I went to the Tokyo game show a long long time ago, maybe even in September!! I genuinely just forgot to write about one of the coolest things I've been to while here in Tokyo.
Before you all raise your eyebrows at the idea of spending an entire day at a show where people just play games and mill about: Heres a little fact file for you:
- Forty-two percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).So, i'm in a perfect demographic to have a valid reason to loiter around a selection of PS4 hardware (other consoles are available) and otherwise spend my day considering skill points and doritos (+4 flavour).
When I arrived at the event there was a mind boggling number of people waiting........
How to make a simple but long lasting queue for any day of the week:
- take one of the largest cities in the world
- add a pinch the fact that it is known for being technologically advanced
- combine with a pre-mixed packet of the largest anticipated game show in the world
- season to taste.
We were waiting for what seemed like 5.2 centuries, we even had to resort to using an umbrella as a parasol to avoid potential sunstroke.... Living in Tokyo you become used to standing on the subway for extended periods of time in the cosy hollow of a abnormally tall man's armpit, but the sheer amount of humans in one place at this show was astounding and the number did nothing but increase as the day progressed. It got to the stage where upon falling into the flowing river of a crowd, you would be whisked away in the direction of the people current never to be seen again.
The highlight of the game show for me was watching the final fantasy XV trailers as the square enix booth. This is because final fantasy XIII and XIII-2 are the 3rd most played games of my life at over 90 hours a piece. (my top played game is Pokemon sapphire at 634 hours). 
The trailer for the new instalment looked AMAZING, I couldn't take any videos of this awesome sneak-peak because the crowd handlers would get angry and wave 'no photography' signs in your face, however despite this I did sneak a few photos anyway! The game itself is astoundingly beautiful and the team at square enix has really outdone themselves this time, it has made me want the game so much and it hasn't even got a release date yet. They have changed up the turn based paradigm mechanism we have been seeing in most of the recent instalments of the final fantasy game series, and I can't wait to see what effect this will have on the game play (and pretty much absorb into the TV screen for a few hundred hour not to be seen in a social context apart from when eating)
The new consoles also featured heavily at the show with 2 of the biggest stands being from Xbox and playstation respectively. They had workable demos of most release titles, so you could try out the PS4 and Xbox1 before their launch dates! The downside was, if you wanted to play one of the games you had to queue for over 100 minutes to get a ticket for 5 minutes demo.
Two of the games I really liked the look of were; 'deep down' and 'psycho break' (the latter has had a title change to something extra boring like 'Mr Arthritis's monotonous adventure' for UK release) These 2 games were being demonstrated on some of the biggest screens I've ever seen and the animals, dragons and people look almost as realistic as a film scene. It seems crazy that only 10 years ago I was admiring the a bunch of grey, jerky, square ass pixels and enthusing about their high quality lifelike appearance.
Of course no Japanese gaming and general nerd fest would be complete without a little cosplay!! If by some small chance you live at the bottom of the sea, or in a small winding crevasse and you haven't heard of cosplay; it means costume play. As in, people (mostly women) dress up as their favourite characters from animations and games and generally flaunt about in skimpy clothes while drooling gaping mouthed men take pictures of them. Here are three of my favourites!!
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| This is lighting and vanille from final fantasy. They look really like the characters its actually quite impressive. although I do predict that the vast majority of small asian girls wearing this costume would probably achieve the same level of similarity. |
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| This dude is a ..... I have no idea. He was probably very happy with himself though as he was chosen to appear on the stage as one of the best cosplay artists at the show. The Japanese people also seemed to enjoy his look very much. |
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| and this is Blanka. I spent a lot of time on street fighter 4 last year (millions and millions of days) and the character I play was this dude. The crazy Brazilian chlorophyll-coated, raised by electric eels monkey man and I had a great relationship as I electrocuted all the other players. When I saw this guy dressed up so awesomely, I chased him like a loon half way across the warehouse to take this picture. and I'm glad I did. |
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| good time had by all. |
thanks for reading! ill be back sooner than you think!!!
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