Nerd alert! - Tokyo Game Show

[Caustic Saint]

Tokyo Game Show!!!!!

September 25th and 26th at Makuhari Messe. And just 3 weeks after I arrive. Could my timing be any better?

I was under the impression that this was always a Tokyo Big Sight event. Anybody know why they'd change the venue?

[Kanchou]

Ooh, lucky. I'll be arriving September 13th, so I guess it's good timing for me as well...

[Steve Bildermann]

Nippon Convention Center (Makuhari Messe)
2-1 Nakase, Mihama-ku, Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture

September 24(Fri.),2004: Business Day*
10:00-17:00
*Admission is limited to industry participants

September 25(Sat.)-26(Sun.), 2004: Open to the public
10:00-17:00 (No entry after 16:00)

Tokyo Game Show

[emperor]

Went last year: Good fun.
Loadsa Cosplay peeps and their photographically inclined admirers there too.

Although, the food wasnt great and rather pricey as I remember.

[Caustic Saint]

Search function, guys.....

I'll only be able to make it on Sunday the 26th. Anybody want to make it an FG day?

[Kuang_Grade]

The TGS is pretty much a blast, although just like spending several hours in an extremely loud and crowded arcade, it can be quite exhausting. And the food is pretty bad, although I would imagine that this subculture mostly subsists on items that can be drunk or inhaled.

And it certainly helps to be young, female, and in a short skirt to get the obsessive cosplay photographers interest. No one was interested in this guy standing in the foreground (and it looks like

[Taro Toporific]

Tokyo Game Show!!!!!
September 25th and 26th at Makuhari Messe.

Here's a "reporter" Zoe Flower who blogged the Tokyo Game Show and the booth babes for GameSpy..... Another n00b reporter does Japan from a female perspective, hee, hee.

Zokyo.Pop! -- Zoe's TGS 2004 BlogTelevision star, magazine columnist, and video game addict Zoe Flower was part of our TGS crew. Follow the Misadventures of Von Blondie in the heart of Japan.
By Zoe Flower Monday, Sept 27th
The Journey Ends with Journey -- 1:11PM
....I had a sushi platter that included an urchin dish that I have heard has a "challenging" texture. Now I love raw oysters and strange foods, so I figured I'd be okay with it since I was promised a lovely taste. So without too much consideration, I chucked the thing in my mouth and chomped down gingerly. It was at this point I started to use any possible mental image I could come up with to stop myself spitting the foul paste out of my mouth and on to the table. I was also hoping that my eyes would not pop out of my head as I held my breath and chewed as best I could. Yes, the texture is not right. It's like a thick yellow ooze that seems to be alive in your mouth. It drips down between your molars and swims across your gums. And it was the taste that just about did me in. At moments it conjured up thoughts of gasoline, rotting fish, and bile in varying percentages. I kept my composure and digested the foul evil nastiness but that was the end of my urchin encounters most definitely. I didn't have it in me to eat the last piece on my plate, a simple cocoon of salmon roe.

.....I was contemplating stealing the dev kit from the EA booth when most people were photographing some seriously slutty booth babes writhing about on the hood of a car. But I found myself caught up in the booth babeness -- moreso because I was dumbfounded when I witnessed a 50-year old man bend down beside the car so that he could snap a few pictures on his camera phones from an angle that would be fit for a website such as "upskirts.com". Pervert. Of course, 15 teenagers followed suit and I have to admit the little minxes weren't shy about posing at any fathomable position or angle. I encouraged Ryan to shoot some of it for "B-Roll" just so he could tell people that its part of his job to direct porn.

[Taro Toporific]

The aftermath of the Tokyo Game Show...(please note the JapanInc site is mega-farkqued up and may not display this link properly.

