Tokyo Game Show

[Jools]

Real quick update, the Insert Credit guys seem to think that Luminess is real simple and there isn',t much to it than the tetris/columns description I gave earlier other than the line that comes across and sweeps away the connected pieces giving you more time to add to them. Although, apparantly you get some special bonus if you connect your pieces on a downbeat fo the music, interesting stuff.

-Jools

[Mr Ben]

Jools! 3 words. CAPCOM FIGHTING JAM!! (AKA Capcom Fighting Evolution)

Its supposedly coming to the PS2. Check it out now, if you havent already.

[M.M.S]

Ok i was there too (we really should have a Tokyo meet some time, there seems to be a few us over here )

The show was ace, bit i didnt even get there until about 1pm due to some travel problems You try using, the train system with 3 Americans!

Ok, i'll be brief now, and hopefully back with more and pics later when i've uploaded them...Oh btw this was my 1st games show ever so...erm...yea

Anyways the show was great despite me being late and not getting to play everything (RE:4 ). Went straight to PSP and it indeed is very nice to hold and the shoulder buttons are all seethrough (i didnt know this). This finish isnt quiet as good as the pics suggest, but the screen is still very nice. There were indeed women carrying the machines around to let you play and the machines were running on batteries and i didnt see any of them needing changing at any point, Then again i was at the PSP section all day so they could have snook of and changed them at some point, but honestly i think the machines battery life wasnt as bad as the 3hrs-ish suggested.

No DS there!

Next, went to play GT4. Erm, it's alot like GT3 and although i'm not a big GT player, it seemed (as usual) to be the most realistic driving sim out there. Also it seems faster and smoother than 3, with the odd GFX touch such as motion blur when u crash adding greatly to things. Didnt get to play all the modes (it seems you can take pics of your replays and print them out now), but the promo screens bosted new modes, 50 tracks and 500 cars roughly.

Yes Capcom Fighting Jam was there with the new beast of a stick from Hori. The game was very good with the usual favourites from several Capcom games (mainly SF) fighting it off in pairs. All very good.

Sega rally 2005 was there, looking pretty early on (still mucho pop-up) i didnt get to play it, but everyone seemed to be having fun.

Devil May Cry 3 was as good as expected, not third time lucky, but you can hardly get things wrong on your 3rd attempt can you! Everythings was super slick with several new moves, done with typical dante style. Also the production in the cut-scens was top class.

Didnt get to play RE:4 but the vids looked really good, lots more was shown with you going around with the girl. Also i didnt get to play Viewtiful Joe 2, but i don't think we have to worry too much about it, the vids looked very nice.

Monkey Ball Xbox was there (no PS2 version, this is coming out tho right ?) It's still got slowdown for some reason on some of the bonus stages, but i'm sure that will be ironed out. It played ok, but people who've played the GC version will struggle with the pad for sure. Also there were some new minigames on show, one was an on rails shooting thing that looked pretty crap

erm...more later, but the show was very good and no huge dissapointments really, lack od DS asside...

Oh i forget, WE:8 was there in the "Asian League Special" guise, or something. I've not even played 8 yet, but this was very nice. GFX and animation were all top notch and the girls at the stall all had cute footy kits on, i'm sold on this game

[Reynard]

Cheers for that, M.M.S - interesting stuff.

[MK-1601]

Thats a surprise seeing as they are one and the same now.

You're thinking of GameSpy, not Gamespot.

[M.M.S]

pics, sorry for blurry-ness, shite camera, what can i say, i hope things are made up by the amount of booth babe pics Oh and also, most stands had a no camera policy, so getting good pics of games wasnt worth it.

Kid playing on a PSP (Metal Gear Acid), not the brick i thought it was going to be

PSP selection of games and stuff, discs and cases are similar in size to GC ones in Japan

PS2two incase it wasnt clear tiny!

uber arcade stick, but you couldnt use it It's gonna be 8000yen if i remeber right

[M.M.S]

cos i knew you'd all be pissed if i didnt...

[Jools]

No pics of cosplay girls! They were much hotter than the profesional girls. Real quick post here as I'm still at the show! That PS2 arcade stick pictured isn't new, the upcoming one with a (sadly rather rubbish) Fighting Jam pic on it is new though. The reason I know it isn't new is because I already own the one pictured! Its teh awesome.

OK, I'm off for a bit of Eyeplay goodness now, catch you all later. Btw, glad you also had a good time at TGS!

-Jools

P.S. Yeah Mr Ben, I have played CFJ and its great, but nothing too unexpected though. Its slower than I expected but it certainly does play well. I'm looking forward to it. If I could just find the pre-release carbinet in Osaka (I know its there) I could be enjoying it right now. Grrr! Oh yeah, the xbox version is going to be live enabled and it looks like the xbox version of SF anniversary edition and SF III will also be live enabled. Yay!

[biglime]

Always the same.

Threads about Japanese games shows dominated by photos of bored girls and geeks talking about bored girls. I fucking hate those booth babes.

Man, that PSP looks good.

R.

[Jools]

OK, as requested, here's a Nights update. Sadly, it wasn't included in the showroom version. Amazingly, my great enthusiasm for the game (despite the huge ques for everything else, no-one is actually playing the game) illicited the attention of Hashimoto, the director of the game! He told me that the Nights game is finished and all ready to go but it has fine controls which don't work very well under the extremely bright lighting of TGS. So there you go! Hopefully it'll be as good as the other games, they are ace.

-Jools

[Jools]

Always the same.

Threads about Japanese games shows dominated by photos of bored girls and geeks talking about bored girls. I fucking hate those booth babes.

