Makakiko - a "Japanese" restaurant?

Today my sister wanted to go to Makakiko a "Japanese" restaurant in a new Shopping Center in Prague. So me and our mother joined her.

When I entered the restaurant I almost bumped into two Chinese waitresses and already took this as a bad sign.

On one of the walls you could see some Japanese/Chinese characters along with some Korean I can't read. One of the words that caught my eyes was Shanghai and just next to it ramen written in Japanese. WTH?

Anyway I order ramen - or at least something - that was supposed to be ramen and I got o soup with not really good chinese noodles, CZECH MUSHROOMS!!!, broccoli and baby carrots. The whole soup tasted as well....mushrooms. Even getting them out of the soup did not really help.

After this I tried few makis. I tried Kappa Maki and I wasn't really sure if the green thingy inside was cucumber. It did not taste that way. Other maki were as well quite incertain of taste. I was completely upset and did not want to try anything else. Even though I tried a bit of salad and I started to feel an allergic reaction to it so I gave up on that and continued drinking my jasmin tea.

My mother ordered Yakitori which probably have not ever seen Japanese yakitori...and I should not even comment on the menu (as those Chinese people probably don't know their spelling right)

All this just to say that this is probably the worst choice of a Japanese restaurant in the area, so beware.

Gamer's day...

Today I was invited to Level Editorial's Office. They wanted a video o f me playing GHWT and telling people what I think about the game (I don't want to see the outcome....o_O).

Guitar Hero World Tour on PS3 is something really different from the PS2 version^_^. Almost the whole game was unlock so I even tried playing La Bamba and BYOB and other songs I did not get to yet at home.

After making the video we played as a band and I have to say that it was quite confusing. I was offsync, the singer offkey, the guitarist was doing fine. In overall we managed to clear the song and have fun afterall. (someone took a video....not sure if I want to see it as well^_~)

When everyone was tired of GHWT I got the chance to play the new Prince of Persia for some time and I have to say that I like the game. It's a game about jumping all over the place and getting from point A to point B (cleansing area and boss). The gameplay is easy. No need to be frustrated because of 3d environment and being afraid of falling down from poles, columns or anything you will encounter. The game flows, is fluid and is nice to watch if you know how to play the game. But you will get into it pretty fast. Also you can't die in the game as Elika saves you from dying all the time. So you restart from the last platform where a series of jumps can begin.

The game starts with Prince calling out the name Farah and Elika running into him (being chased by some guards)....[blah blah story going on]. Because of something bad that happened, darkness has arisen and you need to cleanse many areas to get rid of the darkness. To do so you need to get to that place and let Elika heal it. Usually at the end of each level you encounter a boss you need to kill either with your sword or Elika's magic. At some fights you will be forced to use the environment to get rid of the opponent.

After PoP I played bit of DJ Troopers CS and played Smoooch from Empress^_~. I have to say that the pink highlighted song in the Troopers songlist looks pretty weird.

Perfect day^_~ If I don't count the fact that I did not feel good, was starving and ended up with blisters on my hands from playing GHWT drums.

Burger King and WorldMax

Today, I got a day off from work and I decided to spent at least half of the day playing PIU NX2.
So I got up in the morning and headed off to Metropole Zlicin where are NX2 machine is located.
I arrived to the arcades. No one was there so I wasn't sure if it is open or not. I entered after a while not being entirely sure if I can enter. But no one started yelling at me to back off. So I came to the PIU NX2 machine.

I played few CZ songs to warm myself up. The waiter sitting at the counter was watching me. I played few nightmares and then I looked behind myself to check if he is still watching or not. Actually it seemed that he took a video of me playing so I quickly looked back.

After that he came to me and asked me "you don't stand on this for the first time, do you?". I replied simply "no". Then he continued "It's your machine, right?", so I was like "Yup". After that I asked he if he wants to try it but he said no to that offer.

