Oooh! Shiney! Any chance you have their contact information Tofu? Or know the person who does have it?
Mark and I have both worked with them, and I'm half-planning on negotiating with them for Kumoricon '09. I've additionally established a business relationship with Viso and PlayNTrade which I will be happy to contribute towards acquiring prizes and equipment.
I suppose you probably don't know who I am, so I'll introduce myself.
I'm Tofu, AKA Charlie. I have training and experience making 3D layouts, and I'm planning on doing so for the Game Room in 2009 (I made a detailed 3D layout for the 2008 game room, which we used to a fair extent. Some dimensional inconsistencies and not having access to a full inventory, as well as having a TON of Bawls in one corner meant we had to improvise, but overall, it was a helpful tool). I also run tournaments. I helped with the DDR in 2006, I effectively ran the DDR in 2007, and I officially ran the DDR, Rock Band "Battle of the Bands", and Guitar Hero tournament in 2008. I'm managing Video Gaming for MEW Con in Vancouver, Washington this coming New Year's eve and day. I enjoy bicycles, rhythm games, oldschool arcade games like Joust and Bubble Bobble, Magic:TG, and all forms of tabletop gaming.
Now, a few individual issues, now that I have some time at my leisure:
Mark should have a full inventory of all Consoles, Controllers, Cables, and Games on his computer. If he's not being helpful, talk to Rene, since she's the one who put together the inventory lists, and would know where they are saved on the computer. The two Cobalt Flux DDR platforms may not be included in the list, but there are two of those; no more, no less.
I have some ideas I want to try out for a few tournaments which I will need to talk to you and Jaki about. These ideas would contribute to expanding gaming within the convention, and would help a LOT with crowd control. I'll run those by you through PM.
My inspiration to do layouts is the sensitivity of sound interference between rhythm games. The rhythm game setups at Kumoricon lite and Sakuracon were both terrible, and I wanted to make sure Kumoricon was much better. It was. The only time the two Rock Bands could hear each other was in the menus. Guitar Hero never bothered any of the other rhythm games and I never heard a complaint from there, so I assumed that worked well, and the two DDR's were well-balanced and perfectly audible on both sides.
So yeah, I'm being a bit of a control freak about it; I want to do the layouts. But I'm not an idiot; the more people we have working on the layouts, the better they'll get. Until Lucas came along and started discussing my layouts with me, there were plenty of flaws. I'm hopeful that you'll be happy to let me spend the hours making detailed 3D layouts, and bring the layouts to you so you can construct and critique. I'll be at every meeting within Portland unless something major comes up, like a surprise trip to Guam or something, and I'm also a common face at local arcades. If you have a decent computer, download Google SketchUp; this is the program I make my layouts in. I can compress the layouts and send them to you if we can't meet physically to collaborate on them for some reason.