On August 28th StarSlay3r met up with the producer and actors with No Mercy Video to shoot one of their newest trailers “Killer Game”.  “Killer Game” is one of about 17 trailers that will be on a currently untitled movie DVD that will be released for sale sometime this year.  (Details will be posted once everything is finalized)

Trailer description:

“A championship gamer lets his obsession with being the best lead to murdering those who manage to beat him.”

To get a sneak peak of the upcoming trailer Killer Game check out the screen shots on the official No Mercy Video website

To learn more about No Mercy Video check out their official website

StarSlay3r will be attending thestream.tv’s 1000th episode at the Marbella in Hollywood, CA next month. StarSlay3r was invited to attend this event because of her appearance on thestream.tv’s show Coin-Op TV Live Episode #211. To watch the episode click HERE.

Episode description:

Coin-Op TV Live #211
Shocking in the New Year
Aired Live: 01-06-2008

Hosts Rob and Hailey bringing you a wrap-up of the video game industry news, people and events. A video submitted review from Snyper 7X, highlights from the Ninja Art show with Renee and Guitar Hero expert Ciji (StarSlay3r) in the studio!

About one month ago StarSlay3r did an interview with Brad and Leroy with Comic Tube and the interview is now up on their website! To check it out go to Comic Tube’s website. In this interview they talk about StarSlay3r’s experience with WCG Ultimate Gamer, her gaming career and touch base on comics, random gaming stuff and some upcoming events.

Recently the Orange County Register wrote up an article with an interview with Bruce from American Guru Clothing, some of the gamers that competed in the event as well as StarSlay3r. Here’s a clip from the article…

Thornton drove from Los Angeles to take on all comers on Guitar Hero during a recent American Guru promotion at Howie’s Game Shack in Mission Viejo.

“She’s good,” said Nicholas Lee, 15, of Mission Viejo.

Dana Point resident Josh Uhlar, 21, who works at Howie’s, took on Ciji while wearing an American Guru shirt. “She is incredible,” he said. “I was a really competitive gamer for a while. She’s definitely one of a kind. It’s very special to watch someone that can master a video game like that.”

Click HERE to read the full article!

To find out more about American Guru Clothing go to AmericanGuruClothing.com

The Rock-A-Thon recently posted on their website that StarSlay3r has joined them for their upcoming event this November in their latest news update.

The event is confirmed to start this November the 27th at midnight at the Meridian in Houston, TX where an unconfirmed number of gamers will take their places on stage and start rocking out for this awesome cause. With Rock Band having over 800 songs to date this will be one of the longest rhythm game marathons in gaming history and will most likely be recorded in Guinness as such. Oh, and did I mention we’re doing EVERY SONG on Expert? You gotta see this!

Please go to The Rock-A-Thon’s official website to check out more details about the event and see how you can help donate to this cause. If you can’t attend the event (hey, not everyone can just up and fly to Houston to watch gaming history go down) don’t worry! There will be a live stream of the event so that you can see what their progress is. A direct link to the stream will be posted once everything is ready. For now, check out the website, check out the cause, and donate if you can!

P.S. If you have twitter make sure to follow @therockathon to get updates!

I’m hoping to go check this out sometime soon!

Ottumwa, Iowa makes a bold move as this small Iowa town unveils its plans to create the “official” Video Game Hall of Fame & Museum for the worldwide video game industry. Big “Launch Party” planned at Ottumwa’s Bridge View Center, Thurs., August 13

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 07, 2009 – Launch Party for International Video Game Hall of Fame & Museum

Ottumwa, Iowa – August 7, 2009 – Ottumwa, Iowa has embarked on a unique project that may prove to be the envy of many other small towns throughout the world: establishing itself as the “Video Game Capital of the World” – and opening up the gaming industry’s “official” International Video Game Hall of Fame & Museum.

On Thursday, August 13, 2009, the city of Ottumwa, Iowa is holding a “Launch Party” as the means to publicly unveil their plans to create the “official” Hall of Fame for the worldwide video game industry. This event will be held at the Bridge View Center, at 102 Church Street, Ottumwa. And, as part of this inaugural event, a spokesperson for Iowa Governor Chet Culver will present at 1:00 PM a Proclamation that reconfirms Ottumwa’s status as the “Video Game Capital of the World,” a status that the city has enjoyed since the early 1980s when it played host to many historic video game events that have been documented by at least three separate feature films. And, at 5:00 PM, a special address will be presented by Iowa Congressman Dave Loebsack in support of Ottumwa’s plans to develop the International Video Game Hall of Fame & Museum.

Read more…

This footage is from the Howies Game Shack Guitar Hero event on Saturday, August 8th where StarSlay3r played for 4 hours taking on opponents non-stop and went undefeated on Guitar Hero: Metallica.