I continued and played WorldMax mostly. Achievement of the day...I somehow I have NO IDEA how managed to pass 2 4 level missions in Mirtain. One was something played on NM with blinking arrows and some other mods. The objective was clear the song and I managed that to my surprise! The other mission was much worse. It was something on freestyle with reverse, flip (in both directions) and some really slow speed mod. I was like WTF??? When I first played it because I was getting miss combo and I did not know why...but later on I found out what the hell was going on and managed to clear the mission. After the first mentioned mission I got to Harena and cleared few missions there.^_^

After getting stuck in Harena I went back to Barharn and cleared few missions there. Swearing as hell on Dr. M CZ with speed items. It started with 0.5, than there was 3x and 4x. So I took both and I tried to avoid the rest. But in the middle of one stream there was nasty 1x. Next few tries ended up the same way. The next try I managed to get past this and I was so happy this part was past me..and I stepped on 8x resulting in another "hey, why don't you get up and dance man?". After few more times I got the mission cleared. ^_^

At noon I went outside to get some food but there was a press conference about Burger King opening its first location in the Czech Republic. I stayed there and listened. I found out few interesting things. Like that the first Burger King was opened in 1975 in Spain and that there are like 11million people served each day. That Burger King has in some countries special "localized" Whopper. That means that it is done from something that is unique for the country. Example is Japanese Whopper with teriyaki sauce. I also found out that they've got a really good price for this location (1000EUR) which makes it possible to have about the same prices as the concurrence (109CZK for the Whopper menu which is the same price you will pay for Big Mac for example). We also learned that the company running Burger King here has no limitations to the number of locations and that of course the most important thing is the profit. Thus as many new locations as it is good for a good natural growth of the company (meaning good profit, you see).

Burger King in Europe is pretty widespread (if I understood correctly it is in 75 countries in total). The latest locations in Europe are in Romania, Bulgaria and well the Czech Republic.

We also got information about the Whopper itself. It being made of 100% beef, that is grilled on real open fire. That's why it tastes so good. That you can customize your whopper. So if you don't like cucumber you will get it without it. Of course the option of "with bacon" and "with cheese" are there as well. These burgers are mainly for males^_~ and for the females they've got some light sandwiches (chicken roll is the preffered choice as he said) and salads.

After the press conference and questions, the first Burger King location in the Czech Republic was opened.
*happy*

After the meal I decided to go back to check on the PIU FX machine once more and asked few questions. I got my answers, played few missions and headed off back home.

In the subway I took out my Level magazine and continued reading article about Minorities in Gaming. A few youngsters entered the subway and were chatting quite loud about the new cool Guitar Hero game. They probably meant GHWT but I'm not sure if the game is out here (I got quite far in the game and it starts to annoy me...because playing 6-7 songs on Expert in one row is just.....TOO MUCH). So it was quite nice to listen to them. Later on a few other people entered the train and they saw that I read a preview about Tomb Raider Underground. They started to speak about Level vs Score - our leadeing Czech gaming magazines. (I was reading Level and they were mostly pro-Score readers for some reason).

Few more young people were talking about FIFA and PES and it felt quite nice to hear people talking about games. It's been quite a while that I heard someone speaking about something "normal" not some GH, Rock Band, Wii Music, WiiFit and other stuff like that.

I arrived home quite happy and I was sure that the what I have to say (which is written here) won't interest anyone in this building and I was right about that. It makes me sad and upset at the same time. I know that talking about Worldmax missions can be pretty annoying but hell wish I could share my experience with someone. And too bad that I'm not that good player. I'm at 18 percent and most missions kill me for the first time I play them.

So thanks for reading to those who actually managed to read the whole entry. It was a good day. Now it is time to pack some dance pads.

Finnish Tour

Today Finnish Fire Tour concert was held in Prague's Retro Music Hall.
Four Finnish folk metal bands were present - Falchion, Kivimetsän Druidi, Battlelore and Korpiklaani. Most of the people came there to see/hear Korpiklaani live (me too^_^). This time it was the seventh time that Korpiklaani came to the Czech Republic.

Falchion was first on stage and they played some death metal songs, later on adding folk metal songs. The songs were relatively slow and not really that interesting in my point of view. But I have to say that I was amazed by their guitar solos. It was also for the first time could see someone playing solos from 2-3 m distance (live). I won't forget this...

