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Day One: Tokyo Game Show

Posted by Trejkaz Sat, 23 Sep 2006 09:26:24 GMT

Looks like I have a bit of free time. Not enough time to post photos though, I guess that can come later. I don’t have enough time to properly hyperlink this entry right now, so if you find reference to something you’ve never heard of, JFGI.

I left the Tokyo Game Show a little early – not unexpected, since Nintendo never attend said event and most of the games I’m interested in are theirs. Square Enix and Sony both had guys walking around with signs telling people not to take photos, which was irritating because wanted to show people what Square Enix’s booth sign looked like, it was great stuff. In any case, I’m sure some news site will have a good picture of everything since official press are apparently unencumbered by stupid rules. They cut queues, too, the bastards.

Sega’s stand was fabulous. I got some videos of the booth babes playing Sonic, Bleach and Monkey Ball (Monkey Race in this particular case) for Wii, but they weren’t letting any random people try it out so as far as we know it could all have been choreographed. There wasn’t an awful lot of other Wii stuff around, though I found Elebits later. Still, you have to respect Sega for their choice in players. Where do they find all these cute women who are good at video games? Seriously… is this another Japanese thing?

I also found a booth which had almost no crowd, displaying some new force feedback technology. I’m pretty sure it was these guys. If consumers have their heads screwed on properly, their new technology should end up in every PDA and phone, if not all game controllers. Their demo system was a PDA where you press the buttons drawn on the screen, and it feels like you’re pressing a hard button – very nice stuff. They were saying that Sony had chosen to remove force feedback from the PS3 because it “interfered with the motion detector”, but actually this company also had a concept controller which had both and worked fine. They also had a demo of Jedi Knight II which was modified so that you can feel the light saber buzzing lightly when it’s idle.

Hudson were hosting a kind of multiplayer tournament where you play against gravure idols. For obvious reasons, the queues into this were enormous, so I just didn’t bother. Again, a fakedodgily acquired press pass would have been really useful here. ;-)

There were various random tournaments for other games strewn around the various halls. I saw a guy playing some new breed of Puyo Puyo and owning all the other players, Kousaka-style.

The place was hella crowded. I overheard several people bitching that it was more crowded than E3. I got through it all in about 2-3 hours since I didn’t really find any demos that I wanted to play and that were allowed to be played. Ended up with a bag full of stuff which looks pretty but ultimately is impossible for me to read.

Bunch of us ran into each other at the exit and decided to go on a mission into the nearby shopping district. I didn’t find any awesome random stuff, but I did buy a copy of the Suzumiya Haruhi official fan book, since we happened to find a bookstore and I happened to walk into the section with the artbooks. So after that I had ended up with one more piece of pretty stuff which is impossible for me to read. ;-)

So that’s the summary of my day. And now for the random crap:

Japanese keyboards are laid out awfully. Worse than a UK one, seriously. And UK ones are already pretty awful. You simply shouldn’t put four different characters onto a single key. There is no way a new user will figure out how to type the others without losing some hair. Poor hair.

This hotel has escalators which turn on when you approach them – a nice idea that I’ve never seen before. It also has a full IMAX theatre and a bowling alley inside, but I get the feeling that the prices for both of the above will be escalated so it might be better to avoid them.

Also, the guidebooks never tell you some things… for instance, they never warn you that an iced coffee here doesn’t involve milk, or in fact any other dairy product. It’s still surprisingly good, though.

And now to actually check my mails.

I can’t check my Jabber messages from here, because the net cafe is owned by Yahoo – talk about an awful arrangement. Next time I find some place with a wifi hotspot and use my own laptop.

Over, and out.