Quotes from what challengers told Howies GS Manager Brad Malvin

• “Ciji is badass, It was like going to a metallica concert.”
• “I got owned by Ciji, I want to play her again”
• “I don’t know how she does it but Ciji rocks at guitar hero”
• “when is she coming back?”

This Sunday, after sleeping in from my long day on Saturday, I went out to the Underground Tournament League Street Fighter 4 party/ tournament.

We arrived around 3:30 PM or so to find the party was already in full effect. I was excited to see a TON of people that I knew and found out the people who had been placing 1st in the past few tournaments were all there to try to hold on to their title. Everyone mingled for a while and practiced while the DJs were pumping out their music off to the side. (Great music by the way guys!) There were 4 set ups for SF4.

1. An HD projector aimed at the back wall with a white screen. Huge, no lag… looked great at night but was hard to play on before sunset.
2. A nice sized unknown brand HD tv.
3. A HUGE unknown brand hd tv brounght in by one of the players. I wish I could have taken a pic… great graphics, no lag… the best set up there.
4. The 2nd largest hd tv. This was a Samsung. I didn’t play on it so I’m not sure if there was lag or not but the graphics looked great.

One of the 4 DJs that came to the UTL SF4 event

I was SUPER excited when my buddies Shawn, Sam and KenjixSamurai all decided to show up as well. If you don’t remember, Shawn and Sam showed up at the GH: Metallica tournament and both walked away with prizes for high score and for coming the closest to my score the night before. Also, KenjixSamurai was my Zangeif teammate at the DIZeLAN 3 on 3 event.

I spent most of my time trying to get some practice in with Mike Ross since I hadn’t practiced SF4 at all really, only got about 10 or so games in at Video 94 here and there, but had a hard time doing that since everyone wanted to play with Mike. All of a sudden it didn’t matter that Christian, the 1st place winner of the last UTL SF4 tourney was there, or that Dan and his Guile were on a 15 win streak on HDtv #2.

The brackets were SUPPOSED to be randomized, but judging from my first match I will say that they weren’t very random at all. The guy who ran the tournament claimed that he did not modify the brackets but I was put against someone for the pure fact of the guys wanted to see that particular match up, which I thought wasn’t too funny. The fact that this was done reminded me of how people wanted to modify Devastatin brackets just for entertainment so I was a bit peeved during this match. I won my first match against a Cammy player 2 games clean. (4 rounds without a loss) I honestly underestimated this person and was surprised when each round I was left with only about 1/4 of my life left. That was too close for my liking.

StarSlay3r (SA) First Game in the UTL SF4 tournament

Later I had to vs my toughest opponent. Everyone gathered around to watch this match. Basically people had seen me beating him earlier during practice (I had a 5 game win streak with my Sagat vs his Gouken and beat his C.Viper and others) and figured it would be a good match. While I was a bit upset about having to vs him so early (we were hoping to wipe out everyone and place 1st/2nd) I was happy I’d finally get a chance to vs him in a tournament setting. Many people in the past have heard about me beating him here and there and have said “Yeah right, he went easy on you” or “Playing casually and in a tournament setting are two different things” so this was it. He has always said “I never go easy on you. I always play 100%” but this was his time to prove it since money was on the line.

(The way the tournament is run is that the first person to win 2 out of 3 games advances to the next bracket. If you lose you’re allowed to change your character, but if you win you have to stick to your character. This is standard for SF4 tournies.)

Game 1 StarSlay3r (SA) vs Mike Ross (GK)

Our first match was me with Sagat vs him with Gouken. I made a lot of mistakes and my timing was a bit too early on many of my moves. We both even whiffed ultras at one point in time… it was not our best performance, but I won the first game 2-1.

StarSlay3r takes Game 1 vs Mike Ross

A bit upset about losing the first game he thought long and hard about what character to choose for game 2. Mike has been maining Zangief lately and I have had a lot of Zangief practice. When I’ve played my Sagat vs his Zangief at Video 94 I beat him several times thanks to the fact that Sagat and his fireballs and HK are godlike in this match. Mike then decided to pick E. Honda. I don’t have to tell you all why he picked Honda either….

StarSlay3r (SA) vs Mike Ross (HO) Game 2

Knowing I have never beat Mike’s Honda before I decided I’d do my best in this match and basically just try to do as much damage as possible. The first round came to an end and I ALMOST beat him! He was seriously scared. Mike was later quoted “I was thinking… oh my god… is she really going to win and mess this all up?” After seeing how close I came to beating Mike I had started to let it get to me mentally, and the next round he got a perfect on me making our scores 1-1.

Mike takes Game 2 2-0

The 3rd game it was all on the line. This is basically what will determine if it’s me or him. While I wanted to win (of course, who wouldn’t want to say they beat Mike in a tournament?) I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to place 1st and ensuring that someone else would by taking away their main threat. I stuck with Sagat since I didn’t want to risk a severe beat down by switching to anyone else I wasn’t 100% comfortable using under pressure.

