Tokyo Game Show 2009 (photo blog)

Today I was at Tokyo Game Show (came back 5 about 3 hours ago actually) so I wanted to post this before the day is officially out in an hour and a half. I think something like the TGS deserves more photos and less text, a photo blog format if you will, (which coincidentally makes my life easier too ;)) so here goes:

   Tokyo Game Show took place in Makuhari Messe, a big exhibition hall in Chiba (for those unfamiliar with Japanese geography – Chiba is not in Tokyo, it is its own prefecture). This translated to waking up pretty early and travelling for an hour and a half so that I could make it there before the show started at 10 am. It was pretty interesting to listen to all the “foreigners” on the train, talking about their impressions about Japan.

Even thought I made it there about 15 minutes before 10 am, the line already reached outside. Thankfully though, Makuhari Messe is huge and once the doors opened everyone got in. This will of course not be quite the case during the “public days” on Saturday and Sunday when the number of attendees will probably grow ten fold (if not much more).

There were a lot of famous game companies but some of the booths were pretty specific to Japan – for example this one by DoCoMo, the cell phone carrier. They had a lot of cell phone games on display and even had these huge walls with free games (though they were either feature or time limited. I did download a copy of Metal Slug M1 for my cell phone though). The lights on the wall are touchless (IC) terminals so putting your phone next to them automatically directs your phone to the download site for that game.

Some of the more familiar faces, Konami and Square Enix, creators of the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series.

 Microsoft had a pretty strong showing in a huge “booth”, showing off both exclusives like Halo 3 ODST and Forza, as well as non-exclusives such as Fifa 10. They also had a “secret” room set up for demoing Project Natal but they only let in the national television channel (NHK) and other “big media”.  One could look through the transparent stripes looking into the demo-room though and watch people play with Natal – it seems like they were having fun. I saw a part of the video they shot inside on NHK Nightly News tonight.

 

Of course no game show would be complete without the pre-requisite pretty women calling the participants over. Pretty much all of the big booths had a few and they somehow managed to smile and pose for pictures for the whole duration of the show which is no easy feat.

  

Game companies used a lot of other “gimmicks” to attract attention too. From a Mercedes used by Sony for their Gran Turismo franchise to the fighting statues (static except for the floor they were on which was rotating) for Tekken 6, there were a lot of different things. One particularly interesting one was at the Modern Warfare 2 booth, which used fake snow to “snow” on the people watching their preview video.

By 5 o’clock I could no longer feel my feet from the constant walking around. I think it was definitely worth it though. And as an added bonus there was this tank/robot hybrid thing on the way to the station flanked by 2 female “soldiers” – all characters from a game of course.