Via JapanInc Magazine's, Issue No. 291. Thursday, September 30, 2004
VIEWPOINT: Playing it Safe -- Our '04 Tokyo Game Show Report
Last week's Tokyo Game Show is the final major industry trade event of the year before the crucial Christmas period.
70 percent of all video game and console sales are made during the winter months -- so the stakes out at the Makuhari exhibition hall are always high.
We took our seats on the Chiba-bound train, notebooks at the ready, but we were prepared for the worst. The press on Japan's gaming industry has been gloomy in recent years, with industry sales reportedly off some 40 percent from their peak in 1997.
Gaming, like pop stars, supermodels and TV shows, needs to be red-hot in order stay cool.
"Today's young talent in Japan is no longer interested in game design," a veteran publishing executive told us a couple weeks before the show. "They're actually turning back to manga and anime, stuff like that. Even novels. As an outlet for talented storytellers, game design has become kind of static."
But the show itself was hardly static. We were greeted by all the usual glitz, and the short-skirted promotional girls -- the so-called "booth babes" -- were as sprightly as ever....
<snip>
....Overall, the games on display looked and played beautifully. We had few complaints. And titles like Metal Gear Solid 3, Halo 2, Final Fantasy XI and Devil May Cry 3 are evidently going to be big hits. But it's the titles themselves that were most worrying. They are all merely the latest rounds of already successful series. The games were all great, and will likely serve their publishers' missions by selling in the millions. But there was very little in the way of vibrant originality. Given the massive range of titles on display, it was odd to feel an overwhelming sense of safety. We departed Chiba satiated but hardly stimulated.
The industry may be acquiring sophistication, but much like Hollywood, it has also learned that the tried and well-tested -- while cowardly -- is what brings in the big cash.
-- The Editors

[Kanchou]

It was interesting. I played Halo 2 (I think my team won... I did fairly well), and I whupped up on some people in Counter-Strike: Source.

I can't beleive I didn't notice that NFS: Ricer 2 had a riced-out Celica on display...

I would have played Metal Gear Solid 3 was it not for the huge-ass line.

[Caustic Saint]

Anybody going?

I know I'll be there on Saturday for sure, and maybe Sunday if I don't get my fill of it in one day.

[Grumblebum]

I'll be there on Sunday. My boss thinks its a good idea for me to go.

I love my new job.

[Taro Toporific]

Caption:
SEPTEMBER 16, CHIBA, JAPAN:Women dress up as a charactor [sic] from Gravity's game "Raganarok" pose during the Tokyo Game Show 2005....which takes place from September 16 for 3 days is expected to attract 150,000 visitors.

[emperor]

WTF!?

[Grumblebum]

From what I've read about the new Nintendo controller designs, they look to be very cool - a real step forward for game controllers.
The time may be coming to invest in Nintendo hardware again (the last Nintendo box I owned was a Super Famicon..)

[PaiZuki]

>>>>>>>NEWB ALERT

so yea, im in town actually on a buisness trip, and part of it is to go to Tokyo game show. Having been to E3 in the states on multiple occasions, TGS is pretty small. The free swag is pretty abismal as well. CHeers guys!
let teh newb bashing begin.

[Taro Toporific]

TGS is pretty small. The free swag is pretty abismal as well.

TGS' swag is gr-r-r-eat if count the booth babes. How many did you take on industry day?

[PaiZuki]

Not bad haul.
Some tshirts, a lot of those plastic fans that they give out on the street, but for stuff like the bleach game that is coming out, sadly for Gamecube. I got a pretty cool kojima project medailon and a FF7 Shinra powercompany washcloth, but aside that, just the standard postcards and such. Squaresoft was having a pretty good gimic, play this new online game they have and depending on how many kills you get, depens on the prize. Best prize was a usb drive, probably only 256k or something but free is always nice. Exite (the search engine company) had a cheezy internet crane game, but if you won like 3 times or something they gave you a 1gig iriver.
There were some tshirts to be had, but nothing spectacular. I think the best shirt was for a game called A3, it was a swank shirt, but all those point and click MMORPG:s are the same, ya know.
As for conventions, i go to about 10-15 conventions in a year, and on my ConventionMeter TGS gets about a 6. JAMMA, the Japanese Arcade Machine MA (Forgot what they stand for) convention was smaller but way better from a swag standpoint. THey were showing off all the new crane games, and the best part was they were free... but they had real prizes inside, i have so much omiyage for my trip home its awesome.
Japan definitely breeds their booth bunnies better, thats for sure. I would go to Tokyo Auto Salon just for that...

[Caustic Saint]

Yeah, the swag was underwhelming, but the show was fun - if a bit small.

I got to play all the Xbox 360 games I wanted to (of the titles on display, anyways) and checked out some PS2 and PSP stuff. Katamari Damacy on the PSP was nice, and is probably the title it'll take to get me to pick up a 2.0 unit.

I'm kind of torn on the 360 right now. I was all set to get one on launch day here in Japan, but the region-locking makes me not so sure now. If MS wants it to take off in Japan, they really need to let it play as many titles as possible. (Since I want to use Live on the 360 I'll be keeping the console in its original state, so mixing and matching game regions won't be an option.)

I'll probably import a US model, but I want to know what the launch lineup for the US will be before I commit to anything. The J-launch doesn't have anything I'm craving and PGR3 won't be out here until January.