stepped one time into the Xbox 360 stand, but… I did not play anything of it. Seriously, nothing. It was not about the Xbox360, I was more focused about other games and Cosplayers. These games were available to be played there: Assassin's Creed, Fable 2, Fight Night Round 4, Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto 4, Rocket Riot, Halo 3, James Bond: Quantum of Solace, Kung Fu Panda, Lego Indiana Jones, Smackdown Vs Raw 2009, NBA Street Homecourt and Project Gotham Racing 4. And those games did not really interest me.

XBOX 360 & PS3

The only games I played on those stands were: Harry Potter 6 and FUEL. The other games were: FIFA 09/10, Godfather: The Game and Overlord 2.

Harry Potter 6

I only played it for.. 10 seconds. Because I had to go home and stuff . But the graphics were amazing!!! And I was in a tiny room walking around it XD. So… nothing special.

FUEL

I’ve heard that it earned the record of game with the biggest racetracks of racing games. I played it for a while and it was kind of frustrating. I crashed all the time at rocks or trees and the racing tracks were really big. It did not really fell like a racing game.

OTHER GAMES?

Well… there was a tent at the event were you could play Dance Dance Revolution, a Batman Arcade game and some other games (including a game that you need to control with a bike).

There were also gaming competitions. You had competitions from these games: ‘Back to Basics’ (Tetris and Pong), Call of Duty (PC), FUEL (Xbox360), Guitar Hero: World Tour (Xbox360), Red Faction Guerilla (Xbox360), Rocket Riot (Xbox360), DDR (Arcade), PES 2009 (PS3) and Punch-Out!! (Wii). But I hadn’t participate in any of those competitions. Neither did I do with the Game Quiz and StreetSurfing.

There were also this ‘homebrew’ games like Tomato Killer (where you had to throw tomato’s at non-fictional and fictional characters like Geert Wilders, Yolanthe Cabau van Kasbergen, Sonic the Hedgehog , Duke Nukem, Toad, Dr. Eggman, Lara Croft and many more with the Wiimote) and Control Me Life (where you had to use a single-handle joystick where you could shoot people in real-life and you could see the blood and bullets on the camera screen. Very nifty was it. But it bored me after some time, but still it was funny XD).

WORKSHOPS:

Yes there were workshops there. But people could only go maximum into two. So you had to choose two out of five workshops. You had two workshops of Character Design (I & II), the first one: ‘from idea to sketch’ and the second one: ‘from sketch to finish’. The workshops were given by Senior Concept Artist Romano Molenaar from Khaeon Games. There was also the workshop Game Reviewing (that was given by Guido Hogenbirk from the infamous and best-selling Dutch magazine: Quest) and workshop Animation/Stop Motion. And the last one was ‘Storytelling for Games’ that was given by ‘Nieuwe Garde Rotterdam’ (a group of songwriters and writers who hold several activities in Rotterdam like creative design and cooking). The ones I did were Storytelling and Game reviewing.

Game Reviewing (by Guido Hogenbirk – Quest)

When I was with my friends in that tent, it was surprising that their were only four participants (including me and my two friends). We discussed with Guido H. and a younger adult man about game reviewing and were you need to give more attention for and stuff. They also do in their game reviews something funny: when they review a game like some SEGA fishing game, the Quest people go to a (professional) fishermen and let him play the game and ask him how it feels to play it as a fishermen. The same they could do with a (professional) Japanese swordfighter and asking him to play the swordplay mode from Wii Sports Resort XD. We played the game FUEL there for a while and then we discussed what we all thought about the game. I was not really super happy with FUEL. I don’t want that game and I don’t need it. The tent was less focused on the big reviewing deal, but still it was fun.

Storytelling (by three people from ‘Nieuwe Garde Rotterdam’

Every moment at the storytelling stand (except the moment when I accidentally spilled orange juice on the table) was fine. To my big surprise their were only three participants; me, the older one of my two friends and some ‘big boned’ curly haired college student man (who was also at the Game reviewing stand… coincidence). We all made on a big paper scroll short notes and stuff of how the story is. I was planning to put notes about the battle system and stuff, but NGR said to me that I was going a bit too far (according to them: some other game designers also do the way like me, but that you have to keep with the basic: planning out the story in short notes). My friend made a story concept that was a some kind of mix between the four elements of Avatar: the LAB and the regular side-scrolling platforms with eight worlds. The story of that college guy was a bit odd. It was something about two pigeons (a lazy calm one and one aggressive active one) who are about to take revenge on the officials, because they want to exterminate the pigeons from the city. And their was something about ‘level 4’ that was a swimming pool level with a bath superintendant as boss.

