Merk wrote:Are you recognized internationally at all? Are there any players worldwide that impress you?
I believe to some small degree that I am, but I’m not sure to what capacity or if it’s even by my handle in most cases. It’s not uncommon for me to receive a decent amount of friend requests from Mexican and Brazilian Pump players (two of the countries where Pump is more of a sport than just a game) on Facebook, and the very few forays I’ve done to International forums have had at least one comment about a video that was put on Youtube that I was in. Now if anyone would recognize me by anything else but my name internationally? I doubt it. I’m sure working on Pro has done a lot to facilitate that as well.
There most impressive people I’ve ever met have been Amy from Taiwan (a female player who is better than at least 99% of all males that play), and Legal and Black from Brazil. That pair have put on the absolutely best freestyles I have witnessed and I doubt I’ll ever see better.
Merk wrote:Have you ever participated in WPF?
For those unaware – WPF stands for the World Pump Festival, a tournament where the best players in the world as determined by each country’s Nationals are all sent to a centralized location to compete to see who is the best in the world. I did compete in at WPF in 2005 and finished 11th out of the 20-something participants. The way they did the tournament was a bit odd as it was single elimination and then standings for the eliminated were calculated based upon their overall score on the song where they were eliminated. The first song was Dignity CZ(the boss song at the time and still a somewhat difficult chart now) and I went against the Korean player who ended up winning the whole tournament. Bad beat.
I attended WPF 2007 but did not compete in the main tournament as I did not place high enough at Nationals. While there they did hold an unofficial gimmick tournament which was pretty fun, though. One male, female, and freestyler from each country was chosen and then teamed up at random to compete against each other at randomly chosen songs in a tournament format. Since there were two machines for this tournament the freestyle got one all to themselves and the male/female played the CZ chart for the song on the other machine; the best overall team moved on. The team I was in placed third, which we got some pretty cool swag from.
Merk wrote:Are there any non-gimmicky charts that you can't stage break clear?
This pretty heavily is based upon someone’s perception of “gimmicky”, but for my purposes the few that there are that I can’t stage break clear are Dignity Nightmare, Final Audition Episode 2-2 Nightmare, and Chimera Nightmare.
Merk wrote:Where do you see the community heading? I never hear of dancing game tournaments going on anymore much less PIU ones, is the game much more popular elsewhere in the country?
As far as I’m concerned the Pump It Up community is dying at a good pace and has been for quite some time. There are several outspoken individuals whom are really into the game but overall there just isn’t the following that there used to be. I understand this could be said for all dance games, but I have to wonder if it didn’t receive the largest hit of the three major games. The community is far too sectionalized by region and doesn’t have the desire to travel to meet those in different areas, part of the reason as to the decline of tournaments large or small (this reason in addition to the removal of National tournaments in the US from 2008 until surprisingly this year). This is without touching the online Pump community which has unfortunately degenerated to being on par as any other dance game community. When the major online communications centre for a particular interest or game is led by an individual or individuals whom are less about community integration, are generally close-minded, and don’t have the true desire to further anything outside of their own benefit there just isn’t going to be a base of people who want to stay and endure through that long term. It drives people away from the community and in some cases the game, which unfortunately is where I’ve seen the community heading for the past couple years and I see it continuing that way in the future.
There may be parts of the United States where Pump is a bit more popular but off the top of my head I can’t think of anywhere outside of some parts of Florida and Chicago. Outside of that are smaller pockets of casual players.
Merk wrote:You mentioned that people give you attitude when you're good at something which I can definitely see happening, has any random player that you've never met tried to start shit with you either in person or on some messageboard?
I’m sure there have been more, but only one sticks out in my mind at the moment (and even then it was awhile ago). I like to leave vowels out of peoples’ name so they aren’t incriminated, but we’ll just say this person was C-s-yD-dd-r. It was a pretty amusing situation on a forum where this individual challenged that Pump was easy to pick up and that someone with ITG experience and two weeks could easily beat me. I put up the challenge that I would give that individual more time than two weeks to pick up the game (since they were self-admitted to be pretty sharp at ITG) and put $50 up on a money match with me anytime, anywhere.
That challenge has still gone unanswered.
Merk wrote:How is hurtpiggypig doing these days?
Pretty good the last I’d talked to her. She recently graduated with a degree in Glass Creation and Workings (not sure of the actual title, I’m going on a limb here) and is spending parts of the Summer travelling and working on finding a city with a good glassmaking community for employment.