Tokyo Game Show 2006 coverage!

Phew! What a day! I had just returned from my first Tokyo Game Show several hours ago and boy what an amazing show it was! It was so much bigger than Chara Hobby 2006 that was held in the same convention hall last month and TGS took up the entire building. All 8 halls! My feet still hurt from all the walking and waiting in line to play some game demos.

I arrived at 7:15am at the Makuhari Messe convention hall where TGS 2006 was held and checked out the line of people queuing up to enter the convention hall. The queue was so long that it circled the entire convention hall by around 8:30am and it's a very BIG convention hall that takes at least 15 minutes to walk around the entire hall! There are a lot of very dedicated game fans that camped overnight just to be one of the first in line to enter and play all the next-gen games. Big thanks to Entertainment News International for providing me with some business cards so I could apply for the press pass and enter the convention hall earlier and without having to line up under the hot sun! Media registration started at 9am and I managed to get the pass and enter the convention hall an hour earlier than the official opening time at 10am. I immediately bolted into the convention hall and took as many pictures and watch as many trailers and game demos as I could before the flood gates are opened to let the public attendees in. Unfortunately, I was too busy trying to pick up my jaw from the floor after watching so many of the amazing PS3 and Xbox 360 games in action that I didn't even think of picking up the controllers to play them until after the rest of the attendees started flooding in. They were let in 30 minutes early at 9:30am and I had to scurry to take as many pictures of the rest of the booths as possible before it's all packed with people and having them obstructing my perfect view of the things I want to take pics of. I managed to take a lot of pictures that only the press can take pics of but there are still plenty of things there that even the press are not allowed to take pics or record it on video camera, especially the PS3 game trailers, demos, and Square Enix's closed theater presentations.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to see everything and play all the games there. Nobody could. There are way too many things to see and hour-long lines to queue just to play a 10 minute game demos. There's a 2 hour wait in queue for trying out the Devil May Cry 4 playable demo! The rest are around an hour's wait in queue. I only managed to play a few games like Lost Planet, Resistance: Fall of Man, Heavenly Sword, Cell Factor, and Hellgate: London. I also attended a closed theater presentation of Square Enix's upcoming games including FFVII: Crisis Core, Monotone, It's a Wonderful World, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, and all three games of FFXIII including Agito and Versus! I almost drowned in my own drool while watching the trailer for FF Versus XIII... It's f'ing awsome!

The show ended at 5pm and when I got to the train station at 5:30pm, the place was completely flooded with people trying to get back. It was quite a long wait outside of the station before they finally let some in like a few hundred people at a time. It took me an hour just to get back to Tokyo station while it usually only took 30 minutes. It's not that bad though but getting packed into the train like sardines in a can is not fun.

I had an amazing time there and can't wait to attend next year's show! I'll definitely be a lot more prepared next time and focus on playing all the game demos of games that I'm interested and then take pictures later.

Check out my coverage of Tokyo Game Show 2006 here. Enjoy!