Only 6 months after the first one, Miami decides to have yet another epic NARP! There were a couple of new things this time around, including the special guest Carlos Ferro! After being there from 12pm to almost 1am, it was a pretty tiring day between the setting up and the actual event itself. But I must say that having it more organized this time made it more enjoyable.



The layout was different this time and made it easier for people to walk by. This is a view from the "chilling out" area that Game Wars was set up at the last NARP.



The table near the "chilling out" area had free game play of Street Fighter IV and Left 4 Dead. I was all over that Left 4 Dead until I felt that playing Versus mode was way too long.


The awesome set up by GameWars! They were running the Halo 3 and Gears of War 2 tournament. Once again, the tournament ran really late and we had to just eventually kick them off because el beijo janitor was "threatening" us about calling the police.



Infinite Bits practically took over this room with their awesome kiosks. The Smash and Tatsunoko vs Capcom tournament were in this room, along with Glitch Gear.







Epic Sugarworks was there once again with their delicious chocolate pops! This time, they also made some delicious red velvet cake. That shit was like sex in my mouth. They were really helpful with selling pizza and drinks to everyone.



SFX 360 were on a roll with all the free goodies they were giving away. I know I saw T-shirts, Halo and Guitar Hero goodies, and free systems being given away. I know there was a lot more because people were constantly around them, looking like this:



Cute little monkeys.



They also got help from Carlos to give away the XB360.



The Street Fighter IV tournament was in a corner of the room near the Game Wars area. This crowd didn't really seem to ever move so there was always a great amount of people watching. This tournament also ran pretty late when the janitor was whining about us.

And of course I have to share some pictures I took with my friends.



The lovely lady who gave me the wonderful job over at Tomopop, Colette! She is my girlfriend. :]



Mr. Destructoid himself. I also heart him lots!



Awesome times with awesome people. Notice the Prinny and Mr. Saturn hat. BOING!



And Destructoid user TDiddy. He mentioned I should post this picture of us. Are you trying to show me off, you pervert? :P Come back to Miami soon!

Last but not least, because this guy was extremely amusing, was the guy who sang TIMMEH!! I later found out he and his friend were also Destructoid users. They never found out who they were so come out and let us know who you 2 are! Sorry for the crappy quality -- it's actually a screencap from a video I took of him. I don't have time to upload it or whatever.



Thanks to everyone for attending the NARP!

We all know what today is and some may worry that we'll fall for any news that may seem legit. As for me, I don't know if I should call these scans legit or not. Last year, they messed with Tales of fans when there was an announcement about them making Narikiri Dungeon 4, with a "scan" and all. It's hard to tell if these scans are fake or not because they seriously look real. Wouldn't you think it's too much work to put that much effort in trying to make a legit looking scan from the Weekly Shounen Jump magazine?

Tales of Vesperia for PS3

We remember seeing the error that they listed Tales of Vesperia under both PS3 and Xbox360. It honestly wouldn't be a surprised if we heard they were bringing ToV over to the PS3. According to this scan, it's happening. They seemed to also add a new character to the storyline -- a shota dressed up as a pirate named Patty.




Tales of Graces for the Wii

I wrote about the Tales of game that they presented during the Nintendo conference last year. There was speculation about the name of the game, guessing between "Gracia" or "Graces". The scans presents the game as Tales of Graces! The name of the character is Asvel Lant (suchahothothotcharacter), an 18 year old boy who is the son of a and the successor of Frontier Lord. It says that it'll have a winter release.

More reason to believe these scans are real (maybe) is that they already have the domain name for this game with the words 'Under Construction' written.



Tales of VS

This might be new news to most of you. We were shown earlier that the Tales of VS was trademarked. That was the only bit of news we got about the title. Thanks to the scan, we are able to see what the game is really about. You can say that it'll be like FF:Dissidia. It says it'll be for the PSP and will come out in the summer. Mmmmmmm, a fighting game! This is something I've always wanted.

A reason to believe this is real because they also have the domain name for this game with the words 'Under Construction.'



Tales of Vesperia movie

It seems that the story will be focusing on Yuri and Flynn. The scan says that it's being animated by Production IG. I hope that shit comes out this summer so I cant see it. ... such wishful thinking.



