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So I finally found a korean internet cafe in Brisbane after previously failing at watching (& finding a good place to watch) the MSL finals, as seen here.
I saw it this afternoon wandering through Queen Street Mall, and with little else to do I thought, "Fuck it, let's see what these bitches have got"
It's on the second floor of a building that's being renovated so I caught the little elevator, which took for-fucking-ever to come down and go back up. There was an empty fanta bottle in the corner of the elevator, an ill omen of what was to come.
The business itself comprised three things: a small PC room, a pool room (billiards) and a few karaoke booths with k-pop etc. I walked up to the counter and asked for a computer. Suprisingly, unlike other lan cafe's I've been to they asked me to pay before use instead of after which I thought was kind of weird but w/e, I paid 2 dollars for Half an hour and hopped on a computer.
The room itself was quite small, holding maybe fifteen computers, only about 5 of which were in use. I sat down and logged on and what was the first thing I saw on the desktop? Our favourite little icon, the Wraith, with the golden words underneath "Starcraft Broodwars". Unfortunately I had some business to attend to first so I got that out of the way as quickly as possible, I was eager to play.
Having finished my other work I sat at my computer and mentally prepared myself for what was to come. Having sufficiently meditated I double clicked on the icon, I suppose at this point I should mention the tools I would be playing with. The mouse and keyboard were standard microsoft peripherals, cheap and crude. The mouse itself was horrible, not only did glide anything but smoothly on the sticky desktop but it had trouble tracking on the uniform coloured paint.
So there I was, ready to play, having not played at all in over a month I was feeling a tad rusty. But 'lo and behold, the disc wasn't in the drive, this was my first inkling that things were about to go wrong, very wrong. It suggested to me that they were not up with the latest patch, or at least didn't know that you no longer need the disk to play. I was loathe to get up and ask for a CD, so to save myself the trouble and potential embarassment I relaxed, happy that I had an excuse for not tangling with the koreans that day.
I settled for watching the first game of the OSL finals, which I had yet to see. I navigated through the trusty TL.net website to the vods, and just as I settled into watching game 1 my computer logged itself off. My thirty minutes was up.
Upon leaving I walked past the man at the front counter and asked casually which computers acutally had SC running, so I could know for the future, he told me so. I then asked if they ever get many people in watching proleague/Gom (which there was also an icon for on the desktop, I forgot to mention)/OSL & MSL finals. The man laughed in my face, semi sheepishly, obviously amused that a foreigner such as myself would be intereseted in starcraft, so ended my first Korean PC bang adventure.
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CA10828 Posts
hmm that is pretty odd. usually they have a timer on the computer so they can just charge you for however many minutes you were on.
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konadora
Singapore66163 Posts
You need to find the right PC bangs 
Huge ones have like a hundred computer, selling snacks/instant noodles/drinks, and separated into smoking/non-smoking area. They give you this card, you can choose prepaid if you want. You then key in the card's ID in your comp, and you play as long as you want, which is recorded in the main computer, and before you leave, return your card and you pay your usage.
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On April 20 2009 20:13 LosingID8 wrote:
hmm that is pretty odd. usually they have a timer on the computer so they can just charge you for however many minutes you were on.
some allow it, others dont
Usually because a lot of people just say they're going to take a call and just leave without paying
majority of pc rooms its more expensive using the cards than making an account. If you make account they give you discounts/points but i dont know about foreigners because you need a korean id number. I think the owner can by pass that if you tell them you dont have one.
I personally of all the pc rooms i went to i liked 존엔존 zone and zone.
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konadora
Singapore66163 Posts
On April 20 2009 20:17 Ilikestarcraft wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2009 20:13 LosingID8 wrote:
hmm that is pretty odd. usually they have a timer on the computer so they can just charge you for however many minutes you were on. some allow it, others dont
Most of the new ones use the timer system though... even those in the countryside use them (my grandma's town area)
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Well yeah, that's the kind of one I've been to before, it's just this was the first korean one I've been to, PC cafes aren't really that big in Australia. The room was really small though, but they had really good internet, so I think I might be back should I want to watch sc, as most other PC cafes around here don't have good enough internets to stream (they limit dl speed so each computer gets equal share, even if the place is empty)
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I think the Korean PC cafe's improved A LOT. Well the ones I went to. Some even prohibit smoking now so the air is a lot cleaner And it's cheap too, as always.
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oh i thought you went to a pc room in korea ;;
The majority of pc rooms allow you to choose, 선불 which is paying before hand and 후불 which is the timer
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konadora
Singapore66163 Posts
okay nvm lol.
Why is there a 'Korean' PC-room? Run by Koreans or something?
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wow im actually confusing you with myself ㅡㅡ
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konadora
Singapore66163 Posts
On April 20 2009 20:24 Ilikestarcraft wrote:
wow im actually confusing you with myself ㅡㅡ
rofl scv icon ftw
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Yeah it's run by koreans, all the signs for it were in korean, I only saw it because the hangul for pc bang caught my eye and a few of my friends were talking about the karaoke part of it after korean class this afternoon
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konadora
Singapore66163 Posts
On April 20 2009 20:28 nataziel wrote:
Yeah it's run by koreans, all the signs for it were in korean, I only saw it because the hangul for pc bang caught my eye and a few of my friends were talking about the karaoke part of it after korean class this afternoon
Ah I see.. but you should really go to a REAL korean pc bang in Korea. They are so much better, as far as I can tell from your post.
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konadora
Singapore66163 Posts
Oops double post. God I'm confused with all the threads in TL open.
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Yeah, I'm sure they would be, is there always lan games going on or do they play on bnet? pc bang's here cost a lot compared to in korea I think, it's generally like 5 bucks an hour here, but most cafe's have shitloads of games to play, not just sc/w3/d2, but massive amounts of latest games and really good hardware to play it on.
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51451 Posts
We only have one internet cafe here in Albury, such a rip at $5.50 p/h (4.40 on Thursdays).
Two kinds of payment though (before and after) 
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offtopic:
why the fuck do you both have an scv icon???????
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NeverGG
United Kingdom5399 Posts
On April 20 2009 20:38 nataziel wrote:
Yeah, I'm sure they would be, is there always lan games going on or do they play on bnet? pc bang's here cost a lot compared to in korea I think, it's generally like 5 bucks an hour here, but most cafe's have shitloads of games to play, not just sc/w3/d2, but massive amounts of latest games and really good hardware to play it on.
Ouch - that's really, really expensive compared to S.Korean PC bangs - I used to haunt one back when I lived in a shitty backwater town here in Korea and it was awesome - unfortunately people did still smoke there, but they had comfy chairs, noodles and other snacks/drinks to buy, free water and the guys running it were lovely (they lent me umbrellas when it was raining etc.) I once stayed in there for about 10 hours (God I was bored back in those days.) and it only cost about $8.
I have my own laptop now and net access at home so I don't need to use them, but it's still nice to go to a pc bang from time to time to play around. There's also a big selection of games at most pc bangs ranging from SC and Kart Rider to FPS and dancing games. The demographic for them here is really wide.
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konadora
Singapore66163 Posts
I think P.C bangs are super cheap, 1 hour = 500 won (cheapest), which is around 70 Singapore cents. And they have great service too.
Most of them play LAN starcraft if they go out as a group, but for individuals, it's B.Net
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51451 Posts
to ilikestarcraft: do they have iccup installed on the computers at the pc bang these days?
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EPT
