21st - TOKYO GAME SHOW



For me, this is the highlight of our trip.  I didn't know the Tokyo Game Show would be going on when I planned the honeymoon, honest!  But since it was... might as well go, right?  Getting there was fun, we had to take a JR train.  The guy I bought the tickets from calculated my change with a abacus.  Neat!  So anyway, TGS was in yet another strange place, not actually in Tokyo, in like, you know, just the next megalopolis over, Chiba.  In some new city within Chiba that seems like it was just built yesterday and the people haven't moved in yet.  All clean and shiny and eerie, with perfect new train stations and shopping areas and huge sprawling convention centers and arching walkways leading over nice new wide avenues.  Right, you're probably sick of hearing this kind of stuff.  The game show then!



That's one of the three main halls, each huge.  We got there I think right as the doors were opening, and had to work our way through this long snaking line outside for about a half hour.  Inside was crowded, noisy, and confusing.  People bumping in to you with their stupid huge Xbox Live bags, pushing their way through to the different things being shown, kids running every which way.  I had a hard time actually dealing with the insanity and getting to see much real video game content there.  Most of the really big new games you had to wait in layers of line after line to see or play, so I mostly just browsed from a distance.




"Go Tokyo!"  "OK.."

I crashed my F-22 into Tokyo bay few seconds later.


The display for Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:




Here's one cool thing I saw.  A display for a new Capcom fighting game, called like Fighting All Stars, it looked like yet another 3D fighting game.  They were showing all the characters that appear in the game, and suddenly this appeared:



WHOA!  Mike Haggar?  Former Street Fighter and Mayor of Metro City?  In a new game!  Now that's news.  I'm probably about 6 months beind bringing this news to the world, but I thought it was cool.


Another huge display, for Namco, remember that Taiko drumming game I liked playing?  They're releasing the home version, but only in Japan, of course.   This game is clearly too cool for the US.



That's probably the game designer up there or something, I had no idea, but lots of people sure were interested in what he was saying.  Here's the lineup of people waiting to play at one of the zillion stations.



Special Taiko drumming game girl.  There were tons of girls around the Namco booth all dressed in these costumes.

     

Jenny sensed that I wanted a picture of her, but was afraid to ask so Jenny took her picture for me.  She is an example of what is known in the tradeshow industry by the technical term "booth babe".  The show was crawling with them, all passing out flyers and demo discs and little toys, asking you to come over and play whatever game their company is selling.  We took a collection of pictures of them:





She worked for Microsoft who was pushing their Xbox Live thing.



   



"Genki" means "healthy".





Their job is to attract you over to their booth.  She was the most "attractive".  Note the Capcom choker.


Here's one cool thing, Namco is coming out with a game soon called Dead or Alive Pro Beach Volleyball.  Suddenly at the Namco booth, these girls in bikinis came out and started handing out posters to everybody in the area.  There was a huge rush to get them towards the stage, and I quickly handed off the camera to Jenny and waded in to the battle.



Can you find me in there?



I got SO CLOSE to getting the poster!  SO CLOSE!!!  As they were running low on posters, all the people in the crowd pushed harder and harder, more and more frantically to get up there.  When they finally did run out, THE CROWD DIDN'T STOP!  They kept pushing up towards the stage, the girls jumped back and the crowd rushed in, I don't know why, maybe to tear the girls limb from limb to see if their guts are made of posters.  Finally the girls ran backstage and big security type guys came out to politely block the way back there.


Here's two of our favorite pictures, Jenny with Bomberman!  And Jenny with Ai Ai, you know, from Super Monkey Ball.  Immediately after taking the picture with Ai Ai, he came over and hugged me.






Me with booth babes.  The one in the picture on the left is supposed to be a girl Bomberman, you can tell by the little ball on top of her head.

   


After wandering around the main hall, and then having lunch (TGS had great food!) we started to notice something odd:





Oh, how cute, it looks like a few of the most hardcore fans showed up wearing primitive costumes.  We saw a few people like this walking around.  Then we went to the little outside area in between the main halls:



WHAT?  There were about a ZILLION people all dressed in really really really cool costumes, and then a ZILLION SQUARED people hanging around, taking pictures and getting autographs of the cosplayers.  For us, this became the point of the game show.  We spent pretty much the rest of the day hanging around in this area, taking pictures.  Now for our collection!


