World Wide Wilkie - Tokyo - Day 2

After falling asleep watching Japanese TV at about 8 o'clock the previous night, jet lag hit in and I woke up at 4:30, wide awake and ready to start our first day at TGS. This was our first introduction to the Japanese train systems, at the station there is a board with the fares to other stations, you simply have to find where you're going, note the price and put that amount of money into the ticket machine. If you don't know the price, you can just buy the cheapest fare and there are machines at the other end which will tell you how much you owe.

A hint to anyone ever going anywhere find out where the event you are attending actually is before going there. The Nippon Convention centre is in the Chiba prefecture, so obviously a ticket to Chiba was going to get us there. That was mistake number 1, luckily I noticed a sign at a station saying we should get off at the previous station for the Convention Centre. So we went into Chiba, then got a train back out to where we were meant to be going. Luckily because of the way the Japanese train system works as long as you never leave the station we could have travelled up and down the train line as much as we wanted without having to pay any extra. Once we finally got to Makuhari Hongo station, we jumped on a bus out to the Convention centre.

Japanese trains were amazing, at every station there would be music to hurry you onto the train, the buses were even better than that though. You don't pay when you get on, you pay when you get off, the bus had a voice telling us at every stop what the next stop was and how much it cost. "This bus is bound for Marine Stadium, the next stop is Techno Garden, the fare from Makuhari Hongo station is... 230 yen" it was great. Although we never did find out what was in Techno Garden.

Once at the convention centre, picking up the tickets was surprisingly easy and all that remained was to wait on the doors opening. Being oversees visitors, we got to go in the back door with the press people, and then the amazingness of TGS began.

The noise was fantastic it was like being in the biggest arcade ever, as far as the eye could see, there was neon and TV screens showing game trailers. Everwhere you went you were handed flyers and freebies. First stop was the SEGA stand to play the PC version of Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst.
Tokyo Game Show 2004
TGS Entrance Hall

Phantasy Star Online booth Phantasy Star Online booth The Rumble Fish The Rumble Fish
SEGA's Phantasy Star Online and Rumblefish stands

Next up was the Konami Metal Gear Solid 3 Stand where we were given lots of very cool MGS3 freebies, a CD in a pack made to look like a vinyl and some other stickers and postcards.

Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid 3

The next stand was the Capcom stand, a mass of Yellow neon hoops, on display was Devil May Cry 3, Viewtiful Joe 2 and a trailer for Resident Evil 4. After playing Viewtiful Joe 2 and being presented with a bright yellow Capcom wristbands we headed over to see Sony's PSP stand.

Capcom Stand Capcom Stand Capcom Stand Capcom Stand - Viewtiful Joe 2 Capcom Stand - Biohazard Capcom Stand Capcom Stand
Capcom's stand in all it's Yellow Neon Glory.

The PSP stand was pretty impressive, a giant PSP was hanging from the ceiling and the centre of the largest circle was filled with girls holding PSPs for people to play, more PSPs were arranged round the edge of the circle and the outside wall of the stand had display cabinets which the launch titles and some examples of the PSP and its UMD disc.

PSP PSP PSP PSP PSP PSP
Sony's PSP stand.

Bizarre American thing Hudson's stand Hudson's stand TGS Genji stand Namco Stand
Baanauto 3 EA Gung Ho Final Fantasy Genki Final Fantasy XI Cat Woman
Some random photos from some of the smaller stands.

The SEGA/Sammy stand was pretty cool, lots of games on show and since it was raised up, it dominated the area it was in.

SEGA's stand SEGA's stand SEGA's stand SEGA's stand Sammy's stand SEGA's stand
Shining Tears SEGA Rally 2005 TGS SEGA Rally 2005 Sammy
The SEGA/Sammy stand.

Maid Winble Domokun! wtf?
Some more random photos.
Including a sighting of Domo-Kun!

In the next hall over we found Game Infinity, the Korean Games Industry association. They were showing an XBOX game called Digi-Dance which was some kind of Ballroom dancing sim where you had to press the keys in time with the music to get the characters to dance in time.