After that, Kivimetsän Druidi came. This meant that those who fell asleep during the first bands' performance woke up quite fast as the speed of the songs was much higher than of Falchion.

Battlelore showed us also two different kind of styles, one being folk metal and the other one I couldn't really place but liked it a lot. I did not expect anything like that at this concert.

At midnight the long awaited Korpiklaani got on the stage. Their performace was good as usual, a lot of energy in it and you could see that people really enjoyed it.

LIW and DDR Extreme

Me and NX we went to Leisure Industry Week 08 mainly to speak to Positive Gaming. We also had the chance to find out what is on market nowadays and in what we could invest our money in the future. Visiting LIW also had it's more fun part and that was trying out ZigZag's PIU Prox MP system and iDance MP System by PG.

The first day we went to LIW for just a while and after the closing hours we decided to head to the center of the city. To our suprise the train heading in that direction was Pendolino. I always wanted to go by this kind of train somewhere (to Vienna most probably) but never expected to go by Pendolino from NEC to the center of Birmingham. And not to mention the price which was like 22CZK for the ride. The funny quote about Pendolino that day was. "We are already here? The pendolino did not even reach its full speed??? o_O".

Next day, at LIW I had the chance to meet few people from DDRUK and for that I'm really grateful. Too bad that I couldn't meet Dancing Ninja though (also from DDRUK). We played iDance for most of the time and took videos of the game. Together we went than to PIU ProX stand where we found out that new songs were added. Songs by Alex Miller which were added so it would appeal to a wider audience. But I think it did not really helped much as the stand was dead for whole LIW.

At the stand Ian took videos of all the new charts and when he was taking a vid of the last song some ZigZag person came to him asking him what he is doing. And you know what? The answer was "We are taking videos of the charts so we could remake them". After this we decided that it is better to leave and don't do anything more suspicious. I wonder what ZigZag was thinking about a group of people in Pulse Demo Team t-shirts (a company showing a rival MP system) taking videos of the PIU ProX charts^_~.

At the very same stand someone also decided to play Dignity CZ (too bad I don't remember whom). We chose the song, set it so we could play on CZ and started playing. The Dignity chart on 1x was quite difficult to read but it wasn't that difficult to read as Esperanza or Handsome Character that pass. In about 1/3 of the song the person playing next to me called for a help with the song. Adam joined him and they finished the song together. I decided to try my best and finish the song as well. I think that the result screen was a surprise for both of us^_^. They got 58% on it and I alone got 55% on Dignity CZ. They were quite taken aback with my score "almost" beating theirs. ZigZag people were just staring at us ...

After LIW we went to Kris's house to play a bit of DDR Extreme. On our way to Kris's we wanted to go eat at McDonlads near the highway (where Jboy might have worked?). On our way from the McDonalds we took wrong way. After about 15 minutes of driving Adam claimed: "Hey, I know this place". The rest of was like "We went by like 15 minutes ago."
Another funny thing happened when Ian missed the left turn to Kris's house. We continued the road and someone said "Take the 360". And the rest of was like, hm shouldn't it be 180? Ahead of us was a roundabout and well we did the 360/180 turn and went back. I think that in the end both could be taken as correct. After the turn I told Ian to "Don't forget to turn right this time" and someone noted "hey, even S'Tsung knows where Kris lives".

We arrived alright and went directly to the place the machine was held. The machine was really nice and I really enjoyed playing on it. We started with few songs on singles after that we also tried some doubles (I tried, they played^_~). Anyway as I haven't played much DDR doubles yet I asked for some songs I could try out. So they let me play Do you remember me - a most difficult 9 in their words. I just started playing the song and was doing well. One of the players in the room was like "Hey, she's going to full combo that. She's just walking without doing any effort...". Few notes after this being said I missed my first note as I did not expect the chart to go in the other direction so fast^_^. Also I played Rhythm and Police (a song I played about 3 times already) and Cartoon Heroes (my first try). That song did not feel that evil as on singles. I also failed TLOM at the end of the song because I did not expect the "triplets" (3 notes, 8th pause, 3 notes, 8th pause). Stream would be nicer to end this song I think.
Anyway I enjoyed the stay there and I'm really grateful for being invited and for being let play Extreme. It was really nice

On our way back I asked Adam why he asked me before "Do you like Chimera?". The answer was something like: "Well, you seem to me like that kind of person being able to pass it no bar (the annex to this sentence was "on NM")." I have no idea who meant what but imagining me playing Chimera on NM no bar was pretty funny. Especially with all these really good players around.