The single most popular costume was Chun Li, one of the characters from Street Fighter II and plenty of other games after that.  There were at least 10 girls there in different Chun Li costumes.  Each had a long line of guys waiting politely in line to take their picture.

   





 



Who wouldn't want Chun Li's autograph?


Second most common was Mai Shiranui from Fatal Fury.








The guy ahead of me in line spent quite a long time taking pictures of her.  He posed her all different ways and took all kinds of shots.  By the time it was my turn she seemed a little tired of the whole thing.


Street Fighter's Cammy.  This is a very authentic pose.




Not a very good picture, but I liked these Metal Gear Solid guys.  See in that game you have to sneak around a lot and you can see when the enemy soldiers get suspicious or alarmed by your noise by the ? and ! above their heads.




Final Fantasy XVMVMXVMMXVMVXVMXVCCCIIII or something.




No clue what she is, but I like the "SEXY DYNAMITE" purse in the background.




This picture I like more each time I see it.  Check out all the gawkers in the reflection.





Another really good one, again, no idea what she is.  Lots of them do hand gestures like that.




These guys are really cool! Too bad the guy on the left's 'Kwan Do' got cut off. I think they're supposed to be from Dynasty Warriors.




See the girl playing the flute?




Bunch of random costumes.




Jenny and lots of other people were waiting in line to take her picture, but somehow she let Jenny cut ahead and take her picture first.




Again, I'm just as confused as you.  If anybody knows who these unidentified characters are, let me know.




I don't know if she is a specific naughty nurse, or just a generic one.

 


This picture is really spooky and cool.




Another Final Fantasy character, with other cosplayers taking her picture.




Random cosplayers on the stairs.




We liked this group.  They were somehow the life of the party.  When we got overwhelmed with the crowd, Jenny and I went and sat on this staircase, and they were hanging around that area, constantly talking to each other and laughing.  But, as soon as you aim the camera at them, they snap into character.  Most of the cosplayers were like that, just regular kids giggling and talking, but as soon as the camera comes out, they pose and make angry (or cute or sad or whatever the character should be) faces.  Then typically they thank you for taking their picture.  You seem to be "allowed" to take as many pictures as you want, and even ask them to do particular poses for you.




Another of my favorites.




She's pretty cool, and see me in the backround on the stairs?





Somehow extremely happy and cute.





Not quite as happy and cute.








Felicia, from assorted Capcom games.

   


This robot guy's costume was really complicated, he had wires running everywhere and lots of blinking lights.  I walked up to him to take his picture, and right as I did he tore off his helmet and was sweating and obviously overheating (needs more heat sinks?).  I was going to abort and get his picture later, but it was too late, he saw my camera, and quickly wiped his sweat and said "hot!  hot!  hot!" and then took a breath and put the helmet back on and adjusted himself for photos.  So I took some.  In the picture on the right I caught him taking pictures of some of the other cosplayers which I thought was funny.

   


Mario, Princess Peach, and Toad, in costumes from the very latest Mario game, Mario Sunshine.  Mario's backpack is especially authentic, as well as the Princess's hairstyle.  That game came out just a few months before the game show.  They work fast!






Devil May Cry, a current popular game.




I call him SPACE JAMES DEAN.  Again, he was a normal, sort of akward young guy, hanging around and giggling, until Jenny took out the camera.  Then he immediately does this.





Finally, some of the scairest / best / strangest costumes we saw the whole time:


BUGS




BUGS!



BUGS!!!!




So that's it.  I wanted to buy a T-shirt or some other type of souveneir from the show, but I couldn't find anything I really liked.  They had one really nice Rockman (Mega Man) shirt, celebrating his 15th anniversary or something, but they only had it in small.  Oh well.  I did collect about 15 pounds worth of the flyers, little toys, discs, and other stuff the various booth babes were handing out.


The next day was our last day in Japan, we checked out and went to a fancy traditional Japanese restaurant in Ginza for lunch.  The food was really different.  Neither of us could completely deal with everything we had ordered (we just got two different set lunches, easy to order) so we did mix-and-match, probably ruining their delicately balanced meals.  When we finally got up to leave, one of the servers (all dressed in kimonos) called out something in Japanese, which caused them all to start moving around.  As we walked out, we found the entire staff of the restaurant lined up waiting for us, bowing and thanking us profusely.  Pretty nice way to end the trip!

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