<TheRedEye> So anyway, I made out all right.
<TheRedEye> Got eighty bucks for Pac-Mania, which was awesome.
<Sardius> Wow, how'd you pull that off?
<TheRedEye> Well, it was sealed.
<Sardius> Oh yeah, that's right.
<TheRedEye> And I met a bunch of people, and...oh yeah!
<TheRedEye> So I was just talking to this one guy on the phone and making a deal with him, right?
<TheRedEye> And then like halfway through our conversation, I find out that it's Klarth.
<Sardius> Hah!  Neat.

Yup.

<TheRedEye> So everyone should be coming up here pretty soon...
<TheRedEye> Wanna go get something to eat before they show up?
<Sardius> Oh yeah, that might be a good idea.
<Sardius> Getting food into our stomachs before the heavy drinking starts, and all.
<Sardius> ...jeez, I just realized that I haven't even eaten today. Like, at all.

I didn't even notice or mind, either.  The show and its attractions had been so engrossing that I had managed to stave off basic physical needs like eating and peeing for the entire day.  Nice work, CGE.

Realizing at this moment that my body may be on the verge of collapse, though, I start to get hungry.  Real hungry.  So hungry that I could even go for the dreaded...

<Spinner_8> Hey, I saw a McDonald's on the first floor.

Right.  Even McDonald's - whose products may or may not qualify as food - is starting to sound appealing.  Going all day without eating will do that to you, I guess.  Yikes.

Red just wants to recover from his day of fun (or rather, a day of nonstop assault from several hundred different fat guys in shorts) though, so after telling us that he'd like a chicken sandwich or something, me and Spinner head down to the hotel's built-in McDonald's.  To get food.  For eating.

After passing through the casino floor (I could almost feel the temptation emanating from Spinner) and ignoring the terrible resident blues band, we reach the McDonald's.  I order the 20-piece McNugget meal, because I want to shovel as much food-like product into my stomach as I can, and fast.  I need lots of...something to soothe the incoming alcohol, dammit.  So what if eating twenty nuggets in five minutes should by all means be enough to kill a man?  It's food.  Or something that just barely qualifies as such.

We get the food without incident.

We head back up the elevators without incident.

We all eat and talk without incident.

Minutes later, there is much incident.

...

Hmm.

Okay.  I'll level with you here.  I don't remember much of anything that happened after I finished my McNugget meal, for reasons that should become apparent, if you're not jumping to conclusions already.  Ahem.  All I'll say for now is that yes, your assumptions about my memory loss are probably very correct.  Now, as much as I begged Spinner to write this part for me and take at least some minor portion of the workload off my back, he of course refused.  The bastard.

So what does this mean?  It means that whatever you're going to be reading from this point on may or may not be entirely accurate, and details and whole conversations could very well be entirely made up.  I urge any of the party's participants to contact me immediately after reading the following section, to verify the authenticity of my recollections, and to (please!) fill me in on any details that I may have missed.  I want to make a record of this whole thing, and I want to make it as accurate as possible.  However, due to certain...influences, I know that this is not going to be at all possible on my own.  So please, help a drunk out.  Tell him how much of an ass he was, for the sake of the story.  Do it for the future!

So anyway.  What follows is what I remember of that night.  If you were there, you know that I'm not at all qualified to write about it.  But dammit, someone needs to get the word out about how totally awesome it was.

So here we go.  A drunken reflection on TheRedEye/FeFeA Bash, 2002.  It won't hurt much, I promise.

---

9:00 PM

Good God there's a lot of people here.

Man.

There's tons of people here I recognize from the show, all of whom seem to know Red somehow.  Me and Spinner mostly stand back and let them talk amongst themselves, shaking hands and answering questions as necessary.  Soon, Red's friends start to show up, and we all start to...I dunno, do stuff.  And things, and such.

The alcohol is not here yet, though.  Grrr.  Red promises that his friend Hank is on the way with an assload of hard liquor, though, so I begin to anxiously await the man's arrival.  I begin to picture this Hank as a figure of legend, destined to bring life to the room's desperately sober lot of impoverished, alcohol-deprived twentysomethings.

Holy lord, I need a drink.

