I recently found myself in the curious position of being a gaming creed neophyte in the order of the Xbox 360. Being an orthodox gamer meant that this was a novel position for me to find myself in. I usually play on the PlayStation 3 partly because for some reason I never found the online multiplayer gaming lure of the 360 to be all that, well, luresome. But when this console failed on me not long ago, naturally all I could think about was 360ing it up. My hands ached to be filled with that hulking beast of a controller and my mouth watered at the thought of screaming inane, nonsensical abuse at player-controlled WWII veterans regarding their mommas. I had to get the thing repaired.

Not seven days later I receive a brand new Xbox 360 and eagerly start connecting it to my TV. This is when the feeling of being in foreign territory begins. Connecting the console via the supplied HD AV cable yields the most annoying of buzzing noises. Connecting it via a separate HDMI cable yields the most annoying of completely blank TV screens. In moving the TV around for investigation I realise there is a loose connection somewhere as the picture suddenly returns. I freeze mid TV-turn and contemplate the feasibility of viewing the screen at this new angle. It wasn’t going to work. I therefore continue to move the TV and quite predictably the picture promptly vanishes. This pattern continues for some time as I incrementally edge the screen towards my goal angle. Moving the TV that last inch can only be described as a tense and exasperating experience. I twist the screen further to the right and become increasingly excited as the picture actually remains. Yes, it’s working. Just that last push and… oh for the love of Ares!

I will refrain from boring you with the painstaking TV-shifting experience that ensued. Suffice to say many expletives were uttered and many an electrical appliance was kicked. But I eventually got my screen to display in a direction that wouldn’t mean sitting on my oversized potted cactus to play a game.

Now to get online with this baby. But wait… what was my gamertag? It had been a while since I’d used it and I just couldn’t remember it for the life of me. It’s here that I meet the next barrier to the Xbox 360 gaming world; attempting to create a new tag was yet another trying experience. Like many a cocky gamer, I wanted a name with a little attitude. One that screamed ‘here be a consummate, independent and self-assured gamer’, or just one that would make the other kids wanna play with me. So I spend what must have been a good five minutes thinking up this great name: ‘PixelSlut’. Unfortunately it’s taken and no amount of affixing numbers to the end of it was apparently going to change that. So what else can I call myself? Ah, that’s it: ‘BitChi’, a tag which implies a bitchy girl gamer with some ‘tude but one that also respects the, um, ch’i of the computing bit. I enter this luscious name into the keypad and… it’s taken. Damn it!

A good ten- to fifteen-minute period elapses whilst I fabricate ridiculously cool (you know it) names and receive increasingly frustrating rejections before I reach the firm conclusion that Xbox Live is in fact broken. It’s clearly not possible to create a gamertag of any kind. I’m so confident by this point that I decide to test my theory. I type in a random sequence of numbers and letters until I reach the maximum allowance. Then I click ‘OK’.

What the…? You’re friggin kidding me Microsoft! On the screen before me lies my ridiculously long and entirely incomprehensible new gamertag, the name by which those in the circles that matter will, from this point forward, know me by. How could my theory have been so flawed? How could I have gotten this so wrong?

Trying to shake off the surprise, I begrudgingly provide Microsoft with my credit card details for membership. In a manner I have become quite familiar with by this point my details are inexplicably rejected. Luckily the free one-month gold membership Microsoft offers me will suffice for now. That and my mum’s credit card details (shhh!).

So, after all that, here I am, an active Xbox Live player, diving into online games like Jack Thompson into lawsuits. I didn’t much enjoy the identity-shaking experience I had to endure to get here though and I sure hope the gamingverse doesn’t deem it necessary to unnerve me like this again. But for now I’m a 360 maestro. I’m an Xenos Jedi Knight. I’m J Allard.

But you can just call me ‘jklss87iovwxqjc’.

I was stood half naked in my bathroom the other day, busily attacking the lower half of my face with some small spinning blades attached to a motor, when I had an epiphany… no, it wasn’t the potential strangeness of my situation and how normal that’s become; it was arguably worse. I buy Nivea For Men. Don’t worry, you haven’t accidentally stumbled across a piece intended for GQ or something!

You may remember that product was heavily featured in Splinter Cell: Double Agent, you may not. Well, I do recall that and it rankled with me like you wouldn’t believe! See, I didn’t like that it was strewn on billboards or in the bedroom of a cruise ship passenger as good ol’ Mr. Fisher was going about his day (and night) job of saving the world and popping out to get the groceries… discounted of course.

I don’t want a face that a mouse could ski on, thanks

The man himself obviously didn’t use it either! It sat ill with me even though the game was set in the real world. It may be geographically real but it’s not the world I live in, that world of spies and death and gadgets. And so I ranted about it innumerable times at the game’s release… but now I wonder. Did my hatred of such blatant advertising eventually catch me so I ended up being swayed?

