Tokyo Game Show 2015

I went to my first ever Tokyo Game Show on Friday and despite it being Business Day, there were still a lot of people queuing up at the several booths with the Ghost in the Shell exhibition being a 40-50 minute wait. That was the only one that I had wanted to catch but ended up not getting to see.

The scale of the event and booths were so impressive I could become a game otaku myself. You could try every new game and technology there was on display. One of the largest booths was the Star Wars online game that recreates the story of the movie and allows for up to 40 people to play in two teams against each other. The sight was more like an official gaming competition than an exhibition.

StarWars

The photo above probably doesn’t give the magnificence enough justice but it’s the best I could get. Twitch was also giving out free T-shirts if you win in a coin toss game. I lost it the first time and wanted to try again but didn’t have the time to do so after that.

There were also several live gaming from Biohazard (or “Resident Evil” in the US)  to Clash of Clans; from Love Live rhythm game to Street Fighter. It was interesting to watch a couple of good players up against each other in the classic series in renewed versions, I didn’t even recognise some of the characters.

StreetFighter

I mean like who is Rashid? Anyhow, the guy on the left plays Rashid and the lady on the right plays Chun-Li. Guess who won?

StreetFighter2

Tada! This lady won! And it appears that she’s known as a strong player. On a separate note, the Chun-Li to the right is a guy.

Ayaman

Ayaman Japan was also there doing their usual stuff of dirty jokes. Unfortunately, while their fame did draw the small crowd to watch them, their vulgar comedy didn’t sit too well and drew cold response.

Lobi

There were also many non-machine games such as this where participants get into a bubble and stand on a block on one foot. The two girls at the top then each roll a giant ball down toward the participants and if they remain standing on the block after being hit, they win a prize. No idea what the prize is though.

And the highlight of the event is…

ClashofClans

Hot girls! See the girl at the bottom right? I shall leave the link to the larger resolution version so you can zoom in and see her. Being a blogger, I should probably have taken close-up shots of all the girls for you to see.

No! The highlight was virtual reality.

Sony

This is the Sony VR headset and besides this, there were also several other companies exhibiting their VR technology. Ghost in the Shell was one of those which seemed really impressive and which I heard had several rave reviews. Needless to say, the graphics were so amazing, it’s hard to imagine these when I first had my hands on the very first version of the Super Mario Bros.

The most surprising thing was, I didn’t know The Elder Scrolls was by DMM.com. The company is probably more well-known for adult videos and has been expanding their business by dabbling in English language lessons, stock exchange, and games, so it gave an impression that it’s not putting much effort into these projects. That, apparently, is not true as The Elder Scrolls seems to be a high-quality game that is doing very well.

This is also the first time that foreign exhibits outnumber local exhibits. The news noted that games used to cost between $200,000 to $1 million to produce but while overseas gaming companies are taking high risks spending on graphics at an upwards of a whooping $200 million per game, Japanese companies are more risk-averse, holding back in a hope of gunning for another simpler Mario-like classic hit that can last generations and generations with simple version alternations. It’s hard to say which would be a better bet, but for hardcore gamers, the graphic-intensive games might do better. Nevertheless, the number of casual gamers is not to be taken lightly, and these groups are typically less concerned about the graphics.

At the end of the day, an impressive graphic is not going to draw gamers. A good game is.

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