Fall 2000 Tokyo Game Show

Every year the TGS seems to get a little smaller, a little less important. Unlike E3 or ECTS which are industry only, TGS exists basically as a live forum for advertising the upcoming games to end consumers. Even on "business day" there are plenty of kids running around the show floor. The first sign that the Fall 2000 show would not be huge was when both Sega and Square announced that they would skip this show to do events of their own. Sega usually has the biggest booth and they cover Keihim Makuhari station with advertising for their systems and upcoming releases¹. This time, there was just a few Sega ads, mostly for their own show. The show took up two of the three exhibition halls at Makuhari Messe, down from three last year². Anyway, none of that really matters because the real reason to go to the show is to see and try out some new games and also to check out the just plain wierd stuff that some of these companies come up with. The coverage below is orgainzed only by the order in which I saw things. I cound not note every game at the show or even every vendor, but here it is anyway.

Corrections. Thanks to Geopal who has been living here longer than me for pointing out my mistakes
1 This was only true for the DCs release. Prior to that Sega never played a major role in the Game Show - even when the SS was released (see next item)
2 Up until around '97-'98 the game show was part of the Toy Show, and always took up only one hall, even in '94, when PSX and SS were unveiled. At that time you had FC, GB, SFC, PCE, PCFX, SS & PSX, as well as all the 3rd party makers all in the last hall.

Compared to that the shows of the last couple of uears have been huge - and if you factor in Sega and Nintendo (even though they have their own shows) you can ony imagne how big it would be.

BTW Even when 'Tendo was at the Toy Show they still held the Nntendo Space World show each year as well.

	The "Goods booths" Lots of game companies will have a booth just for the purpose of seling products related to their characters or games, stuff like posters, dolls, CDs, etc. Usually Konami has some cool stuff, but this time it was 90% Tokimeki type stuff. At least they had some of those weird life-size dolls for several thousand dollars each. I say at least because if it was not for stuff like that, it would have bored me to tears. Capcom had a decent booth for Biohazard and Dino Crisis stuff including some cool wristwatches and uniforms. The company that makes the realistic gun replica toys was there since they are the "official Bio Hazard licenced gun company". Just in case you want to dress up like a female Gundam officer, Cospa had a booth for you. Seems that Namco has decided it is no longer worth selling the Pac Man instant ramen or Tekken energy drinks at TGS because they did not have a goods booth this time. The character in front of the Compile booth seems strangely prophetic. I really wonder who goes there year after year to buy a stuffed puyo or a cookie shaped like a puyo.	Dinosaur attack! Rockman character robots more of the same Lets play dress up! detail Who is this guy? Tokimeki Cofee Shop Some kind of fetish costume? How much would you pay? The newest cute character from Konami

	Tecmo Even though they put on a full stage show, they did not have much to show this time. There were 22 Dreamcast stations to play "Dead or Alive 2" and some Game Boy Color displays of "Solomon" but not much else.

	Idea Factory Maybe you read about the digital camera and printer wich hook up to the PS2? Seems that Idea Factory is making two different softwares to edit and print digital pictures; "Print Fun" and "Print Hour".	PS2 printer

	Namco Namco's big offering was "Moto GP" a motorcycle racing game for the PS2. Besides that there was "Klonoa 2 Lunatea's Veil" and "Seven - The Calvary of Molmorth" (both are working English titles. If anyone has any idea what Molmorth is, please tell me!). "Tales of Eternia" was also shown.	Tales of Eternia box set display detail ToE display

	Bandai The upcoming Wonderswan Color was available for hands on play with a decent variety of titles including "Final Fantasy". Yes, it does look good. Several different interesting WS accessories like adapters for the major types of memory cards, cell phone connectors, home brew development kits and the Wonder Borg robot were on display. Also there was a buncha Gundam crap which I could care less about was there for just about any system, possibly even including an i-Mode version. Milk that cash cow! (Superfami.com may not care about Gundam, but we wholely support any successfull form of capitalism. Keep them Gundam titles coming!)	booth greeter crowd around Final Fantasy Wonder Borg arena Wonder Borg package contents Wonder Swan USB PC hookup colorfull memory card hookups detail Wonder Swan mobile phone kit

	Sony Sony's big draw was "Gran Tourismo 2000". It was showing on lots of stations set up with chairs, steering wheels, pedals, a gear shift and a 5.1 sound system mounted around the chair. The second big title was "Crash Carnival" which is Sony's answer to "Mario Party". Can you say "me too"? Sony can. "Dark Cloud" was the featured RPG and a demo disk was given away in the Sony booklet. The last title was "Dark Cloud" which is a cute character type shooter.	floor show carnival dancers stage characters coercing audience members Watching GT2000

	Enix Since "Dragon Quest VII" has been out for a few weeks already it was not featured this time. Enix's feature title was a baseball sim for the PS2 followed by "Dance Summit 2000 Bust A Moove" (dance/rythm action) and a couple of Game Boy Color titles.