Czech Trek 3

A third Czech Trek was organized and was held at Multikino Ladvi. This year's guest was Denise Crosby who is known for her role of Natasha Yar and Sela in Star Trek TNG.

It was really nice to meet Denise and hear her talk about her role and her career. It was good to listen to her and see that for some actors the roles don't need to be that good and won't really give the actors what they imagine and wish for. We learned also a bit more about the original Sela that Denise Crosby created. Too bad that the directors of TNG decided to change this character and don't continue with her story. We were also told that Crosby would like to do a Trekkies 3 documentary which would be now shot in Asia.

Guitar Hero National Tournament

One day I was contacted by one person who asked me if I ever played Guitar Hero (and he already knew that the answer was yes). I asked him why and he said that he would need some players who would enter WCG Qualifier tournament. I accepted even though that I haven't touched the game since a bet/challenge I accepted in May.

The finals of the tournament were held this Saturday at ElectroWorld Cerny Most in Prague. I did not arrive on time, but it did not really matter as organizators managed to forgot (or what?) the GH3 DVD so we had to wait for quite a long time till the tournament actually began.

What surprised me was...well there were some passerbys which would be normal. But some of them were calling us idiots and retards behind our backs. I understand that playing Guitar Hero can be considered lame or even worse and I wouldn't really mind about being called like this. But when these people just decided to pass by in between the screen and us (the players) I found this atrocious. I don't know ... at least a bit of respect for the players could have been there. They could have waited or could have found another way to get past us. Or at least they could have shown at least a bit of politeness.

The fact that there were people taking photos with flash during the tournament I consider normal. You can be telling people to never use flash while people are trying to play but no one listens...happens all the time.

Also the winner of the tournament came there just to win. He learned the songs that we would play in the tournament, especially TTFAF and One. He is not that good as me or QuiT but still wanted to win. I don't consider this fair but people like this exist and I don't want to stand in their way and well I just don't get it. Always there have to be people like...-_-

Anyway what I enjoyed was my round against QuiT. He chose Raining Blood so he could beat me but somehow I managed to get a really nice score on that one. I decided to ignore the beginning and keep combo on the rest of the song which worked well for me as I got 4x for a long time and this in the end resulted in me winning on this song. The second played was 3s and 7s which I completely messed up but I think even without messing the song up I would lose. The last song played was TTFAF to decide who would win. I was winning all the time till the last minute where my concentration was nowhere to be found. I couldn't concentrate on the notes nor the song. After confirming the last freeze I realized saw that the difference in score is less than 1000 big. Too bad that it was me who lost by less than 1000 points. It was nice match though.

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and Ed Boon

At Midway stand I went to stand the line for Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and I have to say I don't regret it. I felt really awkward when I saw all the surprised faces staring at me and then a few moments later some people started taking photos of me. After quite a long time waiting I went to play against one nice boy. I came to an already started round - I played with Sonya Blade and my opponent played with Scorpion. So after few "get over here"s I died. After this I was choosing all the Mortal Kombat characters playable at GC. It was Scorpion, Sub Zero, Shang Tsung and Sonya Blade. On the other side it was Joker, Superman and two other characters I have no idea who it was.

The game is much smoother and has many new features and fun moments in game play. For example if you toss someone across the arena and that person hits a wall he can fall to a stage underneath. This would be normal, but you can still attack him in mid-air and the other person can block. Also I got few "test your might"s this way and some other fast reaction based actions were needed during the fights. Special moves inputs are usually close to those you know for the MK characters so this is fine.

