SIM Anime and Gaming Club

Hey guys. Event update. <: Asiasoft Gamefest returns this year from 22 to 24 May and will be held at Suntec City Convention Hall 603. Event hours will be from 11am - 9pm for all 3 days.
There's no ticket price stated on the website, so I'll assume entrance is free.

The focus of the event will be on MMORPG games inclusive of Maplesea, Audition, RappelzOnline, etc. Mostly games that are more popular with the younger crowd. There will be quite a number of game competitions if any of you are interested in checking them out, give the link a click. http://www.playpark.net/asgf09

But I would like to draw your attention to the cosplay competition which will be held on 23 May, Saturday at from 7pm to 9pm. It is likely to be smaller in scale and an on-stage event, but for those of you who are new to the scene or would like to have a look at and get to know about the cosplay culture in singapore, you are highly encouraged to come down and have a look around.

I will probably be heading down to the event on the late afternoon to evening of Saturday, so if anyone is interested in joining me, just send an email to amccsg@gmail.com and let me know and I will arrange for a group meet up. <:

Cheers,
Yanshuang.

In this update I'll be covering our recent recruitment drive as well as our orientation meeting for the new members. The recruitment drive took place over 3 days , so I'll be breaking it down in a day-by-day format.

Day 1- Recruitment Drive part 1
To be honest, I had quite high expectations for our recruitment drive. We (the exco) had spent a lot of effort getting everything ready for the day's events. The room was set up for the competition and we set up our booth outside the canteen, all prepared for the day. Much to our dismay (especially mine), we did not get anybody visitors to our game competition room at all that day. Our booth fared slightly better, but not by much. It appeared that we had picked a bad time to hold a recruitment drive. Many students were in the midst of exam preparations and as a result were not go over to participate in our competition even though they expressed some interest in doing so. At the end of the day, we only had 2 people sign up.

Day 2- Recruitment Drive part 2
Our original plan for the booth was to get the interested parties (people who approached the booth) to head over to the lecture theater for our games competition. However, upon reflecting on the previous day's lackluster turn out, we decided to change our marketing tactics a little. We decided to place heavier emphasis on promoting our competition, rather than the club itself, as logic goes that if people enjoyed the competition, they'd be more interested in the club and what is does.

I am pleased to report that this change in strategy did bear fruit, and we were able to attract several people to participate in our competition for the day (Link's Crossbow Training).

The Winners for the day were:

• 1st Prize Huang Kaijin Score of 67998
• 2nd Prize Hiew Keat Tin Score of 62508
• 3rd Prize Joel Lim Score of 55178

Day 3- Orientation Meeting
This was absolutely the highlight of our recruitment drive. Why? Firstly, we had a presentation on Seiyuu (voice actors/actresses) by club member Chun Huat. Also, Kenneth brought down Guitar Hero World Tour, Instruments and all, down to the meeting. The game was a big hit, and most of the members had a go at each of the instruments. We closed the meeting with some episodes from DMC (Detroit Metal City), another big hit among the members (if you don't know what DMC is, you should come for our meetings). Pictures of the meeting should be popping up on our Facebook page soon.

Closing thoughts:
All in all, this recruitment drive was a good learning experience for us. We will now be better prepared for our next recruitment drive happening somewhere in the near future. Stay tuned to this blog to find out when.

To everyone reading this, please feel free to leave us comments in this post or leave us a message in our shoutbox located to the right of this post.

~ Brandon

Behold! AMCC now has a Sub-blog dedicated to Videogame reviews and other user created content related to the Videogames department. Together with our Main Blog and Facebook page, AMCC now has it's very own 3 HeadedHydra (as pictured above)! Men ran, Women cried.

The reason for us having a separate blog for videogames is that this main blog is meant for announcements and information pertaining to the club and up-coming events. Some members have expressed interest in writing reviews for certain games they played. Well, wish granted! This blog is for you guys! So go grab your virtual pen and head over to the AMCC VideoGames Blog.

~ Brandon

If you haven't guessed from the title, AMCC now has a facebook group! Blog readers, please join our facebook group. We'll update the group when new posts are made to our blog. We'll also be uploading some photos from our events and be making announcements there.