Ah, but its important to distinguish between the gorgeous and cool cosplay girls and the gorgeous but not in anyway interesting pro model/booth babes. The cosplayers really add a lot of extra enjoyment to the show and they look 100 times better in real life than when pictured it seems.

-Jools

[M.M.S]

Ah, but its important to distinguish between the gorgeous and cool cosplay girls and the gorgeous but not in anyway interesting pro model/booth babes.  The cosplayers really add a lot of extra enjoyment to the show and they look 100 times better in real life than when pictured it seems.

-Jools

WRONG. Now go to the Xbox booth!

Oh and i think the reason why noone was playing the eyetoy games was because everyone was too shy to prat about infront of the camera.

Great show, but i missed loads yesterday, wish i could have gone again today, but can't afford the trip again.

[gravity0]

uber arcade stick, but you couldnt use it It's gonna be 8000yen if i remeber right

This has been out for a couple of months now. I own one and it does indeed kick all sorts of buttocks.

Edit: Jools beat me to it.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

When the PSP was announced on the E3, there was a clip of a game with a ball of Mercury you had to guide through different obstaclecourses (a bit like Monkey Ball and Flipnic), which could break in chunks and be reunited later. It was not entirely clear whether this was just a techdemo or a real game in development. Did any of you attending TGS see it on the floor somewhere?

-Edit- The game is called Mercury and apparantly heading towards a 2005 release by Ignition. But still: is it being displayed? Of all the PSP games, I found this one looking the most interesting...

[Mr Ben]

P.S. Yeah Mr Ben, I have played CFJ and its great, but nothing too unexpected though. Its slower than I expected but it certainly does play well. I'm looking forward to it. If I could just find the pre-release carbinet in Osaka (I know its there) I could be enjoying it right now. Grrr! Oh yeah, the xbox version is going to be live enabled and it looks like the xbox version of SF anniversary edition and SF III will also be live enabled. Yay!

Yeah, I heard that they were all gonna be Live! enabled, but I played C vs SNK 2 over live, and it wasnt the best, sadly. Seems that if you want a decent game, you need to play against someone in your own country. Its either that, or my 512 k connection isnt good enough for it

[Major Britten]

I went yesterday and had a lot of fun, sadly I couldnt play too much because of the amount of people there. Anyway for me the game of the show was Resi 4, it is really fantsatic, the graphics are amazing (pictures and vids on the net dont do it justice) and the controls (thanks to the new camera angles) work really well. Spoiler In one of the videos you could see claire redfield and leon collapsing while coughing blood

GT4 looks amazing, I didnt play the normal game because it will just play like 3, there is a new photo mode that I did try and its great and something I am sure I will spend many hours on.

I had ago on the PSP and although the graphics were impressive the games really didnt grab me that much, ridge racer plays just like all the others, Puyo fever looks and plays like the PS2 version and the other games were just the usual thing. Only one that looked interesting was metal gear. One thing I did not like was the thumb stick on the PSP, its not really a stick so to speak but more like a tiny computer mouse, you have to 'slide' it in the direction you wanted, problem is it is way too sensitive, playing ridge racer with it was difficult at first until I got the hang of it but its still not as good as a proper stick. The screen is big and very clear, but expect it to get scratched very quickly, the ones on the show floor were already very badly scratched and they are only like 2 days old.

Overall it was good to finally go to one of these shows, I wish I couldve gone again today and check more out but I couldnt because of transport issues. Only thing I was dissapointed about was the absence of the DS and all of Nintendo's titles.

[Reynard]

When the PSP was announced on the E3, there was a clip of a game with a ball of Mercury you had to guide through different obstaclecourses (a bit like Monkey Ball and Flipnic), which could break in chunks and be reunited later. It was not entirely clear whether this was just a techdemo or a real game in development. Did any of you attending TGS see it on the floor somewhere?

-Edit- The game is called Mercury and apparantly heading towards a 2005 release by Ignition. But still: is it being displayed? Of all the PSP games, I found this one looking the most interesting...

Mercury was playable at EGN.

I didn't attend myself (a couple of colleagues did though), but was informed that it looked very interesting.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

Mercury was playable at EGN.

I didn't attend myself (a couple of colleagues did though), but was informed that it looked very interesting.

It's good to know it's still in the pipeline, thanks.

[Alex W.]

Did no-one but a random at IGN play Lumines then?

[gravity0]

Did no-one but a random at IGN play Lumines then?

Someone from GA had a go:

It's kind of a Tetris clone. You have a block of four squares drop from the top. Each square is one of two colours. Your goal is to group the colours together into a block of four. Blocks slide down to the bottom if there's a lip so you don't get pieces hanging. It's very easy, you can pick it up in a second, three seconds if you're slow. Once you form the block, you wait for this line that scans from the left to the right of the screen to "Activate" and erase it. I think if you group the same color blocks near the big blocks of four you create BEFORE the scan line hits it, you get some kind of bonus.

I'm not sure how to describe the music. Kind of trancey, acoustic, LOTS of vocals being overlaid, which was really neat. I was playing the game and kind of rocking out to it and it took me a few minutes to realise that the placement of the blocks in the game were directly affecting the music in realtime, kinda like a sequencer. I can really see myself grooving out to this game on the train to work, it's very relaxing.

The problem is that the game is a little too easy. I started to get kind of bored and wanted to die so the guy behind me could try, and I started dropping blocks randomly, but somehow it kept busting out combos and I went to the next level. Hmm.

In short, it's good, the backgrounds are trippy and have lots of color cylcing and it's fun to look at, but the core of it really seems like a Flash game that you could put together in an evening. I'd probably drop twenty bucks on it or so, but I'm a sucker for that Bejeweled type crap, y'know?

[Reynard]

Sounds a little negative, but the Americans never really got Rez anyway.