Review of Tokyo Game Show

First of all let me just say I do apologize that this is a little late, I was busy at my other job.  But you know what they say better late than never.

When people think of going to a convention/expo as press they think "Yes I get in for free." But there is a lot more to it. There are interviews to do, games to review, contacts to be made and pictures to be taken.  Conventions/Expos also have the expectation that you will post on their sites to hopefully bring in business the following year.  And if you do a good enough job; they will ask you to cover again.  And with covering conventions/expos the better job you do the more you can cover and the bigger you’ll get. It’s never you get in for free, there are expectations. Now that I’ve done my little rant let’s get into the main article.

Let me start off by saying how much of an honor it was to be able to attend Tokyo Game Show.  At the time of application I was expecting a polite email back declining us because we didn’t meet their requirements. So you can imagine the shock I went through after reading that we did get accepted.  It was great finally a chance to prove Lagspike had what it took to compete in the world of internet gaming/tech news. Now it’s my job to take you through that chance.  While I am writing this article most of the material that will be covered could be viewed under Tokyo Game Show 2013 under Lagspike TV events page.

Now that is out of the way, where to start. Well how about the beginning. When we, my camera man and I, first arrived, there were directions for every place except where the media would register.  It took us several tries with us speaking bad Japanese for us to finally find where media registered. Once inside, we were greeted with a yellow sign saying beware of heat stroke. We both looked at each other and wondered why because it was such a nice day outside. After a few hours on the floor we found out.  Thankfully none of us passed out. After receiving our press pass we waited at the door to be let in at 10 A.M. JST. Saying that Tokyo Game Show would be different than I was expecting was a big understatement. Tokyo Game Show was basically ten to 20 times bigger than anything that I have ever covered.

The booths were amazing. I got to see and play demo games from Bandai/Namco to Sony. All the demo games were really good and like I’ve mentioned before, the reviews can be seen under the Tokyo Game Show event, as well as pictures, on Lagspike TV. There were some games that I was not able to demo because the line was too long.  On Saturday people were waiting in line for two hours to play Titan Fall from Microsoft.  We left that alone till the next day and were able to get in after 20 minutes. We ended up play demos on Sunday due to the fact it was so packed on Saturday.

Now with every convention/expo there is always cosplay. I’m pretty sure that everyone wants to hear about that. The cosplay was amazing.  The amount of details that went into making some of the costumes was phenomenal. Again cosplay pictures are under the Tokyo Game Show event page, and there are a lot of pictures that were taken. There were a lot of different series represented Pokemon, Kamen Rider, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, you name it we basically seen it. The best part of it was the cosplayers were more than willing to pose for you and with you. Maybe next year I’ll even get in on the cosplay action who knows.

Before I finish this off, here are some of the numbers from Tokyo Game Show, who hit a new record of attendees this year for the public days: