Subspace Lab

And what we blatantly missed at the 2011 Tokyo Game Show;

* Sony gave most of its stand over to the forthcoming Vita handheld but with the long, confusing, chaotic queues, we skipped checking it out. Graham reports that the device is pretty epic, though once again it seems like they’re ripping off a lot of Nintendo’s ideas.

Acquire's booth

Appleseed 13’s booth girl posing

* There was a whole hall dedicated to game merchandise like t-shirts, action figures and plushies? Probably best I missed that. Explains why I kept seeing people walking around with cool Disgaea bags. I actually asked two Japanese guys where they got theirs by saying in broken Japanese; “Sumimasen… doko?” (“Excuse me… where?”) while pointing to the bag, and they pointed to the far side of the hall with me roughly guessing they were saying the next building, but sadly we were having to leave by that point.

Capcom’s premium theatre

The official cosplayer for Shadows of the Damned

* Monster Hunter Tri G for the 3DS was a key attraction but there was no chance we could wait hours in the queues. Actually same goes for Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Battlefield 3.

Some games had closed off areas to better the experience

Props made for Dragon Quest’s 25th anniversary

* Anything that involved needing to understand written or spoken Japanese – damn my disability. It’s also what stopped me checking out Square Enix’s text-heavy but pretty looking 3DS RPG ‘Bravely Default: Flying Fairy’ (wonder if they’ll change the name if it gets a Western release).

The new game for Biohazard (Resident Evil) is based on a ship, mocked up here

People playing on Sonic Generations

* A shed-ton of other things that google searches are telling me were at the event but I didn’t know about. Like, what?! The Behemoth (guys behind Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid) were there in person?! There were wearable animatronic cat ears that reacted to your mood?! Nani?!

Random note: it was announced that ‘Ni no Kuni’, the joint venture from animated studio Studio Ghibli and games developer Level-5, has received an early 2012 release date.

The Street Fighter X Tekken section focused on Ryu VS Kazuya

Square! A huge slime and chocobo hovered overhead

Due to all the crowds and hectic timing at the event, I didn’t get around to taking many photos/videos (especially since nearly all the booths banned such activity). However I’m in the process of stringing together all the quick little vids I did take along with some extra photos not embedded in the last few posts here. Hopefully you’ll get a bit of a feeling of what it was like there.

Here are some things we did get to catch at the 2011 Tokyo Game Show;

* This year, the event featured the wonderful tagline, “GAME-dancing your heart”. Fans could buy official bags and t-shirts featuring the phrase. The VIP ticket holders automatically got the t-shirt.

* A huge dragon figure dominating the Capcom stand, for the RPG adventure Dragon’s Dogma.

A dragon hovers over the players of Dragon’s Dogma

* Lots of cute Japanese ‘booth babes’ being swamped by guys (mostly) taking many photos, some being rather intrusive in my opinion. Some otaku were equipped with some insanely huge and expensive cameras.

* Some very well-made official and unofficial cosplayers of game characters.

* Huge vid-screens showing trailers and interviews for Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3, and Saints Row: The Third.

A demon girl poses for some cameras

Gladiator girl explains the selling points of the game

Smash Bros Brawl cosplayers among others

* I got to play on ‘Rhythm Thief R’, a fun 3DS game that seemed to me like a cross between Prof Layton, Elite Beat Agents and Lupin the 3rd.

* Played Rage for the PS3 – I think after playing Borderlands with Han, this game seemed somewhat disappointing, but maybe I just didn’t get enough time with it. One of the staff was really good with explaining the game modes in English to me. It had an interesting way of resurrecting your own character after getting shot to bits, using the two control sticks to match the patterns on screen that acted as a defibrillator.

* Assassins Creed Revelations – got to have a bash against random people on the multiplayer mode. I found out the only kill I made was against Louise, muhaha. Wasn’t used to the PS3 controller since I’d played the previous games on Xbox, but along with what was shown on the trailer, it looks like it’s gonna be an epic finish to the main series plot.

* Mass Effect 3 – played very nicely and Lou (who’s a total fan-girl of the series) played the demo twice (due to short queues) and we both can’t wait for the release. You got 15 minutes on an egg timer to play as much of the demo level as you could with some default character settings and some experience points to spend. I rushed on my play-through (I hate rushing) and ‘just’ beat the boss in time.

EA’s corner of TGS – the demo of FIFA 12 was next to Mass Effect 3

Louise being very excited to get an early play of Mass Effect 3

* Sonic Generations is beautiful. Half of it playing like the classic original games and the other half based on the decent bits of the more recent games. We had the option of playing one of two different levels (everyone went for the new 3D level rather than the well-known 2D level from the first game), and received a sheet of Sonic stickers for playing. We were actually playing on 3D TVs with 3D glasses on… that felt kinda weird and actually messed my play up a couple of times but I never have been good with 3D stuff.

* Saw a bit of the packed Street Fighter 4 tournament. The players were at God-like levels, but we had much more to see so didn’t stay long. We cheered seeing the odd English name on the obviously very Japanese-heavy knock-out tier list.

* The Konami stand had a collection of Metal Gear Solid models displayed next to the latest versions of the game.

Capcom showing off their latest 3DS game

One of the few videos for Rhythm Thief R on loop was an interview with contributing music artist Miwa

* Trading card games are still popular in Japan and were in ample supply everywhere. Papercraft models of various characters (like Sonic) also seemed to be scattered here and there.

* Smartphone games had their own dedicated section on the show floor. Popular brands such as Street Fighter, Monster Hunter and Space Invaders all had iOS or Android titles on display.

* Japanese universities pimping their video game programming and design courses. There were playable homebrew games on PC and DS, plus some brilliant artwork on the walls.

* Being handed various promotional gifts such as booklets, fans, DVDs, mini pencil boards, cards and carrying bags.

University’s booths showing off their own games and artwork

Bags, booklets and stickers obtained at TGS

Right, getting on with blogging about Japan despite now being back in England (and still not finding enough time), I shall restart with one of the events I went to that’ll be the most ‘out of date’.

17th September 2011

Louise, Graham, Edwards, and I took one of the Shinkansen (bullet trains) to Japan’s capital to catch the Tokyo Game Show (the rather famous once-yearly video game expo/convention).
To purchase tickets for this event, you had to buy them in advance via a machine in a combini (mini-mart like Seven-Eleven, Lawson or Family Mart). Rather fiddly but thankfully Graham helped us out with the excessive Japanese reading and staff questioning required. You could buy them on the day, but we knew they’d be a bit more costy and would also add to the queuing.
Ooooouh and queuing there would be. We turned up a little ‘early’ but after we got off yet another train, we were surrounded by people all flooding to the same place – the convention center ‘Makuhari Messe’.

The main queue to get into the TGS	TGS entrance	Konami showing an interview and yet more queues to get to certain games
While in Japan, I rarely saw Xbox games in shops compared to other consoles, but this was the first sight I saw upon entering	Itagaki Street DS features characters and themes from both Dragon Quest and Super Mario Bros. It’s based on the classic Monopoly-like game with some Mario Party-esque elements added	Various stewards directed incoming visitors to the show. There were also some staff with megaphones, enticing gamers to their booths with promotional gifts

Unlike Graham and Edwards, Lou and I didn’t get the chance to buy the limited ‘VIP’ tickets, so while they skipped ahead and got to go in an hour earlier than everyone else, we found ourselves in a very large queue. We thought we were pretty far ahead but actually after the bag-checks… it just kept going. This thing wrapped round the entire building and snaked in on itself several times to cope with the sheer volume of people attending. Must have took us two hours to get in, it even rained at one point and this nice Japanese fella shared his umbrella with us. I noticed a fair few people playing on their DS or PSP to pass the time.

Marc leading Sonic to victory

Louise posing with the famous Sonic

Is Graham (and his epic t-shirt) faster than Sonic?

When we finally got in, we were overwhelmed, there was so much going off and it was so difficult to move through the large crowds. It was also muggy hot, everyone got rather sweaty.
We couldn’t try out many of the games due to massive queues, and time restrictions made it impossible to see everything on offer. Some things only happened on particulars days as well (we were only there for one of the two days it was open to the public – the press and companies had access previously on the 15 and 16th).

A giant ‘Nendoroid’ version of Miku Hatsune

I’ll save what else I was writing about the event for later as I’ve found I’m taking far too long over typing things up and getting everything edited.
Ven’s words of wisdom; “Break it up into a greater number of smaller posts. Will be easier to write and easier to read.”
I’ll share some photos amongst them too, plus I’m making a small video.

Official TGS website – http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/english/