So what do you guys think? Too much of news to be considered fake? And I should add that the Tales of Channel is down for the day. Coincidence? This better be real news or I'm going to kill someone.

Don't break my little "Tales of" heart (..oh, funny pun there) and be real, 'kay. ;__________;
Thank you AC for the news. <3

Most people are busy playing SFIV but I spent my money on SO4 instead. AH, don't yell at me and call me crazy -- I love SFIV and I have played it. But I have been eager for SO4 since I'm a fan of the SO series. I will make this one statement: This is NOTHING like SO3 -- THANK GOD! I really hated that game and couldn't finish it. Let me tell you how I feel towards this new, beautiful game.

I'm really not a graphic whore but let me say this: SO4 makes The Last Remnant look like the biggest POS ever. SO4 has such beautiful graphics and they do NOT lag at all, unlike The Last Remnant. I am very, I mean VERY, pleased with that. I was honestly worried that this game would have that same problem.

The dubbing is pretty GOOD, unlike that thing called SO3. The boys are definitely going to love Reimi because she is incredibly ADORABLE. I'm not going to waste my breath talking about Edge or I'll get into a major spazzgasm about him.

And for anyone who decides to pick up this game, let me clarify something that people don't seem to understand about Lymle. Lymle is the little, loli girl who has a bad habit of saying "kay?" after ALMOST EVERY SENTENCE. She also gives nicknames to the characters. I read somewhere that people believed this was some bullshit that the American game has but it isn't -- she says "yo" at the end of all her sentences in the Japanese version so their translation for that is "kay". In terms of the nickname, she DOES give them nicknames in the Japanese version so that isn't some stupid thing they just stuck in there, 'kay?

From what I've seen, the translations are staying pretty true to the Japanese. I am sad that we don't have the anime faces during the battles and the menu but the CG faces didn't end up bothering me too much.

In terms of the battle system, it really sticks to how all the good SO ones have previously been -- but with a faster pace, of course. At first, it feels pretty slow and it can be aggravating. But the more you level up, the more fun it can be. But I need to complain about this: even though the monsters are visible on the fields and dungeons, you'll find yourself bumping into them more than running away. It really annoyed me when I was doing one of the dungeons, holy SHIT. I guess you don't have to worry about leveling up.

I'm pretty addicted to the game, even though I haven't had too much time to play it. I'm sitting here at anime club wanting to go home to play my game, haha. But really, in my opinion, this game is really good. Only good games really get my attention in the beginning. I hope you RPG lovers will give this game a chance.

I'm late with this one also, aren't I? I've been busy with school and trying to read a shit ton of pages in my school books because I'm a slacker. Well, I hope I can come up with 10 things, hum.

1. I'm Cuban. Yes. Most people don't even think I'm hispanic at all. In fact, people think I'm lying about it because I don't look like some chongalicious chica. Living in Miami, people expect Cubans to look a certain way. Most people think I'm from Europe.

2. I've honestly been a nerd all my life. My brother, as I've mentioned before, shared his Nintendo with me and since then, gaming has been a big part of my life. I grew up playing games with my brother for as I long as I can remember. I'm the only first generation female cousin in the family so I'm glad I like games. All my cousins are gaming nerds and it's been a tradition for years that we play video games during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. I think family events would suck ass if I wasn't into gaming. XD

3. From gaming, I met anime. I guess they connect somehow but I've been crazy about anime since 3rd grade. I think it has helped me become a huge nerd. I'm not complaining. I never felt that I belonged with what you can call "the normal crowd". My room is cluttered with so much crap from years of collecting that it's hard to breathe in here. And I also cosplay. I don't know how to make anything, handsew cause I don't know how to use a sewing machine, and everything is a guess but it seem like the family history of sewing is working somehow. I tend to enjoy cosplaying pretty boys more than girls, btw.


Male

vs.

Female


4. Because of anime, it helped me want to do things that lead to my future. I've always loved drawing and crafts since I was really small but anime made me want to be part of the animation world. Though I changed my decision about animation, I want to involve myself with Japanese people and their culture because it's different, strange, and amazing all at the same time.

