I'm sitting here on my lunch at work reflecting back at how fun California Extreme was. I was really overwhelmed (in a good way) by the sheer amount of cabinets all in one place, it was incredible. I drove 5-1/2 hours to get there but boy was it worth it. My highlights of the show:

The Grid. How come no one ever told me how fun The Grid is? They had 4 linked machines there and I must have spent 3 hours total playing matches against random people. It's so...manic and the weapons are goofy as hell. Aiming with the rollerball works so well too, I was surprised. The second to last match I played I was tied for 1st with some dude with 10 kills and 3 seconds left on the clock -- I picked him up and threw him (instant kill) as the clock went to 0 and pulled out a win. A loud "NOOOO" came billowing from him as I did a victory dance in front of the cabinet. So good.I got to meet Jeff and chatted with him for a few minutes. Such a nice guy. I later watched him destroy people in NFL Blitz 99. I played Tapper with Ryan. Was super happy to have been able to meet him. Playing a bunch of different Street Fighter matches against random people was really fun. They had a couple of sitdown Street Fighter III cabinets there. Those were really neat.The Ferrari F355 Challenge sitdown cabinet with 3 big-ass screens left me in awe.People were lining up to play "The Irritating Maze" game. It was fun! When you lose there is an extremely bright flash and it shoots a jet of strong wind into your face. it's pretty crazy.I also spotted Drew and Jared Rea moseying about, didn't get the chance to say hi to them.There's more, but I'll stop now. :) Everyone there was so nice, it was packed but it wasn't hard at all to play something you wanted to play.

Who else went this year? I'd love to hear about some of the fun experiences everyone had. Giant Bomb was representin' -- I saw a ton of people wearing various Giant Bomb shirts.