The link to the group can be found HERE.

~ Brandon

Game: Link’s Crossbow Training (Wii)
Date: 14th May 2009
Venue: Lt 3.11
Competition Timing: 11am – 4pm
Cost: Free
Prizes:
Highest Overall score – 3 Megabites food coupons
Highest Score on a Target shoot map – 1 Megabites food coupon
Highest Score on a Defender map – 1 Megabites food coupon
Highest Score on a Ranger map – 1 Megabites food coupon

Rules:
1) Players go through 6 fixed stages, 2 from each game type, chosen by the organizers (us).
2) Players may opt to either use the Wii Zapper peripheral or the Wii-mote and nunchuk alone.
3) Competitors may switch back and forth between the two control schemes at anytime between stages.
4) Players may adjust the sensitivity of the aiming reticule at anytime between stages.
5) The competition ends at 4pm and the winners will be notified by SMS.

About the game:
Set in the world of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, players assume the role of Link, the game’s protagonist. In order to perfect his crossbow skills, Link must pass a series of shooting tests against bullseye targets and a variety of enemies from the game. Hitting multiple targets without any misses results in a score multiplier effect.

There are 3 main game-play modes in Link’s Crossbow Training. These modes are:

Target shooting – Hitting either stationary or moving bullseye targets in several themed levels from the game. These levels are “on rails”, meaning that the screen will move gradually while targets pop up around the level.
Defender – Players remain stationary, but are able to rotate their view 360°. Enemies attack from all directions, and will cause the player to lose points if they get close enough to attack you.
Ranger – The player gains complete control over their characters movement and view. These levels typically task the player with killing a certain amount of enemies within a set time limit.



~ Brandon

Game: Geometry Wars 2 (Xbox 360)
Date: 13th May 2009
Venue: Lt 3.16
Competition Timing: 11am – 4pm
Cost: Free
Prizes:
1st place – 3 Megabites food coupons
2nd place – 2 Megabites food coupons
3rd place – 1 Megabites food coupon

Rules:
1) The game type will be “Deadline”, in which the player has 3 minutes to score as many points as possible.
2) Each player is given 2 tries and the highest score of the 2 attempts is recorded
3) Players have to wait for an hour if they would like to retry the game to attempt to get a higher score than previously.
4) For subsequent attempts, the new score will replace the old one
5) The Competition ends at 4pm, the highest scoring players will be notified by SMS.

About The Game:
The player controls a small, highly maneuverable ship that can move and fire independently in any direction. The objective of the game is to score points by destroying a variety of shapes and surviving by not touching them. If player's ship is destroyed, a life is lost.
In the “Deadline” game mode, the player has unlimited lives, and has 3 minutes to score as many points as possible. The game ends once the time is up.



~ Brandon

Time: 8 PM
Date: 19th June 2009
Venue: Singapore Indoor Stadium
Ticket prices: CAT 1 ($103.50), CAT 2 ($76.50), CAT 3 ($63) and CAT 4 ($49.50)

Synopsis lifted from SISTIC website:
Video Games Live (VGL) is the biggest and most sensational game concert featuring music from the most popular video games of all time. Performed to countless sold-out audiences in United States, Europe and North Asia, VGL is making its first Southeast Asian appearance in Singapore!

VGL integrates cutting-edge visuals and state-of-the-art technology with music arrangements and unique interactive segments, offering audiences an explosive one-of-a-kind entertainment experience.

Produced and performed live by world famous video game composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, with our very own remarkable NUS Symphony Orchestra & Choir, VGL features music from the most popular video games - Pong, Mario, Sonic, Halo, Warcraft, Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy and more.

Gamers & music lovers unite! Do not miss this opportunity to watch Video Games Live’s debut performance in Singapore!

Anyone interested? I'm personally thinking of booking the CAT 2 ($77) tickets. For those interested in booking other categories (prices) of tickets, what we can do is have everyone who wants to attend post in the comments with their email and ticket category (CAT1, CAT 2...) we will then group up the people according to their seating and make the booking. We can meet up on the day of the event and head over together, you will be sitting with people in the same CAT as you are, so there is no pressure to choose expensive tickets just because more people are picking the $104 tickets.

