It's not even remotely funny and I hope they die in a fire. They act like they ever fucking went there or something.

Give me a break.

This is about as funny as /b/.  I was expecting a more serious post.

I'm amazed they know about Illusionz. No seriously, I am.

PAX takes place in Bellevue, which is right next to Issaquah.  I'm not surprised.

IZ provided the PAX machines (though the creators wouldn't be directly involved in rentals).  Also, I believe I remember them having a news post way back involving IZ.

This comic isn't even remotely funny.  Then again, the internet's been pretty boring for the last few months.

I just posted it btw, never said it was funny or whatnot. :-P

Yeah, the old one was about Quarters.

This comic is just stupid. I didn't laugh, and didn't actually really see "teh funnays" in this at all. Still, I guess it's good that someone recognized the arcade closing, but like Met said,

Even though it was a 6th mix, I really enjoyed playing FREE GuitarFreaks for about 9 hours straight at last years Penny Arcade Expo.. Do you guys know any other arcades down there that would possibly part with their machines for a few days??  Hopefully something newer??

Luckily that one person, Bill Masterman, (of Masterman Vending) regularly browses these forums as "mvco." He is the coolest arcade operator ever (no, seriously) and would be just about the only person in the region that would have the connections to pull something like that off.

sorry to sound like a noob, as i am sure ppl already know about this. but what happend/is happening to the ITG2 dedicab that they had? (@ illuzionz)

They never had an ITG2 dedicab...

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who didn't really see why this was that funny. :> I was worried I just didn't "get it" or something.

As a sidenote, not only do Gabe and Tycho hold PAX around here, but they're actually FROM this area... so yeah, of course they know about IZ.

Bill can't rent out/lend his machines due to the nature of his contracts (Imagine if all the Bemani at Acme or Narrows was suddenly gone for 3 days, they really wouldn't be happy about the lost income); he might have connections, but only a place like IZ that owned both the machines and the building can rent out machines without getting into trouble.

@luke: IZ never had a dedicab, they had the beta test upgrade cab.  Regardless, their stuff is either being auctioned off or taken by the government, depends on the bankrupcy proceedings.

edit: Sorry, re-read your post and realized that it looked like you assumed that I meant he was going to pull from local inventory. My point was that he's the only guy around with the cred to do soemthing like that now that IZ is gone regardless of how it happens.



Is this fact? Mike was previous MSFTE who made enough to retire and start his own business with what appeared to be a lot of his own personal capital. I don't know what's happening to his stuff, but the government taking possession sounds very unlikely.

I think that the comic isnt exactly supposed to be funny.  

It makes little enough sense that I assume they're leading up to something in the next comic.

Either that or PA comics are never funny

I'm only going off of what I heard from Laura (she'd been looking into getting the 4th+ Solo); Mike's barely been in contact with anybody since IZ closed but (IIRC) he wasn't fully sure he would be able to sell his stuff off.  Or I might be mixing this up with rumors, it's been awhile since there was any news.  Whatever the case is, nobody's sure what's happening to the machines at this point.

And, for the record, I was mostly assuming that there were going to have to be bankruptcy proceedings, since, due to what Met stated about Mike basically just starting IZ up with his own money, he'd be personally liable for anything he couldn't pay for. IZ was a HUGE monetary drain, and he recently revamped the place so much that if he didn't need to file for bankruptcy, I'd be damn impressed.

That said, I never said that I knew for sure. I also haven't heard from him for about three weeks. All he really told me is that he's not sure exactly what's going to happen to the machines but he'll let me know when he knows.

Then please stop making complete conjecture as to his financial situation.

edit: that came off harsher than I wanted. I would just like him to go down with a little dignity. He made a huge impact and really don't think he's getting the credit due. I don't want to make a mockery of such an important figure to this community. If he's bankrupt, he's bankrupt- but not until someone proves it.

Fucking amen.  I hated everyone just jumping IZ's throat as soon as they went out of business, as if this was the desire of the community and now that they're gone all is merry and happy.

For the first ~3-4 years of my bemani playing "career", I exclusively went to IZ.

lol Government will now start to play DDR/ITG...i wana see bush fall on his ass while doing it......anywho back on topic sry bout all that

Ok, who let DDRFreak know we have a forum?

I count myself very lucky to have frequented Illusionz (if only for a couple of months) while I was out in Seattle back in 2005.  I got a chance to play PNM, GF and PPP for the first and only time there.  And it was a great experience for me - before then my only exposure to Bemani had been the local DDR machines and one guy's home PNM set-up.

I think it's awesome that the founder made the leap to do something like this, and I'm sorry to see it go under.

As to the financial repercussions, the death of a business is an incredibly convoluted matter, and none of us (except the owners) can possibly know how it is going to pan out until after the fact.  So there's really no point in speculating.  I will say that it's possible that if the business was incorporated as an LLC or similar, the owners' personal finances and some or all of their initial investment will be salvaged.  Let us all generically hope for the best and say no more on the subject.


I blame the crosspost to Bemanistyle, myself - it lets the riffraff like me in.