TGS Digi Dance Digi Dance
Game Infinity's Digi Dance.

One of the other major exhibitors in the second hall was Microsoft whose main game was obviously Halo 2. We managed to catch a special Halo 2 competition against to teams of 4, complete with girls in bikinis to hold up the scores, but as you can see from the photo, Microsofts special effects were against me in my blatant attempt to take some photos of scantily clad ladies.

XBOX Stand XBOX Stand
Microsoft's stand.

Halo 2 Halo 2 Halo 2 TGS TGS - Halo 2 TGS - Halo 2
TGS - Halo 2 TGS - Halo 2 TGS - Halo 2 TGS - Halo 2 TGS - Halo 2
Halo 2 in action.

TGS - Outrun 2 TGS - Outrun 2
Outrun 2.

Tecmo were displaying their flagship product, the dirty smut which is Extreme Beach Volleyball. I am so outraged by this game, I have to post a couple of photos so that you can see the terrible things that pass for entertainment these days.

Tecmo
The Tecmo stand with Dead or Alive and Extreme beach Volleyball.

SNK were showing King of Fighters, a dodgy looking 3D version of Metal Slug and a man with grey hair in a fetching leather jacket.

TGS TGS TGS TGS
The SNK stand, gotta love that leather jacket.

TGS TGS TGS Tecmo Tecmo ACSOFT
Naruto TGS TGS TGS TGS TGS
TGS TGS TGS TGS TGS TGS
Bandai Naruto TGS TGS
The remainder of the photos from the second hall.

After a quick look at the Star Wars credit card stand, we headed back to the first hall to get some last shots of Viewtiful Joe 2 and to see what Konami were up to at the Metal Gear Solid 3 stand.

TGS
Star Wars credit Card!.

Viewtiful Joe 2 Viewtiful Joe 2
Viewtiful Joe 2.

Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid 3.

And with that our first day at TGS was over, although by this time it was only 12:00 or something, since we're complete lightweights and had passes for the Sunday anyway, we headed back to the hotel.

TGS TGS
What a way to sell
computer games to geeks.

We arrived back at the hotel at about 14:00. Unfortunately our room was getting cleaned, so we went for another wander round Shinjuku to snap some more of the skyscrapers in the area.

Keio Plaza Shinjuku NS Building Shinjuku NS Building Mitsui Building, Shinjuku Shinjuku The Metropolitan Government Office Buildings Shinjuku
The first photo is our hotel, the rest buildings around the hotel.

Despite the fact we were totally exhausted, the day didn't end there. We had tickets to the Melt Banana gig, so armed with the trusty map Andrea had given me along with the tickets we headed out to Shimokitazawa in search of the Shelter. After 30 minutes of wandering, asking a policeman for directions we retraced our steps back to the train station, found we had taken the wrong turn at the first point and found the Shelter within 5 minutes.

The Shimokitazawa shelter is one of the smallest venues I've ever been in, it makes King Tut's look pretty big. Despite this fact, the management weren't worried about cramming people in, even when the door wouldn't open for more people to come in, they kept coming. This made for a venue which was very hot and where you couldn't move at all.

The first band on were Kirihito, a 3 piece band with a Drummer, Guitarist/Vocalist and Saxophonist. They played cheery upbeat songs with some pretty fast drumming and the saxaphone adding an almost Ska like influence.

Melt Banana were on next, and they were the most amazing band I've seen. They started with "Chain-Shot to have some fun" and to be honest if they'd left the stage after playing that one song they would have been the best live act I've seen this year. They played pretty much every song off their last album, "Cellscape" every song super fast and full of energy. I can't say how much I love this band, the guitarist is awesome, the basist is about the same height as her bass, but she still rocks so much and the vocalist is like nothing I've ever heard.

After Melt Banana was KK Null, a one man noise machine. This was the first time I've ever seen a proper noise artist live, it was like ATR's live at Brixton album and I would have liked to have seen more, but the dehydration hit me and despite the ridiculous heat, I started getting cold sweats and thought I was gonna pass out or throw up, so we left which was a shame.