Posts Tagged ‘Tokyo Game Show’

Booth babes are a staple of TGS. Every company had a dozens of young ladies dressed in a variety of skimpy outfits to entice gamers into join their booth. Some were beautiful, some had tops that were undersized (to spectacular results) and all looked dead inside by the end of the day.

It isn’t a fun job of course, handing out flyers, having to smile and be bubbly all day to people you would normally cross the street to avoid. What really seemed to destroy their spirit though were the photos. Constant photos. They would hand out two flyers, and then have to stop for five minutes while fifty people took pictures of them smiling demurely at the camera. First I took pity, and then I took photos. That is until I saw the face of one ‘babe’ after one photographer refused the flyer she offered.

Think Juon.

But cute.

Having lived in Japan for four years my view of the world has changed. Many things that visitors may find bizarre are common place to me. Not so at TGS. Imagine the Tokyo subway at rush hour, where thousands of salaried business men turn in to rugby players each day. All of them trying to get in to a single train compartment.

TGS is the same, except salary-men are replaced by children, coz-players and people who look out of place any where but in their own bedroom. Every one of these groups will trample your prone body in their quest for games.

There were two ways out of the crowd; to get away from the popular games or by joining a queue to play a game. Biohazard 5 peaked at a hundred and forty minute wait to play, but at least the queue was a quiet oasis from the bustle.

Before I even get to TGS I have seen most of what there is to see. There will be no surprises. I know that my fantasy of Deadrising 2 has not materialized. Even Madworld is not there due to classification issues.

On the plus side I can plan what I want to see before trawling the minor booths looking for more obscure games that catch my eye.

Of the big companies I will be avoiding Square-Enix; I am just not prepared to fight the crowd they draw in Japan. Capcom will monopolise my time, the home version of SF4, RE5 and Tatsunoku vs. Capcom being three of the games I’m eager to see. If I get through these I’ll be seeing what I can of Sony and Microsoft before trying to hit up the smaller cramped corners of the exhibition center.

For now though I’m off to the overnight bus.