Round 2 was when I really fought hard and survived several handslap 12 hit combos and blocked an Ultra just to come back from on the brink of death to surviving one more round.

StarSlay3r tiger knees her way to victory in Game 3 round 2

I didn’t want to go out just yet…. I wanted it to come down to the final round and it did. With everyone gathered around watching the match on the projector I was nervous as heck!Round 3 went to Mike and he almost got another perfect on me. A flurry of hand slaps made me nervous and I remembered back when we first started playing together over 3 months ago. I clutched out an Ultra when he was about to finish me off with a stomp and was excited I brought his health down to 1/3 or so before dying.

StarSlay3r clutches an Ultra in round 3

We went back and forth but in the end he won.

I wish I had played better, but at least I can say I went up against the #2 Street Fighter 4 player in the nation and it all came down to the final round of the 3rd game. I wouldn’t have wanted to lose to anyone else. Also, I was the only person who was able to beat Mike 1 game. Mike was able to beat everyone else in the tournament 2 games in a row all the way through to 1st place. I consider this a personal victory and will try harder to improve my skills to give him even more of a run for his money next time!

Congrats Mike for claiming 1st and showing everyone in the UTL why you’re one of the best! We’ll be attending the next UTL SF4 tourney which I’m told will be held in a dojo in Los Angeles. I can’t wait!!!

This weekend was full of awesomeness! On Saturday I teamed up with Howies Game Shack, American Guru Clothing, Coffin Case and Monster to run a Guitar Hero Metallica challenge where any and all challengers could test their skill against mine for a chance to win prizes from American Guru, Monster, Coffin Case and Howies Game Shack.

The rules were simple… beat me and win, although accomplishing that goal would prove to be quite a bit harder then that. With my last Guitar Hero challenge that I did at PAX (Known as the Judy Nails Challenge sponsored by Activision) I went 56-4 on the game Guitar Hero: World Tour pre release. At PAX the rules were that I was not allowed to practice the songs before hand and was only allowed to play while competing so during my 1 hour breaks when competitors were lining up to play the game, I was there giving them tips on the new slider gems and open strum notes on bass. With pros like Pulsar showing up and me having the handicap of having to use the slider bar if anyone picked hot for teacher (which 3 of the opponents who beat me did) I definitely had a few challenging matches to endure.

Some details about the event:

1. I did not practice any more than 30 minutes in the past month on this version of Guitar Hero and only practiced 1 song before the event.
2. I was using a guitar I had never used before for the first time and found out it activated star power on its own (easily resolved by turning the tilt sensor off)
3. The challengers picked whatever song THEY wanted to against me, I did not pick any of the songs against any of my opponents to ensure the players could choose their best/favorite song
4. The challengers were allowed to pick hard if they wanted to giving them a point advantage
5. I allowed photographers to take pictures of me while I was playing even with flash on!
6. I still rocked out while playing. LoL Even headbanged for a few songs.
7. Players that had scores somewhat close to mine were allowed to rematch me if time permitted
8. I allowed all Activision and Neversoft employees who tested on Guitar Hero Metallica to come to the event and challenge me as well

With a gamer bashing me on their website stating “facts” that are untrue about my guitar hero skills, I decided to show everyone what I’m REALLY capable of and raise money to help the homeless in Southern California at the same time. I had to borrow a guitar for this event since my last guitar broke at Devastation in Arizona a couple months ago and I haven’t bought another once since. (Mostly due to Nightmare Armor Studios and Coffin Case working on 2 special custom guitars for me… but shhhh you don’t know about that yet )

I arrived at Howies Game at 6pm and was told I’d have to compete for 4 hours. I was like… LETS DO THIS! To get everyone attention we cranked up the speakers in the center arena of Monster Alley and I started whaling on the guitar to the Mercyful Fate Medly. I average about 960k on this song usually and did a bit lower this time, but at least I got rid of my jitters really quick and was nice and warmed up after the solos.

The Metallica set up in Monster Alley at Howies Game Shack

Gamers gathered around and started taking pictures and signing up for the chance to challenge me. While some people started walking by shouting “I think I can take you!” they sure did run away fast once they saw my score! I walked around for a few minutes to check out the awesomeness that is Howies and I see now why this is one of the best Lan centers that exist. I then was taken outside for an interview with the Orange County News to talk about the event and how we’re here to help.

Howies Game Shack PC rigs

I wasn’t aware what the ultimate prize for beating me was until AFTER the event but Howies Game Sshack had a prize on the line with a value of $7,000 if anyone could beat me! It’s good to know they had that kind of confidence in my skills and I was able to come through undefeated. The manager, Brad, later made the comment “I could have said the prize was 1,000,000 hours free and it wouldn’t have mattered because nobody would have won.” The two people who had the highest score and came the closest to my score (closest scorer had a score of about 49k below mine) received prizes.

