Tokyo Gameshow 2008 - we made it!

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NOTE: at the end of this posting will be a link to the full web album of all the pics we took (with witty captions) at the gameshow, since there are way too many to include in a blog posting. what follows is a rough outline of our day and some choice photos, enjoy!
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so, i'll spare you the transportation details and we'll skip to the meat, so we found our way to the gameshow, yasa!
and found a giant robot that looks suspiciously like anita waiting for us outside:

We bought tickets from what appeared to be a scalper just outside the show, but he was selling them for what appeared to be face value and we got them for "a solid" (1,000 yen - or $10 usd). after getting inside through the mad amounts of people and getting a lay of the land - oooh, look, Street Fighter IV and a cute floating blue blobby guy

we got in line to try out a game, Raving Rabbids TV Party, with those cute crazy bunny things. This was a relatively short line with only about a 15 minute wait to play and Anita has the original version of Raving Rabbids and wobla loves it. This one was special. we got to do some neat new moves like 'brush the teeth', 'spray the deodorant', 'shave the chin' and what you see here known as 'swab the ears':

there were of course lots of people dressed up (here's just a few, more in the web album):




and we spotted some type of ninja game - but of course. so marc gets in there and decides to try his hand at some ninja skill - like jumping over tigers - to win some unknown prize; anita is quick with that shutter!

the unknown prize turned out to be a scavenger hunt map to perform a couple of feats all around the gameshow to ultimately win what looked like a demo cd or somesuch. the instructions were all in japanese of course and the show floor was way to crowded to actually try to do all of that in one day, so we moved on.

So, the games, there were soooooo many games, too many to blog about but you'll see a lot of em in the web album. Here are some we got a glimpse of: Metal Gear Online, Spacedriver Grid, Judgment, Basara Battle Heroes, Biohazard 5 - really wanted to get in to check this one out, it looked so cool but the line was over 75 minutes just to get inside a shrouded tent to even see gameplay outside of the trailer

Mirror's Edge, Halo Wars

and tons of others we didn't recognize or couldn't tell what they were because of the japanese titles. there were also huge sections for handheld games and mobile games, even a 'test library' set up to feel like a private library where you could sit and try out some mobile and handheld games. again, lines too long to really get into it. Marc did find a cutout of a cat without a line tho, so he jumped in
we end this posting with a tribute to the saddest lonliest man at the gameshow. apparently no one wanted to play his game and anita and marc weren't about to look uncool in japan either!

thanks for waiting, here's the album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/marcbdg/TokyoGameShow2008?authkey=UPLutBcHMtU#5257351568986062146