A trip to the Infinity Grand Prix
Last year, I was able to attend the Little Wing Grand Prix held in Osaka. This year, I was able to go to Infinity Grand Prix also held in Osaka. If you'd like to read about the time attack held for PSP2, you can read about it in this thread. The Infinity Grand Prix was held at the Asian Trade Center, just across the street from where the Little Wing Grand Prix was held. However, despite being just across the street, the hall in which the event was held in this year was much bigger than last year's, acccording to the blog. So instead of going the day before and staying in a hotel, I decided to go the day of the event. This meant waking up early and getting on the first express train of the day. I hate waking up early but at least I was able to relax a bit on the train. When the train got in to the station, I rendezvoused with a friend and we headed out to the Asian Trade Center by subway. It was snowing, which is uncommon for Osaka, and it was falling at it's worst when it was time to move go from the subway station to the ATC. That was no fun but it turned out ok. Once we got to the hall, we had to get numbered tickets. Outside the hall was the KFC Gurhal branch. If you bought more than 500 yen worth of food, they would give you a Colonel Statue password card.
Last year, since the venue was rather small, they only handed out tickets. This year, they gave out numbered wrist bands. We got to the hall around an hour before they started letting people in and we still ended up being 214. 214 ended up being not a bad number though.
There are only about 300 ~ 400 people lined up here, but eventually, upwards of 800 people showed up during the course of the day. As everyone entered, we got little bags with maple syrup flavored CalorieMates and password cards for the Skia Blade 1 and the Yellowman Suit. Once they started letting people in, everyone bee-lined to the sales booth. While in line to buy stuff, they gave out order sheets and you marked what and how many you wanted though they only let you buy one or copies of a single item depending on the item. In not 25 minutes, the Emelia headphones had sold out.
Everything else managed to stay in stock until the end of the day though. I picked up a rappy, a copy of the P-SPEC booklet, and a copy of the PSP2 design collection book.
Once we were done at the sales booth, the opening part of the stage show was about to begin so we found a seat and sat down.
The first thing up was an introduction of the competing groups. Before letting all the non-competing spectators in, the competing teams were narrowed down to 20 from however many had entered. Amongst the teams at Osaka was last year's champion, Team Namanushi, and a pregnant husband and wife team and their 2 ~ 3 year old daughter. Then Dragon Sakai, Captain T, and Lightning Tsuganuma as well as Ogura Yui, the girl who played Hal in the Fun! Fan! videos for PSP2, came on stage to introduce themselves and announce the day's schedule. There would be an hour for lunch, then the first round of the time attack, then a talk show, a mini-time attack with the three game creators and Yui, then a quiz, and finally the finals.
After the introduction finished, we had some lunch, and stopped by the KFC to get the password card (even though the password was already online).
We go back in to the hall and sat down before the first round starts. The bottom-placing teams go first in groups of five. The first set of teams isn't very interesting except that the pregnant husband and wife team dies at the boss. The higher ranking teams start putting out exciting times though. 2:10, 2:11, 2:20, the final teams were exciting to watch. After the top ten teams have been chosen and a small break is had, the talk show begins. This is where the "To Aru" is announced. Sakai is also asked if there will be a PSP3 in the future here. He answers "If you buy a lot of PSP2i, there might be."
The mini-time attack consists of audience members teaming up with Dragon Sakai and Captain T and running the second stage of the Infinity Grand Prix mission with Olga Flow. You might have seen a video of this in a different topic. Doing this mini competition gave the remaining teams in the main competition a chance to see what was coming next and plan accordingly. Next up was an audience participation quiz. Numbers were drawn from a box and those people could answer questions about PSP2 and PSP2i. Those who answered correctly got goodie bags from Sega.
There was a long break after the quiz ended and people started lining up to get signatures from the three creators. The Sega staff ended this because there wasn't enough time for everyone to get signatures before the finals started. The first round of the finals started with the remaining ten teams going through the Olga Flow stage. The fastest five teams were then selected for the second round. The teams here move surprisingly fast and the contest ended with last year's champions coming in first place.
After the finals ended, the Infinity Grand Prix officially came to a close but Sakai, Terada, and Tsugunuma had a miniature signing, during which they gave out business cards. I had them sign the back of my P-SPEC though my friend was content with going to the bathroom.
Now for the bit, I know more people are interested in, the P-SPEC booklet. The booklet itself consists of two parts: unreleased (?) artwork and messages from the creators.
Among the artwork is this high-res model of Ethan. This was made after PSU was released while Sega was investigating the costs of what it might take to put PSU on a next-gen console. It turned out to be too expensive, according to the blurb next to the picture.
There is also this art from the PS1 Generations remake. Some of PSU players may recognize some of the outfits in this pictures. The artwork included in P-SPEC covers not only PSU and PSO but Generations 1 and 2. Likewise, the comments contains not only messages from PSO / PSU teams but from some of the original Phantasy Star creators themselves.
The messages are not only messages but lots of art too. The Nagisa pillow, shown briefly in another topic, also falls in to this category. Too badThere's some interesting art that Ami might find to her liking but anyone who enjoys bald mustached Guardians, late 80's rappers, belly buttons, and brrrrrraaaaaaaaaaobots might enjoy this too.
Spoiler!
Finally, there is a two page spread by one of the artist that is really cool. It features a PSP2i lobby and lots of familiar things.
Spoiler!
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Originally Posted by RenzokukenZ
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