I’ve always been a gamer and a fan of Japanese games it seemed a great opportunity to go to the Tokyo Game Show annual event whilst it was on, not really knowing what to expect. I was guessing just a few stands from video game designers with some videos showing their latest offerings.
Tokyo Game Show 2011
As it turns out, it was a bit like this, but you can also play the new games too, before they were released anywhere in the world. From an industry who make extra money from special and limited edition versions seemingly all the time now, this felt like quite a bonus. After all, whats better than trying something before everyone else in the world gets to?
Street Fighter X Tekken anyone?
If you’re a gamer I would recommend you going, you’ll get a lot out of it, a bit like if you’re into manga and go to visit Comiket (I wasn’t so got a lot less out of that day). However if you’re not you may still get some enjoyment out of the cosplay (again same as the Comiket cosplay), however I think you’ll get more out of looking at the cosplay of either event if you have some idea on who everyone is trying to dress up as.
Figurines for sale
As well as the developer areas (usually surrounded by long queues of people eagerly awaiting to play demo’s of the latest games), there is also a merchandise area for the bigger companies like Capcom and Square-Enix to sell their junk to people wanting to give their cash for any game tie-in product available (ahem-I did this). Which is also accompanied by long queues (yes a queue to pay money inside an event you already paid money to get into, nice business model that one).
Mario and Sonic goods in fluffy form
There is also speeches and announcements from the developers about their upcoming games and a very big arena with competitive people battle it out in fighting games to win a championship. Don’t take this as a joke though, the prize to win this varies per developer, but Arc System Works who made the Blazblue fighting series offered the equivalent of $100,000 for the winner of it’s competition, who knew video games could be so profitable?
Audience watching the competition
To finish off the days, they had a charity auction of various video game based paraphernalia. The best things were signed items, but I felt it was a missed opportunity to give away some more retro items and create value within the industry. Development drawings or story scripts for example. But still, they raised a lot of money for the Japan relief fun for the years tsunami and earthquake victims so who’s complaining?
Auction of video game items
Within the next few posts I’ll bring you some Cosplay photography from the event :-)
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