5. I've taken Japanese since middle school. Yeah, my middle school offered Japanese, along with my high school. And even though I've taken it for so long, I'm still not good at it. I'm great at reading and hearing it. But having an ongoing conversation or writing letters is what I suck at.

6. I've been to Japan 6 times. This summer will make it my 7th time. My first time was the only time I was an exchange student. The other times, my hard working ass pays to go over there.

7. I've been diagnosed with PCOS since elementary school. It's weird, because most girls get it when they're older. It's even more weird I don't care about telling people about it anymore. I used to never tell anyone but I guess that's what happens when you get older -- you just don't shit.

8. I've only dated 4 guys in my life and only one was from Miami (living wise, yes. But he was Japanese and not born in Miami). My second boyfriend was from Canada when I went there for a year to study animation and he was Chinese. My third boyfriend was long distance; he as my penpal for 1 1/2 years and from Japan and I met him the next summer. I hate that asshole, btw. My current boyfriend, which is a long distance relationship, is the first non-asian boyfriend (HA-HA thank god for that) and I met him in such a nerdy way -- yeah, you can laugh -- WiiChat Forum. He happened to be one of my friends that I added to my Wii and shit happened, and now we've been together for 2 years and almost 2 months. <3

9. I've recently joined Tomopop as an editor. I know, who KNEW? I just popped right in there. I'm happy to have met Niero and Colette because I wouldn't have been a part of all the crazyness that comes with DToid and I wouldn't have ever been writing about figures on Tomopop. I'm thankful for that.

10. I'm a really shy person. If there are too many new people around me, I'll migrate to someone who I know and stay with them the whole time. I'm bad at introducing myself sometimes to people and I have a hard time starting a conversation if I don't know you at all. For me, if people approach me and talk to me, then I try my best to feel comfortable.

10.5 (aka, pointless factor but just need to write) .... I'm insanely addicted to Left 4 Dead. Stupid thing to write about but I Iose sleep over this game. It's my first shooter game on my 360 I can't believe it's the only thing I play these days. WHY! My RPGs that I haven't played are seriously crying somewhere.

Long time no blog, everyone. I've been sucked into the the zombie world known as L4D. But I do hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

I think I'll be receiving a lot of WTFs for this but I'm amused that Bamco has put such a scene in the new Wii game, Fragile. I'm not exactly complaining about this turn of events, either.




You know, all the kid is trying to do is thank him for something. And what is the other guys response to him? "Friends kiss too, you know. I read this in a book" ... I wonder what book he's reading. The bastard took that kid's first kiss.

..

Oh. 8D

So now, how many of you were planning on purchasing this game?

First off, I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! :D The day after Christmas I'll be heading out of town until school starts again.

Last year's Christmas party was a Rock Star theme and this year was a Super Hero and Super Villain. Yeah, weird .. not your average Christmas kind of party but that's what makes them fun as hell. The 3 girls original plan was to try to do the PowerPuff Girls but that failed due to time and whatnot. My crazy costume was something I had done in high school for "Super Hero Day". Before work and the party, my ass had to drive around trying to rebuild that costume in what, 2 hours or something?

So who the hell is it? Dun dun DUN!



...

Yeah, well, screw you. I know it's lame as hell. XD Either way, here are a few more picture. I wish EVERYONE would have dressed up. There just wasn't enough tights going on.








I didn't find out that Rey's huge bulge was from his keys, wallet and whatnot until the end of the night.


... I can't even tell you what the hell is going on. Creepy Niero is creepy.

Yesterday I received Tales of Hearts in the mail! :D I was kind of pissed that I didn't get the pre-order bonus like I was supposed to but I guess that's my fault for reserving it late. I also got the case for the DS.


This was my DS with the Tale of Innocence and now..


This is the Tales of Hearts one. It kind of sucks because it blends with the color of my DS. :|



I'll eventually purchase the CG one to have for my collection. I started playing the game a bit and I love it. There's anime cut scenes :D! I didn't know it was going to them besides the opening. I really hope they can bring this game over. I think people would definitely enjoy it. When I play the game more, I'll write about it.

Take care everyone!