By Vinh Trieu - Administrator

Oni-Con 2006 Image Gallery

If you've been to some anime conventions, you'll surely find what you'd expect, cosplay, anime goods, artists, vendors and even sometimes console gaming. What you may not find is an area dedicated to console and video arcade gaming, hosting casual and tournament style gaming, which is what Oni-Con has provided throughout it’s young three year history.

We’ve been partial sponsors to the arcade area the past three years and from what we’ve witnessed, the foot traffic and participants for this area has increased dramatically, with not only better games offered, but also prizes as well.

If missed the show, here is what the gaming room offered this year:

NEO-GEO 50 Cab – Samurai Shodown V Zero Special/Fatal Fury Special by SNK Playmore
Dynamo 33’ – Killer Instinct 2 by Rare/Nintendo
Dynamo 27’ – Psycho Soldier by Capcom
Konami – Keyboard Mania: Second Mix
Hanaho 33’ – NEO-GEO Battle Coliseum by SNK Playmore
Dynamo 27’ – Pocket Fighters by Capcom
NEO-GEO 6 Slot – Metal Slug X, Breakers Revenge, King of Fighters 2002, Aero Fighters
Hanaho 27’ – Buriki One
Sega Dedicated – Guilty Gear XX

Console Gaming:

Nintendo Game Cube: Super Smash Bros., Naruto

PS2: King of Fighters XI
PS2: Street Fighter AE
PS2: Tekken 5
PS2: Guilty Gear Slash

Xbox: Halo 2

Total Prizes Given Away:

- 3 Hori Real Arcade Pro 2 Sticks
- Playstation 2 Slimline System
- Boxed NEO-GEO AES System w/KOF ‘94
- MAS SF Arcade Stick
- MAS SF Xbox/PS2 Arcade Stick
- Hundreds of full sized posters
- Arcade Flyers
- MVS Kit Artpacks
- Large Marquees (Zupapa, Sengoku 3, S-C.com)
- Patlabor 2 (Full Movie DVD Boxed Set)

Tournaments Held:

Super Smash Bros. Singles (64 Entrants – Capped)
Winners:
· 1st Place: Mr./Death 3000 (Prize – Brand New PS2 Slim System)
· 2nd Place: Wizma

King of Fighters XI (28 Entrants)

Winners:
· 1st Place: Joshua Martin (Prize – Brand New Hori RAP2 Stick)
· 2nd Place: Mr./Death 3000

Street Fighter Anniversary Edition (28 Entrants)
Winners:
· 1st Place: Gerald “rtp” Jones (Prize – Brand New MAS SF Arcade Stick)
· 2nd Place: Suavion

Super Smash Bros. 2 on 2 (64 Entrants – Capped)
Winners:
· 1st Place: Mr./Death 3000 and Raymond (Prizes Brand New Hori RAP2 Stick, one for each team member)
· 2nd Place: Mighty Guy and Yukiazy

Fatal Fury Special Challenge (Entrants – 8 boo!!)
Winners:
· 1st Place: Gerald “rtp” Jones (NEO-GEO AES Home System w/King of Fighters ’94)

Tekken 5 (30 Entrants)
· We don’t have the results of who won, so if anyone knows, please send us the winners’ names. (Prize – MAS SF Style Arcade Stick)

2nd place finishers received prizes as well, however, because they were provided by VGMWorld, we didn’t get a list of what was passed out. Anyone who entered in a tournament were entitled to free posters, from the limited Vice/Mature print to authenthic SNK/SNK Playmore posters (KOF 2000, KOF 2003, Metal Slug 5, Matrimelee, Rage of the Dragons (White/Black), Samurai Shodown V, so everyone would at least walk away with a consolation prize.

Ironically, the biggest prize given out (The NEO-GEO) home system had the fewest participants. Originally, to win the system, each contestant had to pass the whole game versus the CPU on Level 8 Difficulty without continuing or losing a round. We realized this task was almost impossible, especially for a game that is quite old and had a niche following.

So in order to give out the prize, we changed the rules to just completing the whole game, difficulty setting to Level 4 (Default) and allowing each player to lose as many rounds, but cannot continue. Let’s just say that “Big Bear” single handily annilhilated all the contestants. If you’ve played Fatal Fury Special, you can choose your opponent in the beginning. At default, Big Bear is the third opponent. The first 4 contestants lost on or before Big Bear. So the fifth entrant got ‘smart’ and chose Big Bear as his first opponent…only to get destroyed by him as well. Lol, don’t mess with the Bear. Because no one won the afternoon event, we had all the contestants come back at night to go head to head with one another and the final man standing gets the system. 5 contestants battled it out to the end and finally we could hand over this classic beast of a system to the winner. Congratulations to Gerald “rtp” Jones for taking this system away from us.

Fatal Fury Special will be available for Live Subscription service on the Xbox 360 in November 2006. Practice up because next year, we’ll be holding this tournament once again and believe it or not, it’ll be for even a bigger prize. This time though, you’ll have to earn it to win it!!

Final Thoughts

The original space provided for the gaming area was about 5000 sq. ft. Last minute changes to other events and the anticipation that a smaller space would be adequate cut down the size by about 60%. At times, what was given was adequate, but the whole staff agreed that the extra space would’ve allowed for a more relaxed gaming experience and more BYOC gamers.

The whole idea of the arcade room and events held is for everyone to have a good time, but at the same time, allow gamers to have a chance at winning some great prizes. The overall turnout of casual gamers on the arcade machines, home consoles and tournament contestants was much higher than we anticipated, hence this meant we were highly understaffed and a little tight for space.

In the end though, we see the event as a highly successful one, as the traffic was steady throughout the whole show.

Seriously though, there’s always room for improvement and will implement them in the next Oni-Con. More space, more TV’s for the BYOC gamers, more Capcom games/tournaments, DDR, Naruto, DOA, Guilty Gear, more prizes (especially for the 3rd place finisher) yeah, we heard it all. All improvements is dependent on a few factors, staffing and funding to execute all these needed changes.