But these people are entertaining enough to divert my attention away from the fact that I'm not drunk yet, I guess.  There's some really enthusiastic collector guy there with a backpack full of bizarre-looking yellow cartridges, which I am fascinated by for some reason.  And there's this other guy there who seems to be important - R.W. Bivins from OlderGames.com - and some other guy...hey, why are you here again?

<Gear_guy> Oh, I'm from Gear Magazine...I'm doing a story on the Expo here.
<Gear_guy> Mind if I get a few pictures and ask you guys some questions?

Wow, Gear Magazine huh?  Never heard of it.  But still, I'd be honored to help you out, or whatever.

On with the games!  Good games!  We don't need to try to eke entertainment out of Sachen games anymore - thank God - because after trying out a different Famicom converter, rahga's Kunio games started working!  Wooooohoooooo!

We start out with some Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu.  Oh boy, was it good.  Nothing beats four-player Kunio.  Nothing.  The combatants included Red, Spinner, Billy, Nick, Mike from Good Deal Games, R.W. from OlderGames, and myself.  And even though I lost every time, it was still one of the funnest things ever.

<Sardius> Again?! Why...how! How do you keep winning?
<TheRedEye> It's all in the blood type, man.

Red won every match.  Every single one of them.  He beat the three of us saps easily - no matter who else was playing - every time.  I think I may have won one match by a fluke, but every other bout out of the ten or so that we had, Red was just totally dominating us.  Billy and Spinner never really had a chance against TheRedEye's might - he'd be slamming them into the ground repeatedly with no retaliation and gobbling up their ricecake corpses before anyone else could get to them.

But nearly every match, it would get down to just me and Red, and we'd spent several minutes grappling back and forth until finally...he'd win.  He'd always win.  Always.

<TheRedEye> I've never played this game much, either. You guys must just suck or something.

After getting repeatedly destroyed by Red, the group calls for a different game to be brutalized at.  Nintendo World Cup it is!  I decide to sit this one out and let the previously-mentioned banana-colored cartridge collecting guy take my controller and team up with Billy for a match against Red and Nick.  So the game begins.

<TheRedEye> You know, me and Nick once played through the entire game as the worst team...
<thenickshow> I think it was Cameroon, or something.
<TheRedEye> Yeah, Cameroon.
<TheRedEye> And we beat the whole game like that, as fucking Cameroon. It was great.

So of course, Red and Nick have an advantage over the rest of the players.  But I guess what made the match the blowout it turned out to be was the fact that the collector guy on Billy's team had no idea of what he was doing.  Ever.  For the entire game.  Honestly, most of the time, he wasn't even on-screen.  The rare instances where he made an appearance seemed to mysteriously be followed by some sort of inter-team tragedy, such as him kicking the ball right into the back of the head of a teammate, knocking him out.  Followed by several goals at the hands of TheRedEye.  Of course.

Billy could only hang his head and disgustingly sigh occasionally at the slapstick antics of his team, all while the points started to mount against him thanks to the brutal tactics of Red and his competent teammate.  When it was all over, the score was something freakish like 25-1, or somewhere thereabouts.  Another solid win for TheRedEye.  Naturally.  I would've expected nothing less, after all.  My swift, unrelenting beatdowns at Kakutou Densetsu taught me that he is a man to be feared.

Halfway through the game, the alcohol arrives.  Hooray!  So therefore, this paragraph marks the point where you can stop believing anything I say.  Read on at your own risk.

---

10:00 PM

The mysterious and rumored Hank finally arrives, lugging many, many plastic bags full of delicious alcohol into the room and into our heretofore meaningless and empty lives.  Nick immediately assumes the role of bartender, and starts to arrange the many varied drinks on a nearby countertop.

Okay, I guess now's a good time to introduce a few people I'm going to be rambling about here in a second.  I don't personally know any of them all that well, so this is going to come off as sounding incredibly stupid, but hey, I was drunk so okay.

The major players:

Frank (far right, in glasses, drunk as hell) - TheRedEye.  The man.  Legendary Nintendo...guy.  Or something.  But hey, he's the fucking redeye.  Of course he's better than you.

Hank (far left, doing nothing distinguishing) - Red's friend.  Bringer of alcohol and joy to the world's drunken children.

