Taipei Day 6 (Bahamut Anniversary Con)

 Today I woke up late-ish as well and 姨媽 has already left for her weekly mahjong. They left me a club sandwich on the table. Aww thank you.

I just took some time getting ready as it was almost 11am by the time I was ready to go. Today I was invited to a annual con by Dark H and Knuckles. They are running an try play stall for Sonic Generations and games. The thing about this is that Bahamut is a ACG website, as well as a anime streaming service. They run a con every year on their anniversary. And that they have stalls where essentially volunteers or fans sign up and bring their own hardware & software to set up a stall for a particular game or series, etc. My friends are doing Sonic Generations, and they ran a best time for stage 1 competition (Sega pulled through on the last minute for sponsorship prices; clearfiles). The best time was 3:45mins!! If you complete the run under 10 mins you get the prize of clearfile. If you don't you get a participation price which is a small "thank you for playing" card which Dark H illustrated. They also had Sonic Rumble and sonic Dream Team for demo play, and a Sonic 2 something, and a fan-finished one that Sega never finished development. It was pretty cool and fun!! Dream Team is locked onto Apple Arcade. Dark H and Knuckles also bought me a copy of Generations. Even though they needed to buy another copy for something they still thought of me 😭 bless.

Jing Mei MRT station with a special window

Entrance to the venue, right next to the RT station

Live band person here too

It was 12pm when I arrived at the venue so I bought an onigiri and honey cake from the 7-11 at the station and had a light lunch before going in.

Gifted Generations and the catalogue ($10) that I bought for souvenir. It also has a form for you to go into the draw which is drawn at like 4pm.

I tried playing for the first time on Generations, and it is very kind and doesn't punish you if you die or run ou of course. It's quite newbie friendly. They also managed to borrow 2 long ass monitors from Samsung, and then Knuckles found someone overseas to erase the black areas around the screen (as the normal play screen blacks out the sides) so the whole stage can be displayed nicely on the long Samsung screens. It is so good to see it on a bigger screen, that's for sure!!

Big ass monitors (and some guy in a 3M Aura!!!)

Big ass monitor playing Generations (with the controls explanation placard drawn by Dark H)

Mr Knuckles hard at work

I managed to make it throught the stage like 2 seconds under 10 mins! The in-game timer is 9 min 29 seconds, but it doesn't count the time freeze and reloading if you die times. And managed to get the clearfile. Scoreee!!!

Then Dark H took me to have a walk around, and just showed me the bazaar area, and we had a bit of a chat. Then she left to go back to the stall and I had a good look at the bazaar tables. There's only about 5 ish artist stalls? The rest were trying to sell their old merch, or past obsession regrets, lol. A lot of Chiikawa hahaha. I found like 1 tote bag of 1/2 Prince!! Of Jiu and Prince. Unbelievable, aye!! I also bought some Sui (from Tondemo Skill) postcards from an artist stall, and also another stall had an artist who drew watercolours focused on cats. He had a set of postcards featuring cats in famous landmark spots, and he was really proactive in telling me more about the illustrations (such as these cats in this illust were stray cats he met at this spot, so he drew them into characters). He also illustration cats realistically in watercolour too. I bought 3 postcards from him too.

Cool custome keyboard keys stall

Like how they put a Want Want next to payment info haha

Cool artist stall

Someone's had regret haha

A Yuno but no Asta...

Some guy with a cool gacha backpack!

Main Stage

Bunch of Kuai Kuai to make the computer behave hahaha

I had a look around the middle area after, it was a Nintendo Smash Bros, Mario Kart 8, and Splatoon 3 championship stage, and some other official game stalls. I went back to the gaming experience area, and discovered the Aria stall was them trying to tell people about this great series. They made their own little house Dioramas that you can lift the ceilings off from, and had various figures. 

Roof off

Roof on

Another stall was for MTG. They had some anime-esque illustration cards on display! Didn't know they branched out into that. It has been more than 10 years for me, after all.

There's a retro games area with heaps of CRT TVs and old games from that era!! So cool!!! I love how they went into the extra effort with CRT TVs cause they're heavy as to transport, but it really makes the experience as it is meant to be on those TVs. Apparently they usually have this area every year. 

I tried playing some more Sonic games at Dark H and Knuckles' stall. A small kid was trying for the first time as he didn't have any consoles at home, and mum wasn't so knowledgable on games. They were able to let the kid try lots and also let the mum know that Dream Team/Rumble is free to play, and mum can access it so seems like the kid might get a chance to play games! That's so good.

Dark H helping the little kid out

Sega and Samsung were hoping for photos of the event, and Dark H was doing good work getting photos with high crowd density trying out the games and at the stalls. I hope they get a favourable response from the sponsors so they can have a favourable relationship going forwards. 

Afterwards I chatted for a bit more, and met another friend of Dark H's who came well dressed in a black and red hanfu-style fasion coord, (and matching printed patterned mask!), in thick glasses. It was a really good time and I enjoyed myself, seeing all the different and new things.

It was about 5pm when I bid goodbye, as Dark H and Knuckles have to start setting down and tidying up the stall, so they would be busy. And then they will go out to Sonic Café afterwards with a bunch of their friends. So nice. I thanked them and left.

Started playing Chocobo Racing right before I left haha

Bye bye see you next year maybe?

There's the Farmer's (association) market outside, regular thing during weekends. I had a look around and a lot of there were selling produce that looked really good? I bought some small bok-choy x3 bunch for $100 to contribute for meals, and some bobby bananas x4 ($40) and a 椪柑 citrus fruit for ($40). THe bok choy I bought 2 and then thought about it, and looked at the volume and thought it wasn't enough for all the people currently at 姨媽's house. So I went back and bought another bunch lol.

Some cool potted/shaped plants

Bananas

The citrus fruit

Stall owner said instead of taking a photo of the stall I should take a photo of this handsome guy (him) lol

Took the MRT to Chiang-kai Shiek station and then walked to the bus stop which I had a bit of trouble finding. It was in the middle of the road. And took the Roosevelt bus home. When I got home, 姨媽 was too tired so she is having a rest day and didn't cook, so 表姊 and 表姊夫 went to buy a Chishang bentou for me, and a charcoal grilled stinky tofu. The bentou was good. Even the dried radish was good. But the tofu was... super average, and not really nice. Would not have again.

The stinky tofu

After dinner I filled in the dates in my stamp book, and wrote my postcards. Apparently each MRT station has a stamp. !??! Why didn't I know this earlier?!?! I took the MRT so many times this week!! Like!! I could have collected so many!!! SO SAD!!! Super 囧囧囧.

I helped massage 姨媽 and she ended up falling alseep on the bed. I will sleep after blogging soon.

My haul today (forgot to take postcards out)