Tokyo Game Show

This past weekend was a three day weekend for us, starting on Saturday and extending until today, Monday, September 29th. The holiday we were celebrating was "Respect for the Aged" day, which is, when you think about it, an interesting holiday to have. I doubt it would be possible to have such a day in the US, but since Japan's cultural values originally stemmed from the Chinese confucianism... I suppose I can't be too surprised. 


Anyways.


This weekend was also Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, where the video game industry showcases and unveils new games in Chiba, Japan (the same place where Tokyo Disney is, which isn't technically in Tokyo proper). Basically, it's a giant video game convention and expo, with days for the general public as well as days for people who are in the industry only. Nintendo never goes, but several other big names, like Sony, Sega, SquareEnix, and Konami have exhibits and booths. Sometimes they announce new games and have them available to try out if you're willing to wait in a Disneyland-on-a-holiday-sized line. Or they'll show trailers or give out free stuff. It's kind of like comicon, but for Japan and video games. 


And since we were a) in Japan and b) on a three day weekend, a couple of us decided to go up for TGS and to hang out in Tokyo. I mean seriously, when else am I going to have this opportunity? 


We left on the night bus (which was not made for gaijin sized people, nor people who can't sleep anywhere/on buses/without moving) and made it up in time to hit up the show on Saturday. Holy wow the line was long. The line pretty much had us walking around the entire convention center, which is at least as big as the one in LA I think. 


Once we were in, it was like... woah. Woah. So many video games. So little time. They had demos and trailers of Final Fantasy 13-2, as well as Street Fighter Cross Tekken (which looks absolutely AMAZING). There was a giant dragon (for Dragon Dogma) and, of course, a bunch of Monster Hunter stuff. SquareEnix had a store that sold expensive stuff for the 25th anniversary of Dragon Quest. There's also a store in Shinjuku (that we failed to get to on time by ten minutes) which had more... reasonably priced things and didn't involve waiting in a long line. 


Japanese cosplayers at TGS put pretty much all the other cosplayers at any kind of convention, from the small Fanime ones to Anime Expo and Comicon to SHAME. SEriously. The costumes people had were nothing short of amazing. Except one. There was an... anime-ish version of Link someone did and the face was just.. creepy. Like those cabbage patch kid dolls. That kind of creepy. 


I was very pleased to see The Behemoth (creators of Castle Crashers) had a booth there (and a giant flying chicken) with demos and merch. I was not pleased to find that they sold out of EVERYTHING (for sunday included) by the time I visited them. Because ohmigod. They had figurines and cell phone charms that were AMAZING. I'm still kinda sad I didn't get one.


They also had free schwag; I got this tote that freaking lights up. That's my favorite, probably. There were also a lot of folders, and even more fans (since it was ridiculously humid and hot that day, those were pretty popular). I got a Ragnarok CD and a couple more things.


The game show itself though, is split up between three buildings, with different areas for each exhibitor to set up shop. There was a store dedicated to music from SquareEnix games. That took willpower (though the fact that for one CD, the asking price was around 3,500 yen or ~$35, was a good deterrent too). The cosplayers usually hung out in between buildings, where occasionally, you could catch a breeze.


I didn't have the patience (or the interest, for those with a shorter wait) to wait for any of the games (also, I heard that for the new portable sony device, the PS Vita, had to start turning people away at 10:30. The show ended at 5.) I did play one game though; in Japan it's Dynasty Warriors 6, but in the US we're on DW 7 already.  I kinda embarrassed myself at first because I forgot that on the Playstation, the buttons mean kind of the opposite things. So I was pressing circle or whatever button was on the bottom to confirm at the main screen, and it kept going back to the title screen, and then the lady came over and told me which button to press.


It's been seriously too long. I should get a PS3, heheheh...


The graphics for the characters were kinda sexy, which made sense since it was a PS3 game. I waited for 70 minutes to play that game, and then when it came down to it, ran around killing things before getting locked out of the gate. Then I wandered around and had no idea what to do... But the move sets were awesome~ I didn't even get to do the musou powered up moves (I had forgotten how). But ohhhhhhh man. Oh man. So much fun. I definitely can't get that game in Japanese though... too much information is conveyed rather... quickly, or only by ear. My Japanese isn't that good yet (maybe someday though). KT, the people who made the game and who were running the booth had this promotion going on where if you played three games, you got free schwag. But the other games that looked cool all had long waits, and the ones that didn't were still at least twenty minutes. One of them was this "fab game" (like literally, that was in the title) on the DS, and another was a horse racing game for the kinect. You had to pretend like you were riding a race horse for that game.


My dignity was worth more than the free stuff I could have gotten, I think.


I didn't get into the squareenix store, nor the music store (and besides, the CDs are ridiculously expensive). I did linger around the Street Fighter x Tekken booth. That one looks pretty freaking awesome. Shame I'm not better at fighter games.


One of my favorite things at TGS was this booth area where they had people draw things on post card sized transparent sticker sheets, as support for Japan kinda (or a message about TGS). They were doing a charity for the Tohoku Earthquake; I think the general gist of it was Play video games and be genki, or happy. I forget the precise message. But we drew things and added them to the other hundred on the wall. Some people (re: lots of Japanese people) are ridiculously talented at drawing. It makes me a little jealous sometimes, haha. But then I remember that I'm not actually awful at drawing, and then I have to shut my mouth. 


Either way though, Tokyo Game Show was pretty freaking awesome. We only went for the saturday, but one of my friends went for both days. Instead, we went to Kamakura, but I'll post about that some other time. I kinda fell asleep in my contacts; waking up being able to see, while nice, is really really not a good thing. 


Oh and it's raining now. I guess fall has finally decided to grace us with its presence. Last night when the taxi dropped me off, the nice driver drove all the way up to practically the door... of the apartment building next to where I live. I didn't have the heart to tell him that it was the wrong building, so I just got out there and waited at the door until he was out of sight before going to my own house.