	Game Infinity The Korean development community's booth was looking really good this year! Each year several Korean companies get together for a booth at TGS. This year there were PC games like "Heika" (it means life), JAVA web games fron delphieye, a very cool Tekken controller (you have to see it!), there was also a dance type controller like this which also included drum pads but my the pics seem to have gone to bit heaven. There was even a new handheld console with a large color screen from www.gamepark.co.kr. I have no idea who would develop for it and they were not announcing any partners, but best of luck anyway. The Korean companies don't develop for any of the usual consoles, probably due to the former ban on Japanese cultural products in Korea.	Greetings! Tekken Tekken Tekken new portable

	Koei Seems Koei has signed a distribution deal with Midway to do the Japanese versions of Midway's games. I liked the Michael Jackson character in "Ready 2 Rumble 2". Koei's in house feature titles were "Angelique Trois" featuring the "love chat system" (the women playing the demo kiosks seemed to like it), Winback for the PS2 (better looks, seemingly same gameplay as the N64 version), and of course "Kessen II" which looks DAMN good, and an odd title called "Guitar Man" which seems to be a manga tie in rythm game.	Guitar Man

	Taito "Super Puzzle Bobble", "Stunt Copter", "Greatest Striker"... someone must care... "Power Shovel" the newest entry in the "de Go!" series where you get to simulate controlling, you guessed it, a power shovel using a flight stick type controller.	Can she drive this thing? He's driving a steam shovel but left pretty quickly

	Konami Konami had the biggest booth and the most games of any vendor. Demo areas were divided into music, sports, Game Boy Advance, Universal and PS2. New MGS2 footage was shown, but only on one small screen. It was running off a PS2 so I assume they pressed some DVDs for the show. The new footage looks and sounds better than the preview DVD. Thank god there were no subtitles. Those of you who have seen the DVD and can understand the spoken Japanese know what I mean... "Ring of Red" is Konami's answer to the Front Mission series. Could it be that it looks just like those games because it was developed by the same team? "Shadow of Memories" and "Silent Hill 2" continue the horror adventure genrge. The PS2 incarnation of Goemon looks good. "7 Blades" is a samurai era fighting adventure game for the PS2, oddly enough with English subtitles (this is Tokyo after all). Universal licensed titles included "the Grinch" and "Hamunapotora" (the Mummy) for the PSX and GBC. Seven Game Boy Advance titles were showing, but only one was worth mentioning. You know I'm talking about "Akumajo Dracula Circle of Zamun". Still looking good after all these years! The Konami cash cow barn was also full of lots of music action games including bemani handhelds, a DDR Arcade Controller for the PS, a Disney character DDR controller for the N64 (stomp on Mickey to the beat!), keyboard controllers for the PS2 and more. There were lots of sports games. I don't care. There were girl/romance sims. I don't care. The floor show was all for the music titles with lots of pretty young men and women doing syncronized dance steps to annoying Avex JPOP.	nice PS2 accessory hand held DDR controllers N64 Disney DDR mat a dream come true more bemani floor show more floor

	DoCoMo (the mobile phone division of NTT) was there telling us "Let's Enjoy i-Mode". If you have been living under a rock or just don't read real newspapers or magazines, i-Mode is the Japanese web/email capable mobile phone system.

	Genki was showing off their latest incarnation of Tokyo Highway Battle.	Genki

	Ask had a nifty little hellicopter pilot sim called "Air Ranger"	Hellicopter

	Climax Graphics featured "Ill Bleed" a(nother) horror game in a (very) small horror booth with a ghoulish greeter who kept coming up and poking me while I was standing there taking notes. He stopped once I flashed the camera right in front of his face. Similarly, inside the booth there was a part where someone reaches out their hand from behind a wall to surprise. I think he was more surprised when I grabbed him back. Yes I am a jerk.	Scary booth Hope the mask protected his eyes

	Takara had their usuall fare of kids and family games	home karaoke

	PC Corner Sega PC was here showing two titles, too bad they could not have a full booth this time. Microsoft was there as was X-Box (nothing to show)

	Epoch had some kind of ping pong game with wirelss paddle controllers. Looked fun!	ping pong

	Hudson Hudson's big push was for their JAVA and i-Mode games including another incarnation of the Momotaro series. Momotaro was one of their two Game Boy Advance titles and on Game Boy Color was "Grandia Parallel to Rivers".

	Capcom "Onimusha" was finally playable and looking good! The enemies look really good and scarry. Since it is based on the Biohazard/Resident Evil engine it suffers from the dreaded "loading" between play areas. "Rockman EX" showed up on the Game Boy Advance. A multi part RPG "Eldorado Gate" for Dreamcast will feature character designs by Yoshitake Armano of Final Fantasy fame. Oh, there were also fighing games.	Entering Samurai Horror fighing floor show Eldorado Costumed fighters again these people are employees, not fans

	Jaleco I really have no idea what "Arler - the next mutation" is about, but it was easy to understand "Dream Audition" with it's nifty PS2 microphone controller. You won't believe me, but I thought of this last year.	Mike again

	Compile Why do they even bother having a booth? All they ever show is the latest incarnation of Puyo Puyo. Who even buys those cookies?

	Other stuff (no particular order) The show floor always looks cool from the enrty point. I met a really cool journalist from Hong Kong who managed to grab a lot of goodies. As always the big companies had booths for their schools. Somehow I admire the Japanese concept of having students pay to learn how to work for you.	From above Frankie! School time!