Yeah, I got it now. I wasn't sure though because he didn't use a message quote so I didn't try to follow it.

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.  Look at the post above his.

I honestly only saw two or three people jump on the fact that IZ is now gone with excitement. Most of us were actually really sad to see it go, despite the last couple of years, because it was such a big part of our past. The people I did see laughing about IZ being gone were mostly people who started playing after its decline, and therefore weren't able to see it the way players who had been around for awhile did.

And for the record, I didn't mean to make it sound like I was the authority on ANYTHING. I guessed about IZ's financial situation with Tony in private (mostly going off of information on Mike's website); I didn't go around telling people I knew anything for a fact (except that he'd get back to me about selling me the 4th plus Solo). I certainly want Mike to get the respect and dignity he deserves. He was really, really important to the community for awhile, and especially important to me since I basically grew up at his arcade.

If you were being serious, I did.

If you were being sarcastic, ignore this post.

Not me.  We need to enforce the rules better though, in my opinion.  From what I've heard though, he's basically on the bubble.

I'm not happy about IZ closing, but honestly I wasn't that sad either.  I knew it was coming, basically.  He was failing to please both the (former) regular visitors as well as casual players with tons of dilapidated machines.

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.  

Ok, who let DDRFreak know we have a forum?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Either that or PA comics are never funny

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.

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.

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.

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.

They never had an ITG2 dedicab...

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)

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.

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??

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,

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

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.