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 fear this guy would be more proficient at connecting my console to my TV

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 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!

If all goes well then as you read this I will be in Sorrento, on the coast of Italy. I will be lying on a sun lounger working through my book backlog as the delightful creature known as my partner swims in the azure ocean under a clear sky before we both go and feast on the finest cuisine the south of Italy can offer. We’re away for about a fortnight all in (we are flying from London so are visiting the city on the way out and back) so we had the fun and games of geek packing.

What is geek packing I hear you cry? Well, it’s a solution to the simple problem of being a geek and going anywhere that isn’t your home. This ranges from a commute where geek packing can be just grabbing your DS to attending a LAN event which can mean a full move of your gaming rig. Holiday geek packing is unique though because there is a balance to be struck between what you want to pack and what you can legitimately get away with considering you’re going on holiday. You can’t exactly take your PS3 for example. So first up you have the actual act of travelling. Being geeks our attention span is such that a few hours in a plane can drive us crazy. Yes even participating in the marvel of going 645 mph through the skies on a feat of engineering can’t hold our attention. Luckily most airliners have finally realised that the DS won’t cause the plane to explode so best take that.  Can’t pack the charger just yet as that has to be used until the second we leave to make sure it’s fully juiced. Now we need travelling games, again a problem as only one game will cause boredom soon enough. So let’s say three carts, one of which is in the DS.

Now for the actual suitcase we can finish the DS packing by putting in a few more games, let’s say three more; in their boxes to protect them of course. Now don’t make the rookie mistake of saying to your partner that they don’t need their DS because you have yours. Multiplayer gaming may make the long warm nights fly in, so get them to pack theirs along with their games and their charger (after all, what if you both need to charge at the same time). Next up for physical things is your laptop. This little disaster prone piece of hardware can’t be trusted with baggage handlers, so keep that thing in its bag next to you at all times. The joys of digital delivery of products means that you can now pack twice as much as half of it is stored on a microchip. On your laptop choose the games you install wisely, whilst having Team Fortress 2 installed seems great you are relying on the place you are going to having WiFi suitable for gaming. Games that won’t tax the machine too much are preferable (warm weather + overheated laptop = problems) so a mix of easy running and older titles are key here. Football Manager 09 and Half Life 2 will do me nicely along with the ever present Peggle. To finish off the laptop we need DVDs. Nothing major, a few films and boxsets should do it.

Now on to alternative gaming, our final section. The joys of gaming is that it’s now on anything with a screen. So that mobile phone that will bankrupt you with roaming charges can now help scratch that gaming itch. Your Pacman and Frogger era games run well and will keep you going, if you have a fancier phone keep an eye out for more sophisticated games (iPhone in particular is growing as a gaming platform in its own right). Your iPod can run games as well and your casual game addiction can be well served here by playing Solitaire and Zuma on that bad boy. For the men reading, these casual games can help blow the time you’ll spend waiting for your female friend to finish washing her hair because water abroad doesn’t get it clean enough. Finally we’re back to the case for associated paraphernalia, being geeks we have great digital cameras so get those in along with five high capacity SD cards “just in case”. Chargers for those along with AA batteries, again, “just in case” along with chargers for phones. All these plugs need travel adapters… about five should do for those. Oh, camcorder and batteries and tapes and chargers. Better throw in another travel adapter for the camcorder. iPod dock to charge the iPod has to go in and best not forget gaming magazines to read when we’re out there! The joys of travelling with geeks.

Now how do I fit in my clothes?!