A Partially Active Weekend

I had a fairly active past weekend. On Saturday I went to Tokyo Game Show, and it was ok. We left around about 7am to get on the train, got to the city around 10, and then waited in line in the hot sun for about 2 hours until we were able to go inside.

It was fairly easy finding our way there by train. We basically followed the crowd, about 99% of the people on the train were all going to TGS.

Once we finally got inside there was quite a bit to see.

Unfortunately the main things I had originally wanted to see while at TGS weren't there. Specifically Nintendo and the Wii U and the new 3DS stuff they were releasing. They had only shown it to the press, but didn't have anything showing on the public days.

Plus everything had an extremely long wait time to be able to see anything. We got in around 12:00, and they closed around 5:00 so if I had waited in some of these lines I'd only be able to see and play maybe 2 different games. If Nintendo's stuff had been there it might have been worth it, but I didn't see the point of waiting for many other things.

The one company that I enjoyed looking at their stuff and was also surprised that they had shown up at all was Behemoth Studios.

I wasn't expecting them to be here because they I was pretty sure they were primarily an American developer, and didn't know much of what they did overseas. They were showing off their new game Battle Block Theater. Which they allowed me to take some video of (unlike almost every other company who wouldn't let you take pictures of any of their games)

This is a video of two little kids playing the game and not doing very well. They couldn't seem to figure it out. One of the people working at the booth was trying to help them but she didn't really seem to know how to play the game either.

This is of a different set of people playing. They were doing slightly better and actually completed the full demo they had available.

Then I got a turn to play it, but since it was co-op I needed a partner. No one else was around so I got to play with one of the workers at the booth explaining the game. She didn't seem like she had ever played the game before. I had to at one point explain to her how to climb up a wall, and how to throw an item. It kind of caught me off guard since she was there to basically show the game, yet she couldn't play it very well. But I still enjoyed myself playing the game, and look forward to its release soon as I have bought all of Behemoth's other games that have come out, and this one looks to be just as good.

Soon after that I walked around and took quite a few pictures of booth babes and cosplayers.

Booth Babes are basically women hired to dress scantily and be eye candy to attract people to the booths.  I took pictures of about 50 different ones and wont upload them all here so here is a link to an online album with all of the photos. I'll just post some that stuck out to me.

Not all booth babes are the same, one was a giant Hatsune Miku.

I think this was some kind of Booth Ninja

I was pretty sure this was a guy at first.

One booth just had dolls in school girl uniforms standing there. Kind of lazy if you ask me.

Here is the link to an online album with the rest of the Booth Babes 

TGS Booth Babes Gallery

Also I took a bunch of pictures of cosplayers. Basically people dressing up like video game characters.  Took tons of these pictures as well, so I'll just post some and a link to the online album.

First cosplayers I took a picture on. Pretty sure the one on the right is a guy dressing as a girl character.

There was a really bad Master Chief cosplayer there. Up close the costume just looked kind of bad.

Also probably a dude.

This one as well.

She gave up wearing the costume probably because it was so hot.

Here is the link to the rest of the photos.

TGS Cosplay Gallery

Other than that, since I wasn't willing to wait in line for 2 hours, I spent a lot of my time around the Indie/ College student area. This was an area were independent developers, and college students can show off their art work, and games that had made.

There were tons of colleges there.

This was my favorite part of TGS. Mostly because there were no lines, and they had some fairly interesting and unique games. Some did have issues with like control and the camera angles, but other than that they were good all around. I filled out tons of surveys telling them about what I thought about the games. I also took some videos of 3 of them

These are just some AR cards. Nothing really special, but AR has always been pretty cool, and from what I saw they were the only people to have anything AR related at the show.

This was an interesting block throwing game. You had to take your environment apart to fight, if you did to much you would fall off. Was very fun to play.

This one is self explanatory just watch. You won't see anything like this coming from major developers.

Also there was I think a birth giving game.

That's a guy wearing some kind of dress, and he has to I think "push" the baby out or something. I dunno it was weird.

Here's a link to the rest of the pictures from these booths.

TGS Indie/ College Booths

The only other place worth noting was the Family Corner.

They seemed to be showing more of the types of games I would want to see, specifically the new Kamen Rider Fourze game. Unfortunately I was not allowed to enter. Only children and their parents.

Then 5:00 came around and Stephanie and I headed back. Alex and Quick, the other two who came, left early without telling us, apparently because Alex was sick. On the way back we stopped by Akihabara for a bit because it was on the way. Found a couple more video game stores. Stephanie was looking for a Gameboy Advanced SP, and I had seen one in a store for cheap the first time I went to Akihabara, but since it was night I couldn't find the store again. Then we got back on the train to Hachioji but were delayed for about an hour. On the little TV screen on the trains the thing said "train delayed due to human entering" We were pretty sure this meant that someone had killed themselves by throwing themselves onto the train tracks, but we were not entirely sure. Unfortunately this caused us to get back very late around 11:00 which is past curfew for the girls living at the dorms. But Stephanie didn't get in trouble for it luckily.

Then on Sunday I was lazy all day. The other people in my dorm block all went to Tokyo Tower and the shopping areas around there, but I choose to sleep in and rest a bit.

All in all TGS was kind of average, nothing really would make me want to go back next year. Unless I can somehow get a press pass. The press go on separate days from everyone else, and probably don't have to wait in a bunch of lines to see the stuff.