If you do not feel comfortable posting your email here in the comments section, you could also email us at amccsg@gmail.com

Please RSVP by the 17th of May (Sunday).

~ Brandon

Bryan here on the L4d Competition that was held recently. First off, as “Team Captain” for ‘Arrgh! Me CupCakes’ (AMCC), I would like to thank my teammates, Albert (President), Hui Ching (Secretary) and Jonathan (Member) for participating with me in the event. Also, a big thank you to Brandon (Video Game Head), his friends, and Kenneth (Member) for the help they gave us in training for the tourney in such a short time frame. Just to let you know how small the timeframe was, most of the team got the game about a week before the competition so again thanks for the training.

On to the competition itself. When we arrived, the judges informed us of a change in the format. No longer was it simple elimination. It would now be a league sort of game where they totaled each team’s win/loss ratio in Versus mode, where teams alternated between Survivors and Infected to see who could beat the other team. To make matters worse, they announced that the top four Singapore teams would be competing with us that day instead of the finals. Despite these changes, our team was determined to do its best though we knew it would be tough for an amateur team like ourselves to go against pros.

First up, we were placed against another casual team which called themselves [the same]. After a few minutes of banter, the match began in earnest. The first 2 maps of the campaign were a struggle as the other team’s Hunter teamwork was well synchronized and our team lost those. On the 3rd map however, we got the better of them as our adrenaline began to kick in.

Unfortunately, the AI director was miffed at our team in the 4th map and we were cheated of our Tank when it was spawned before the Survivors activated the lift so we were not able to reach them. Despite that, we fought on and in the final map, our teamwork managed to work around holes in their defenses and we took them down swiftly (despite Albert talking to the judges about the problem with our tank). On our turn, our teamwork proved too much to handle and we turned our luck around and emerged victorious. Best of all, we managed to get the other team to scream our names in anger. Unfortunately, we learnt that a player on the other team was having some problems with his team and had sometimes created problems. This combined with their eventual loss resulted in the team storming off from the competition, never to return.

The next two matches were fought against the 3rd and 2nd place winners of the previous competition, [HBK] and [Vertex II]. Needless to say, we had our asses handed to us on a platter by both teams. [HBK] however were very gracious in their victory and even told our team that we put up quite a fight over the other teams. [Vertex II] however, were not as sporting and played around with our team while taunting us as well as insulting our team before the match began. And thus, we were kicked out of the competition.

We also learned later that overall, our team provided the biggest challenge to the 2 pro teams as our matches lasted well into 1 ½ hours compared to the others they fought with our scores in the upper hundreds compared to the double digits of the other losing teams. Overall though, I guess our team managed to learn many tactics and much info that may prove useful in the future and for that I also thank all the teams we faced. Hopefully, we will do much better in the next competition and I hope to see more supporters.

Bryan, VP AMCC

This is the first update to out blog in 3 months. I know we haven't been treating the old gal properly, but from now on we're going to give it the attention that a blog like her deserves.

First off the club is alive and well, and has been in operation since the 27th of February. We've been quite busy too. We participated in the SIM open house held on the 13th and 14th of March, where AMCC was enlisted to help promote the day's events. By promote I mean we had Cosplay girls while some of us held up hand-written signs advertising the various talks. We also had a Wii set up in the changing room for those involved in the event to chillax while waiting for the next round of promotional walking-about. Overall, a good time was had by all.

We also sent in a team to the Zombie Mania Left 4 Dead competition held recently on the 25th of April. No, we didn't win in the end, but the team did very well and even gave one of the top teams in Singapore a good run for their money. I shan't (or rather can't) talk too much about the competition, because I wasn't there. So I'll leave it up to someone that was to fill in the rest of the sordid details.

The next event on the horizon will be a recruitment drive. We expect it to be a grand event, and will be booking a booth outside the canteen and a Lecture theater to hold a videogame competition. More details to follow. Watch this Space.

~ Brandon