Brisbane Gamers Meetup 4

Game Event from Yug - Wednesday, 10 December 2008 @ 3:16am

Gamers like to get drunk.

Anyone who believes otherwise obviously didn't make it to the 4th Brisbane Gamers meetup that occurred on the Saturday, 6th of December just gone. This was also the first Brisbane event not to be held at my place, thanks to a combination of stuff being stolen at the end of the 3rd meetup, and my house literally being flooded out. A new venue had to be sourced, and the solution turned out to be a better option than I could have ever envisioned.

Cybercity 2002 is a restaurant / entertainment venue in Fortitude Valley, just across the road from Chinatown Mall and up the road from such classy establishments such as the 'Elephant & Wheelbarrow' and 'Rockafellas'. It's hidden down a dodgy looking arcade surrounded by stores littered with dodgy posters, henti videos and not a word of English on display.

In summary, it looks dodgy, uninviting, and run down.

When you walk through the doors however, you are treated to an area so large it should have been made into a nightclub by now, with pool tables as far as the eye can see. The Chinese food is quick, cheap and very tasty, the whole place is BYO - with a bottle store conveniently located 2 doors down, there's about 10 private karaoke rooms tucked away in the corner, and obscure Japanese and old school arcade games along almost every way.

Upon closer inspection, the summary is that the place is awesome.

CyberCity 2002 in all its awesome glory

I had actually woken up around midday on Saturday with a very nasty hangover. I knew it had been a big night as I had woken up fully clothed, in the shower, covered in mud, holding onto an Ace of Hearts playing card - only to look up and see a hubcap hanging from the shower nozzle. I'm not making this up. Needless to say I was still fairly fragile when I met up with the boys from Sydney half an hour before the meetup was scheduled to start.

That's right, Sydney. A crew of AustralianGamer boys had flown up to Brisbane for the weekend with the sole purpose of imposing themselves upon the meetup. Jae and Oracle represented from the AG Team itself, along with forum members Claude the Duck King (Joaby from GameArena) and Fleeek. They had spent the day in Brisbane and decided to buy themselves funny hats, Joaby's huge purple pimp hat making him seem even more inebriated than usual, Jae's policeman sparkling stripper cap frighteningly suiting him, and Fleeek with a red Mustafa cup hat, which by the end of the night was sold off to someone for $5.

After a few drinks we were also joined by Matt, Yahtzee and his missus Lanky Pickett, AG Team member Simon, and my good mate Ryan, and as it was getting closer and closer to go time, we decided to head on down to the city of cyber.

We had a sectioned off area allocated for us, with 6 tables seating around about 60 people in total. I think we easily filled up the majority of these, and that's even considering people were off doing other things apart from eating at the time. We had an almost never ending line of food however - satay chicken, sizzling Mongolian beef, salt n pepper prawns, and a whole bunch of food that tasted way better than it had any right too.

There were a whole lot of stories from the rest of the night, but since I was jumping around mostly introducing people and making sure everything was running smoothly, I think I'll leave it to some of the individual people who attended the night to give a few of their unique stories and perspectives of the evening ...

THE KARAOKE

Two rooms, 10 people each, booked all night. Either they were packed with a large mixed and varied number of people belting out classic 80's power ballads, or it was a smaller 2 or 3 people with more recent pop songs. I think Hannah (from THQ Studio Australia) and her friend were in the second karaoke room for at least the last 3 hours of the night.

"The karaoke room was a hoot! Joab and Jae were in there struggling to understand the complex system of the karaoke machine when Kim and I sauntered in a little before 10. Being a trained (and not too drunk) engineer I quickly figured out the basics, so we weren't doomed to singing the same song over and over and over for the whole night. Shortly after we got it working some more people joined. I remember Edgecrusher, Talia, Yahtzee and his girlfriend, TeaShades, Oracle and a few others.