My favorite matches of the night included one against a kid who couldn’t be any older than 10 who approached me and said “I wanna do this!” I looked at him and said “Alright… what difficulty do you want?” I was willing to make an exception for some players if they wanted to do HARD difficulty since even though they’d score more points per note, again, I wasn’t worried about losing. The kid looked up at me and said… “I’m going with Expert!” I said “Heck yeah! Lets do this!” The crowd applauded and everyone started saying “EXPERT?! Are you kidding me?!” This kid probably had the most guts of all the players I versed. People started looking at what I was doing. I’m assuming people thought I’d go easy on him just because he’s a kid, but I did not. My thoughts were this… if I’m going to challenge someone I want them to give 100% for the match. When I play against Mike ross and Justin Wong they go 100% on me and if I get perfected then that’s because they are the BEST and I am still learning. This kid wanted a REAL match, so I’m not throwing it. He would not have had fun going to school saying “I beat a pro because she stopped playing halfway through the song.” He had fun playing against me and thanked me for the match, as did his father. I ran over and gave him one final fist bump after our match and they all left smiling and his father congratulating him on his performance.

After my matches were all done I went in the back with Mike Ross and we started talking to Howies Game Shack owner and American Guru Clothing owner about future events and possible new sponsors for me. (but the sponsor thing I’ll get into on a future date ) With the 4 of us brainstorming we decided to do another event but this time it will be a Street Fighter 4 tournament run by Mike Ross! I’ll post a new blog with more details about the event shortly, but first I need to gather all the details since this is going to be HUGE!

A special thank you goes out to Howies Game Shack, American Guru Clothing, Monster Beverage Company, Coffin Case for making this happen and to Sam Cohn, Shawn Belew and Mike Ross for coming out to the event! Also thank you to all of the competitors and to everyone for being a good sport. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the fact that everyone said “good game” and shook hands after… good sportsmanship FTW!

There WILL be another event featuring me in the future but the game will most likely be BlazBlue this time, but we’re still working on the next game as well as sponsors and prizes. I’ll let you all know what’s going on as I find out more details! See you next time in Monster Alley!

Howie's Game Shack Monster Alley

I’ll edit this post later with pictures as I get them, video footage once that’s up on youtube, and will link to the interview once it’s up! Thanks again everyone!

A few days ago one of my co-workers was telling me about how Kotaku posted this message from Bioshock’s marketing team and how the event was supposed to be happening early saturday morning at a beach in Santa Monica. Since there only 10 locations around the world where this event would be held and one of them just so happened to be only about 30 minutes from where I live I HAD to go check it out. My friends and I started thinking… “what’s going to happen?” There was no real details. All we knew is that we had to be on the beach at Sunrise (6:11am) and see what the tide brings in. We (along with Kotaku apparently) were really hoping to see a guy in a big daddy suit and a little girl like in the first game.

At about 5:00am I leave with Mike to meet up with my friends at our work in Santa Monica. We hop in 2 cars and head on down to Santa Monica Beach and stand at the exact location that the coordinates lead us to. We arrived at the beach at about 6am and ran to the beach to see that there was already about 150 or so people at the beach already. As the time got closer to 6:11am there was about 200 people at the beach just staring at the ocean.

Waiting for sunrise

6:11 am comes and goes and still nothing. We notice a few people walking toward the pier and a couple people holding a pirate flag a quarter mile away from us. We start to get a bit disappointed.

At 6:30 everyone started runnning toward what looks like a mini submarine that popped out of the water

(6:35) Ok so that was a lie… Theres no submarine but rumors have it 2 joggers found bottles like the ones in Germany?

We ran about 1 mile to a location very close to the pier and saw a huge mass of people gathered around one area scooping up what looked like bottles with rolled up papers in them. There were approximately 70 bottles on shore and I didn’t get one. The bottle had a welcome to rapture flier and plasmid advertsements.

Rapture advertisement

Basically these bottles were all that there was planned for this “event”. We were all pretty disappointed especially since on top of waking up at 4am and driving 30+ miles out to this that at 6:11 there was no big daddy, no anything, and we had to run about 1 mile away to the ACTUAL location.

Dear 2k games… next time have a guy in a big daddy suit running around chasing people or something. I’d suggest staging a little scene with a little girl and have some guy try to hurt her and have the big daddy chase after him attacking him then running into the crowd. Just my opinion… but if you make people all over the world wake up early for something like this, please don’t disappoint!

Here’s one guys video of his experience overseas… I thought it was funny when he had the same answer as me when answering the question “was it worth getting up early for?”

Later that evening Kotaku posted this picture/ article

Bioshock Bottles already on ebay

If you went to one of these events please write about your experience and include pics if you have them!