ＧＹＡＲＵ🦌 Retro Deer🔜Shikoku

Man, that brings back memories. Combo Breaker is one of my favorite tournaments. If you want to get a sense of what EVO was like just before it grew into the massive event it is today, I'd recommend checking out Combo Breaker. It gives you a glimpse of what EVO felt like on the eve of its explosive growth. That said, I've been traveling around the world to attend community-driven tournaments since the 1990s, so compared to what I saw back then, Combo Breaker is already astonishingly huge. Back in the '90s and early 2000s, we would actually show up at these events with arcade cabinets and copies of our games to lend out, and we'd even help unload and set everything up. Nobody ever imagined that the actual game developers might be there, and we would quietly watch the tournaments, almost as if we were trying to stay undercover. At Combo Breaker, people would keep playing until late at night—or rather, all through the night—even in the hotel lobby. I remember occasions when, in the middle of the night, people would suddenly break into a chorus of Japanese anime songs. The official apparel they sell is also pretty nice. A lot of it is stuff you could comfortably wear in everyday life without looking out of place. And there are plenty of fan artists selling their creations, which is always fascinating to see. Oh, and there's another thing. This almost never happens to me, even in California or Las Vegas, but for some reason, the Chicago community is different. I'll just be walking down the street, and someone will roll down their car window and start yelling at the top of their lungs. Or they'll actually pull their car over, stop, and come charging toward me screaming, "HEEEEEEEY!!!!! HARADAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" (I have to admit, there have been moments when I instinctively ducked my head because I thought I was about to get shot.) Another thing about the Chicago community is that when you ask for directions, they have this strange habit of explaining everything using people's names, which makes absolutely no sense to me. They'll say things like "Eisenhower" or "Kennedy," and at first I honestly thought they were giving me some kind of history lesson. They also constantly use Lake Michigan as a reference point when giving directions. Now, I used to be a yacht sailor, and I've actually sailed on Lake Michigan, so I know perfectly well which direction the lake is in. But I remember thinking, "How on earth is anyone who isn't from Chicago supposed to understand these directions?" And then there's deep-dish pizza. Everyone kept recommending it so enthusiastically that I ended up eating it practically every night. But the funny thing was, none of the Chicago community guys ever showed up at those restaurants. So I finally asked them, "Wait, don't you guys normally eat this stuff?" And they told me, "Nah, what we usually eat is something called tavern-style pizza. It's got a thin crust, and it's cut into squares." I remember being utterly confused. I mean, what the hell? You guys spent all this time recommending deep-dish pizza to me, and that's not even what you normally eat?! I guess it's sort of like when tourists occasionally ask us Japanese people, "Where can I find a ninja house?" (Okay, that analogy doesn't really work at all, but you get the idea.) Anyway, Combo Breaker is an event that holds a lot of great memories for me, in more ways than one.