The singing for the most part consisted of screaming out the lyrics, or something close to it, an octave above what most people are normally comfortable with. It should also probably be mentioned that someone pushed some buttons on the remote, turning off the volume on the microphone. Most people didn't seem to notice or care though and the microphones were happily passed around and sung into for the next hour."
- Gaute

"Sitting there with a bunch of people I didn't get to introduce myself to unfortunately, but watching Yahtzee take the microphone to blast out some 'Stairway to Heaven' only to watch his face drop in utter horror as the song wasn't the Led Zeppelin song we all know and love, but some Asian synth pop extravaganza."
- TheScarecrow

"Joaby is, bar none, the best singer this country has ever seen."
- teashades

THE SKILL TESTERS

These machines took a beating all night, to the point where they stopped working. Still, that didn't deter Edgecrusher, who's ultra skinny arms managed to sneak up through the opening and nab the converted Patrick Starfish stuffed toy that Joaby had spent almost $20 trying to win earlier.

"I spent 10 bucks in 30 seconds trying to win a shitty Spongebob character for fleek so he would blow me. On reflection I could have just given him the 10 bucks straight up and gotten a years’ worth of services."
- teashades

"I tried to win you a spiky tortoise shell but the machine ate my $8 instead."
- Oracle

HYPER BISHI BASHI ARCADE MACHINE

I think many people who never played this arcade game most probably now think it is the greatest game ever created in the history of gaming. Essentially a Wario Ware type game, except entirely in Japanese and with mini-games that are even more confusing. It accommodates 3 player action where the only input is 3 large coloured buttons. Madness, mayhem, and a whole heap of fun.

"Can I just put in a good word for the unmentioned star of the night... the Bishi Bashi machine."
- Tenielle

"The bishi bashi machine is the greatest game in the history of mankind. I had heaps of fun playing that."
- Templar

"The Hyper Bishi Bashi machine kicked ass! I would go back there just to play it."
- Morry

FLEEEK

Yes, Fleek gets a section all to himself, becoming as much of an entertaining feature of the night as anything else. Managing to drink enough tequila for everyone there within a period of 3 hours, he promptly vomited everywhere and passed out ... kind of. He kept popping up in different areas - the bathroom, the karaoke room, at the pool tables - always offering his unique perspective on the nights events. Eventually he was taken into a cab where Hawky endured him for the rest of the night.

"Remember being outside on the ground, people were saying stuff and every time i heard something said about me i woke up, said fuck you and gave the finger."
- Fleeek

"Oh boy. He was pretty drunk already, but soon after arriving in the karaoke room had the brilliant idea of having some tequila shots. And when I say "shot" I actually mean a half-full plastic glass. Joab gave him some fatherly advice in the form of a head shake and Fleek poured a tiny little bit of it back into the bottle. And then drank the "shot". And soon thereafter collapsed on the floor.

A few attempts were made to wake him up and get him on his feet. With little success. At some point he valiantly summoned the power and strength to leap up from the floor with a triumphant "TA DA!" to demonstrate to us all that he had in fact not died from alcohol poisoning and was in fact still able to control his limbs. Sort of."
- Gaute

As the night hit the AM and Cybercity we started running out of alcohol, we moved the proceedings up to Bar 388 on Brunswick Street. I had names on the door at the Met nightclub, but there was no way our crew was going to get into there. The drinking continued, along with a whole lot of dancing. There was a Rick Roll at some point, which was pretty much my cue to pack it in for the evening. I'll leave it to the lovely TalzGir to explain how the rest of the night went down.

"After departing the 388, Korthal, Teashades, Joaby, Matt, Sasha, Tom and myself returned to Matt's place to wake up Yahtzee & Elsbeth and play some 4am drunken Little Big Planet. About 15 minutes into our adventures in the Dreamscape of Little Big Planet all of us were happy to embark on our own little dream adventures.... or make out. "

Leaving CyberCity 2002 and braving the weather in the search for more booze

QUOTES OF THE NIGHT

"I am really glad i got out of bed for that, it was amazing" - Aet - TheScarecrows girlfriend, after being forced to come out.

"I understand that he's drunk, but why are his pants down?" - funkypea - Questions about the state of Fleeek after he passed out.

"Do you like my hardgay hat?" - Jae - The hat that ended up with the sweat of a thousand heads.

"You're the devil, aren't you?" - Sal - After seeing one of Yugs magic card tricks.

"He didn't KISS me" - funkypea - Pras denying a drunken kiss from Fleeek.

"Six figures baby!" - nihilcreative - When you're just that good.

"Patrick doesn't have ID" - Claude the duck king - To the bouncer at Bar 388 upon entry