Billy (next to Hank, with cigarette) - The eternal Player 2 in all of Red's multiplayer games.  His exclamations cause mirth and sometimes fear.

Nick (on couch, holding bottle) - Another member of Red's posse.  Expert at mixing drinks and politely laughing at the stupid drunken shit I say.  As a result, he quickly becomes my best friend in the world.  Of note: he looks freakishly red in these pictures because he had just arrived from San Diego, with a nasty sunburn to show for it.  Also, he runs a website, which provides more Frank/Nick/Billy pictures than...well, any other website out there.  An honorable and considerate service, truly.  The reason why he gets the longest profile here is because he's sent me some truly great emails and actual input on this story you're reading right now, and this is my way of expressing my appreciation.  Thanks, man.  Plus, he fucking dreamed about me shortly after we met.  And in the dream, I was a waiter at Olive Garden.  That's just too awesomely creepy to not be anything but totally impressed by.

Chantel (on floor, grinning at Red's varied acts of stupidity) - Red's roommate.  She and Red "kind of feed off of each other's drunkenness, if that's possible," according to Red himself.  And since she's not Nick, this is all the description she's going to get.  Sorry, Chantel.

---

Some other guys, or something, I guess:

R.W. Bivins (next to Red in above picture) - Part of OlderGames.com.  Shows up in some of my pictures.  Dickhead.

Video Game Bible Guy (on couch, next to Nick, not going to bother finding a better picture) - Authored the Video Game Bible.  Invited himself to the party.

Gear Magazine Guy (not pictured) - Writing a story for Gear Magazine.  Or is he after something more sinister...?

Sardius (you know what I look like already, dammit) - Runs a stupid website about nothing at all in particular.  Is supposedly a complete asshole to talk to.  Will very likely get exposed for the total fraud he is sometime soon.

Spinner 8 (you're not going to find a picture of him here...not for free, anyway) - Creator of The Whirlpool, the definitive video game fan translation news site.  Great guy really, though he'd never let you believe it.

Mystery Girl (in this section's first picture - checking out FOOLS WAR) - No one I've asked knows where she came from, who she came with, or why she was there.  And I'm dying to know at least something about her, because she was really cute.  Sadly, the only words I remember her speaking were "Ooh, Duck Hunt!"  As good a statement as any to try to fit yourself in with our assembled insanity, I guess.  Sigh.

Okay, on with it.

Hank shows up with the drinks, and Nick sets up the bar as I eagerly watch.  In a short amount of time, the bar is open, and I'm the first in line.

<thenickshow> Okay, so. What'll it be?
<Sardius> Um, I dunno. I can't decide.
<Sardius> Make me whatever you think is good, I guess.
<thenickshow> ...vodka and cran it is!

Nick fills up a large plastic red cup with vodka and cranberry juice and hands it to me.  I take a sip and...oh MAN that is the most delicious thing I've ever tasted!

<thenickshow> Yeah, if there's one thing I know, it's vodka and cran.

I thank Nick for the well-mixed concoction and sit down, watching the end of the Nintendo World Cup game and sipping at my vodka.

Mmm, good stuff.  Reeeeal good stuff.  Yep.  Startin' to feel pretty good here.

So...like, yeah, there I am, sitting cross-legged on the floor and staring contentedly at the TV screen as Red scores goal after goal on the other team.  The Gear Magazine guy is sitting right next to me, taking pictures the whole time.  Every thirty seconds or so, the room would light up with a flash.  Dude must've taken a hundred pictures or so, I swear.

When I see no flash for a few minutes, I start to wonder if something's wrong.  I turn to my right and see the camera pointed directly at me.  Eep!  I'm kind of caught off guard, but I quickly pry the vodka away from my lips and look over my glasses at the lens, in the likely vain hopes of making the resulting photo into something that isn't too painful to look at.

I stare into the Gear guy's camera for almost a full minute.

The flash doesn't go off, but the camera stays directly pointed at me.  I don't quite know what to do.  Here's this guy just staring at me - straight in the face - through a camera, and he's sitting, literally, only about two feet away from me.  And he's not doing anything.  He stays motionless as he silently watches my lame, rushed pose.  As the seconds pass, I start to feel more and more self-conscious and creeped out.  Finally, in near-panic, I reach for the sweet, calming embrace of my vodka and bring it to my lips, while continuing to stare back at the Gear guy's camera.

