I think Xenogears is absolutely amazing, but it's definitely not for everyone. It is very text-heavy. There are a LOT of random battles. My first run through the game took nearly 70 hours.
Let me talk about the tourney for a bit:
I want to tell everyone that on Saturday I met with some of the people that are going to be staff at this tourney, including onski the guy who got the venue and all that, and I think this tourney will be a success. Onski has his shit together and while he doesn't have a lot of experience, he's very aware of that fact and receptive to suggestions, and he's had to put in a lot of effort to even make sure this happened when he took it over from a bunch of 14 year olds who had no idea what they were doing. We are going to need some volunteers though to help us run this thing, cause as it stands we have 5 or 6 people, and we definitely need more, and I don't mean people who are like "yeah I'll call out matches or something when I don't feel like playing friendlies," I mean people actively dealing with setups, reporting matches, and beating the shit out of anyone that is trying to play friendlies. Once the bracket starts, there will be NO FRIENDLIES DURING THE TOURNAMENT UNLESS IT IS ANNOUNCED. We are going to have a piece of paper, and if you are caught playing friendlies, your name goes on it. If we catch someone playing friendlies whose name is on the list, they get one auto-loss in their bracket. I hope someone 'famous' is caught so we can prove how serious we are about this. Time is tight as hell and we need all of it to make this thing finish.
My current plan is this:
Take reg for Brawl doubles only first, begin its bracket, and then take reg for ALL OTHER events during the bracket. We will then switch setups to Melee as the bracket begins to need fewer TV's, and then start Melee doubles, and then Melee Singles. We will try to run those 3 events the first day. Melee singles may not finish, but whatever isn't, can be finished on the second day when the Brawl Singles bracket begins to need fewer TV's. The second day will be almost entirely Brawl Singles. We are going to make the Brawl Singles pools/brackets after the first day ends to save time (as well as decide if we actually have time for pools or not). The venue is open from 8am-8pm so you can damn well be sure we are starting Brawl singles mad early.
I am bringing my own TV for classic gaming and setting it up near the TO area. I don't want to lug around a bunch of systems though. I'm going to bring my NES and SNES, if someone could bring an N64/Genesis/whatever, that would be great. Also post any suggestions for games; I have many and will bring anything people desire if I have it. Leon and I will be epic battling in Tecmo Bowl. I'm pretty sure there's going to be some Pokemon Puzzle League going on as well.