Basically what I like is the camera flow, the moves of the characters (of both the attacking and defending).

Later that day I got to meet Ed Boon and I cannot express how HAPPY I was that I got this chance.

PS2

One of my PS2s stopped reading DVDs and I decided to have it fixed (because I need it quite soon for one event).The day before we asked in JRC where we could get my PS2 fixed. After telling the guy that we WON'T go to Sony to get it fixed (mod-chip and stuff) he told us to go to Famfulikova 1140. He told me the address at least 5 times but I couldn't remember the name. When I arrived home I started looking for any gamestore repairing consoles but I couldn't find any. Finally I decided to take a plan of Prague and check the namelist of the streets. I found the most wierd sounding street starting with F and checked its location. The location seemed to be the correct one. So I typed "PS2 games, famfulikova" in our Czech search engine and the first link was playworld.cz (or something like that).
A friend of mine who already went there with my other PS2 confirmed the location so I decided to go there.
I got on tram to Kobylysy and then searched for a bus station for about 10 minutes^_^. The bus eventually arrived. When I got off the bus I saw "Playworld 20m" sprayed on the wall of one building.

I entered the shop. Usually after entering a game shop I get wierd looks from the people working there (usually negative). I might be glad that I don't know what they think about me (nicely dressed asian girl in a gamestore?). Anyway this time I got quite surprised looks. I came to the counter and asked if I can ask him a question about my PS2. He replied simply "yes" so I told him about my loading problem (knowing that it would be laser issue).

After that another person tried my PS2 and said that the laser is just too old but that he would have to check it and see what's wrong with it. I told them that a month ago I asked someone else to change the laser. But after he changed the PS2 did not load the games (it did but usually got stuck on loading during the game).

Well, they said that there is still the originally Sony warranty whatever thingie and that noone has actually laid hands on my PS2. This time it was me with a doubtful look. But anyway I told myself they will soon find out what's inside.

Few moments later the man checking my PS2 came back with a quite funny expression on his face (different chipset in the PS2 then was written on the case and messiah chip inside). Anyway he told me that the laser was actually replaced with "a new" one but that the laser is maybe 4 years old and that I can't even get it nowadays.

I told them to get me a new one and install it. But I did not have enough money so I had to return back home and get back to the game store.

I started a conversation about dance games (because I would like to buy few SUpernovas) and well he told me quite a lot of things...like that dance pads wouldn't sell, not even the games and that they are quite rare etc. I really had an urge to tell him that it's actually my living (selling dance pads) but I did not tell him.

After it came to paying for fixing my PS2 he asked me what I'm waiting for (because I was wondering whether I want to buy Tekken DR or not). I told him about my indecision and he looked at me with the most confused look today. He asked where I see the game and I showed him the game (it was right in front of him). A moment later he exclaimed "a you mean the tekken game" and I realized that I did not actually stated the console for which I want the game so I guess it was my fault that he did not know what I want.

Anyway he sold me the game for a nice price. I went outside to wait for the bus to the city center and loaded the game in the meanwhile.
I started playing the game and played it for the rest of my free time. That means that I played in the bus and subway. People were looking at me or at my PSP screen.Sometimes trying to be discrete sometimes not. There was one granny who look at me if I would be some kind of abberation or specter or something. But anyway I had quite some fun except Asuka and Feng kicking my ass several times. These two martial art starts are new for me in this game so I had difficulties anticipating their moves. But throws and other close range techniques worked on Asuka and I just button mashed (not really but I had no strategy whatsoever) that Chinese guy.I have to say that I really like the game. It was a nice and unexpected change after Tekken 4 which was a catastrophe and Tekken 5 which I hated from the time I played the game for the first time at its release party.

After that I spent some time with Michal playing Magic The Gathering, chatting about the game and talking about other stuff (mostly related to the game itself.)
Back at home I continued playing Tekken DR. It was also time to charge the battery...another nice day passed. (I just spent quite a lot of money this day....but I guess that's normal - I did not spent that much as in Wien this weekend).