Okay, I’m not totally against advertising; between you and me, I’m not one that buys into it as I don’t watch much TV or read many papers. I know when it comes to games these days, it may be necessary to fund the very game product X is plugged in but would a little context not go amiss? Or at the very least have a little subtlety and instead of using a knife, use a scalpel?

I’m incredibly worried I’ll end up with an ill-advised stealth suit one of these days…

I was hot!

That’s not me being immodest because my midriff was showing – that was because I was crowded in on all sides by people queuing for Pocky at the ‘Tokyo Toys’ stall whilst dressed as Ulala.  And when you’ve dressed as Ulala as many time as I have, keeping it fresh doesn’t mean that you can get away with the nice cooling mini skirt again – you have to wear a long sleeved top, big headphones, striped trousers and a baby pink wig that turned the top of my head into a personal scalp sauna.

Sometimes, you have to really love Cosplay to do it.

Fortunately – I do.

And, my love of Cosplay means that even though I may be behind some of the other Ready-Up staffers in terms of Xbox achievement points, I am ahead in world records to the number of one (apart from Kirsten). Rather than scouring through every square inch of the ‘Gears of War’ universe for dog-tags, I and 375 other cosplayers were working our glue guns to the nub to make our video game dreams into bright, glorious, three dimensional – and occasionally itchy – reality.

The first time I broke the world record (hah – I’m getting an old hand at this) for the ‘Largest Gathering of Video Game Cosplayers’ was in February of last year and it was put together by games industry names. There was only about 80 of us in cosplay but we set the record and so I got my first ‘Guinness World Record’. This was a very small amount of cosplayers and this was easily broken later that year at a German convention. But 3 days later at the October MCM Expo we just went and broke it again.

Dallas-area Anime convention ‘A-Kon’ claimed several times it had broken the record with nearly 700 cosplayers but as Guinness Adjudicator Gaz Deaves said to me whilst holding the record, they never sent Guinness any proof of this. So here I am again, London MCM May 09. “Another MCM, another World Record”, shouts Gaz to the huge amount of photographers in front of us (see I told you I would get to the front). In fact, I just went up to Gaz and asked to hold the record with him for the photos (quite impressed he remembered my name too). So from the measly 80 cosplayers who turned up at Millennium Bridge in the freezing February frosts to the now 376 record breaking cosplayers basking in the heat. I know I will be there for the next one for as long as I can make costumes.

I have to say that this year’s MCM Expo has had some of the best cosplay costumes that I have seen in a long time. Some of the outfits must have taken months to make. The minute I saw this ‘Wolf Link’ costume I could have just taken him home. In a quick interview with ‘Wolf Link’, I asked…

Ulala: “So ‘Wolf Link’, whats it like to be constantly changing from regular ‘Link’ to ‘Wolf Link’?”

Wolf Link: “Hoooooooow… uuulllll!!”

He then proceeded to chomp on my microphone.

One of my all time favourite heroes decided to show up at this year’s MCM Expo. The legend himself, Mr. Earthworm Jim. My best chum Susan came dressed as Faith from Mirrors Edge and my Square Enix crazed buddy Laura went as Sora from the Kingdom Hearts game.

Ready Up’s ‘Cosplay Clash’ is going to be a lot of fun as well as the rest of the Insert Coin 09 event. It’s the first cosplay event to be run by passionate gamers and seasoned cosplayers, the first event with good prizes to be won (money!), and the first event to ban ‘Free Huggers’ (well, okay I can’t really ban this, but I would discourage anyone to come and try to ‘Free Hug’ people or ‘Free Hug’ me, as these days, it’s as bad as saying ‘Free Swine Flu’).

The London MCM Expo has become somewhat more of a chore than an enjoyable experience and it was very hard to see anything at the event due to the amount of people that attended. It was very uncomfortable and I got whacked by various ‘kooky cosplay kids’ and their weapons. The event has become less of an exclusive fun weekend about sci-fi, film, comics and games for everyone to enjoy and more of a place where kids hang out, draw Manga, ‘Glomp’, and just act stupid. Insert Coin 09 will be an event for everyone. Smaller and more specialist in its subject, it should be a great escape from the ‘big daddy’ of conventions, which in my opinion, has fallen victim to Manga and its own success.

Not sure about an outfit for the ‘Cosplay Clash’ yet, but there are still quite a few Ulala outfits left, so I have options. Decisions, decisions…

…or I may do something completely different.  Like come dressed as ‘Pudding’. For those of you who don’t know who Pudding is, go out and get a copy of Space Channel 5 right now, or face my wrath!  Or Sega Superstar Tennis at a push.

Well I hope you all enjoyed my swinging cosplay report show, I’m Ulala reporting for Space… er, I mean Fran reporting for Ready Up!