My story was also kind a good
First of all I had to come up with a logline (don’t still know why, somebody explain it please?). This was the logline ‘teenager finds mystical sword and must use it to destroy demonic creatures and demons in the modern world’
Genre: (Japanese) Role Playing Game

At the beginning you will choose the gender, clothes and hair colour of the main character (default male: Jeito, default female: Liza). Then you will give a name to his Dutch home city (default: Amsterdam) and you can name the Player’s partners (just like in Earthbound, before you meet them). Like in flash dating Sims and the Sims you are able here to give a certain amount of points to several stats from the Player. In other words, you could make your Attack very high and your Speed very low and that will be your basic stats. The character (Player) in the game is known as a lazy, sarcastic, weak but kind teenage boy/girl at the beginning. But later in the game it will grown up from a coward to a strong courageous young man/woman.

*the story was not really finished at some points. So you will miss certain back-story elements and such*

You will begin at your home in Amsterdam. You have to go to your medieval sword fighting class, so you use the bus to go their. After the lesson you will walk back to the bus station. But you see *something - element* that will keep your attention and eventually you end up in a forest. You see there a real medieval sword with strange encryptions and decide to take it. But your selfish action lead to the opening of the demon and fantasy portals. It completely changed the world. The sword is actually able to use the power of time and space, but because the wielder (you) is very inexperienced with magic powers; you are only able to use the basic magic powers for a long while.

You go back home, but you immediately notice that your hometown is mixed with New York City and some standard fantasy world Castle City. The next element is a bit based from ‘The World Ends with You’ and ‘Tales of Hearts’. There are a certain amount of people and animals per town/city that are possessed by demons or dark spirits. You have to defeat them and de-possess everybody, so you are able to move further in the game. You can also encounter enemies without going into someone’s (inner)soul. Like possessed cars, zombies or demons who have not yet possessed somebody. After a lot of possessed people you will encounter the possessed host were the super demon boss is from the ‘level/stage’. You have to defeat him and after that you will obtain one of the seven legendary spirit books that you need to collect in order to permanently wipe out the demons in this world and put them back in the demon world.

But after that you get caught by a bunch of possessed shooters and possessed cops. You will escape and you will end up at a plain to England. At the airport you will encounter your first partner in the game. After you reached London with the taxi, you will notice that England became a fusion between England, France and Germany. And you will hear that the United Kingdom is taken over by a resurrected and powerful Atilla the Hun. You will meet up with a resistance group and two of them will join your team and after the mission they will stay in your group. In the castle you will encounter a lot of guards and zombies. In the soul chamber you will challenge Atilla and after you beat him, you will get the second spirit book and end up in a teleportation hole that will lead you to: Doom City.

In Doom City you will meet up with your next and new partner and you will meet with a NPC that will help you on you adventure (she is the scientist that will enable you to teleport to the certain selected area where you want to go). After fighting the evil clones of your party you will get the third spirit book and your sword goes berserk that makes your team end up at ‘Tokyonne’, Tokyo mixed with Rome. The city is terrorised by vampires and Samurai zombies. Destroy them and go to the temple!

At the temple you will encounter a boss fight with Samurai Musashi and unidentified Great Swordfighter. After that you will fight the real boss at the temple: an Eurasian dragon. You will meet up with your new team partner, get the fourth spirit book and the scientist will teleport your team to the kingdom city of China. After an encounter of your evil version, you are given the task to defeat the four demon possessed god dragons. So you have to go four times in a temple and beat four times a dragon. After defeated the four dragons, you will end up obtaining the two spirit books of the three remaining that were not found yet. After getting the sixth book you will end up in your own fantasy world with your team. You will examine your wonderful world and you will get challenged by your super mega angelic stronger version and its team. Your fantasy version will see that you are strong enough to battle the final boss and will give you the last remaining spirit book and opens the gate to the angel-demon realm.

In the angel-demon realm you have to fight your way to the demonic castle. After almost reaching the final chamber, your best friend betrays you, steals your seven books, reveals himself as the final boss and fights you three times in three different forms. After the battle your friends disappear and return to their own world and you will close the gate from the demon realm. You will end up home and lead a normal life. But it seems that you still want to make new coming adventures (because the ending reveals that you still possess the sword).

THE END?

That was the most stuff there was at: FREE GAMING ROUND 2! They officially confirmed that in 2010 they will hold Free Gaming again as FREE GAMING ROUND 3!
I can’t wait for the next many cool games and activities!