Of course, that's when the flash goes off.

The Gear Magazine guy lets out a semi-disgusted sigh, turns away from me, and resumes taking pictures of the assembled game-playing group.  We didn't say a word to one another throughout the whole thing, and we didn't speak afterward, either.  To this day, I don't know whether I fucked up his picture or if he was actually waiting for a picture of me sipping the vodka.  I'm leaning toward the fucked-up option, myself.  It was really weird how he just silently stared at me like that for so long, though.  I wonder.

Oh hey, has this article materialized yet?  Anyone know?  I'd like to see if my vodka-obscured face made it in.

Anyway, back to drinking.

By the time the game is over, everyone is pretty tired of TheRedEye making them look bad, so the Nintendo World Cup participants start lining up in front of Nick in search of something to make them forget about how much they suck at video games.

However.

The only person to stay seated on the floor with me is Spinner.  While everyone else has put games aside in favor of drinking, he has a plan.  A plot, if you will.  I didn't realize it at first, but he was planning something evil.  Something very evil.  And I was going to be the object on which his evil was to be wreaked.

<Spinner_8> Hey Sardius.
<Sardius> Mm?
<Spinner_8> REMATCH
* Spinner_8 holds up the Nekketsu Hockey Bu cartridge. Menacingly.
<Sardius> Uhhhh...okay. Fine, fine.
<Sardius> Just...just lemme get a refill here and I'll be all ready to kick your ass.

Nick is nowhere to be seen, though, and the bar is empty.  But I figure that mixing vodka and cranberry juice can't be all that hard, right?

Right?

Well, you'd think that.  But you'd be wrong.  As I found out with my first sip after I sat down to start the Hockey Bu game, I didn't put in nearly enough cranberry juice.  That shit was strong.  But still, it was drinkable, and I was too lazy to get up to fix my mistake.  So no problem.

Actually, this is a problem.

See, the game starts off normally.  Spinner of course picks the strongest boss team - and cheats constantly - but I hold my own pretty well.

<Sardius> Sure is nice being able to, you know, actually play this game now.
<Sardius> Without worrying about any DreamTRs FUCKING TURNING IT OFF.

But in my semi-drunken wisdom, I had decided at the outset of the game to impose a handicap upon myself.  I had promised myself that after every goal Spinner scored on me - at the subsequent "YEAH!" screen - I would take a swig of vodka, as a penalty of sorts.

...

So I guess it wouldn't have been such a staggering, embarrassing loss if I had added a little more cranberry juice to my drink.  Several consecutive unblockable power shots on Spinner's part helped to severely weaken my sobriety early on, and by the third period, I was barely able to hold the controller.  My cup was nearly empty by then, due to repeated large gulps being taken out of it thanks to Spinner's barrage of goals brought on by cheapness and luck.  By the end, he didn't even have to rely on dirty tricks to score goals on me.  My goalie had all the reaction time of...well, a drunken Sardius by then.

Yeah, Spinner, you won.  Gloat about it all you damn well want.  But you know deep down that your win only came as a result of my self-imposed drinking rule.  I'm sure that if you had a drink in hand while you were playing, we'd have been on much more even ground.  But as it was, yes, you won.  It doesn't count, though.  Because I say so.

I'm sure that if we were both sober, the score would've been more like

Or perhaps around the area of

Or maybe I'd beat your ass so bad that the game would start freaking out.
 

So yeah, we need a re-rematch one of these days, Spinner.  One of these days when neither (or both) of us are drunk.  I demand it.

Since my rightful win was not to be, I got up after our game and started stumbling around, looking for something else to do.

But first, another refill is in order.

...

Except a terrible thing happens when I try to mix myself another vodka and cran - I run out of cranberry juice.  Uh oh.  Well, maybe that little splotch of red at the bottom of the cup will be enough to dilute all this vodka somewhat.  Okay, so where's the ice?  Hmm.  Not in the fridge...and the ice cup is empty...ah hell, who needs ice anyway?  I'll just fill this cup to the brim with what is essentially pure vodka and everything'll be all right.

Eheh.

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