okyo Game Show is most definitely different than all of the western trade events we attend during the year. The show not only features your standard large publishers like Square Enix, Capcom, Konami, etc, but many other smaller companies that may just put out something specific like cell phone games. While the rest of the crew was off doing important grown-up meetings and such, I thought I would spend the day wandering the show floor seeking out off-beat stuff. I took photos and played some pretty weird games. While it’s not my first time here, I wiped my brain clean of any dumb ideas or opinions I had of any non-large publisher title and just saw the world with new eyes. Read on to find out what my adventure included.
Right away, I was drawn to a medium sized booth with what looked like a pie-headed super hero. As it turns out, said super hero actually had a sand dollar head so I dubbed him Sand Dollar Man (note: this is not really his name). Sand Dollar Man, or SDM, has his very own DS game available but before I had a chance to sneak in and get my hands on it, a live skit started up and out came a real life SDM! Bookended by two girls in yellow, he checked out the crowd and even let everyone see one of his sand dollars. I’ll just say that SDM is pretty confident with the ladies has he checked them out and even tickled the one on the right. Weird. Anyways, now it was game time and I darted over to the DS only to realized there were 20 open kiosks with the game. So much for not looking desperate in front of SDM himself.
The game is something like a WarioWare title. A collection of 40 mini games that rift other video games. The first one I tried was a goof on a classic SNES Final Fantasy boss battle. Since my Japanese is a bit rusty (meaning I know absolutely nothing at all), it took me a while to figure which selection was the Attack command. Eventually I got it and killed the eight-headed Sand Dollar Man. The next mini game was a spoof of Space Invaders but instead I was knocking down lines of our beloved SDM. The game actually simulates terrible frame rates to make the game hard. The last game we tried was a demented version of Super Mario Bros. They had SDM running from a giant cat and jumping over blue warp tubes that had blood stains on them. Yep.
This next game I checked out was something of an exciting time. It happened to be Earth Defense Force Mobile 3. I didn’t even know about the first two. Anywho, we here at the office really gained a deep love for Earth Defense Force 2017 on Xbox 360. The game ran really well on the phone which featured a really hi-res 16:9 display. The flip phones here are crazy. After running through the level and destroying some giant ants and remembering how hilarious the animations in these games are, a boss came into sight and my demo ended. I must say it was a really cool mobile phone title.
As a strolled on and snapped photos of just about everything that gave off light (which would be 90% of the objects here), I notice the Taito booth and specifically a Bubble Bobble game. Oh the history I have with these titles. When I got up to the kiosk, I noticed the game was called Puzzle Bobble Space. While the game was a great puzzle title, there was no space in sight! Only Earth farms! I could not help feel a bit disappointed. It was time to move on.
And move on I did to the Tomy booth featuring a wide variety of DS games including a court game featuring a John Leguizamo look-alike dancing around on video screens. The game that caught my however was called Major Dream DS. It an best be described at International Track & Field meets a American baseball title. I was pitching and let me say what an even pitching is! First I had to select where in the strike zone I wanted to throw, build the power and finally send the ball away. Each pitch was like a Hidoken punch. A loud, vocalized event that ended in a strike every time. At this rate it would have taken me 30 min to finish the top of the 3rd inning. It was time find a new adventure.
Off in the corner of Hall 5 was a sweet little nugget of knowledge known as the Video Game Technology Museum. Inside, it had timelines of game tech, stations to play classics and cases filled with disassembled consoles. It was pretty cool to see the original Xbox in pieces as well as the original Famicom (NES). But ultimately, my instinct kicked in and I picked up the controller for Super Mario Bros and before I knew it, was went from world 1-1 to 6-3 and there were people watching me do it. I of course, fell into a pit when I realized this.
Maybe it was the lights luring me in, but as I walked on, I got yanked onto the third story of a really tall booth by some guy who wanted me to try a new product. Essentially what these guys had done was hook those fancy 3D video screen glasses up to a cell phone. Seriously. Basically, it was a $1,000 way to have a cell screen strapped to your head. I played a really quirky snowboard racing game that used an in-phone accelerometer to control. It was not the best game I’ve ever played but it was definitely new.
For those of you that don’t know SNK, they are a famous Japanese developer/publisher responsible for games like King of Fighters and Metal Slug. They also made a game called Ninja Commando a while back for the Neo Geo. For those of you that don’t know, Ninja Commando not only had a terrible translation to English, but also features some of the best badies ever. With exploding boulders, guys in bad yellow business suits, giant ninja mummies and sea turtles that spit fire, what’s not to love? I hopped on and before I knew it, I was knee deep into level three and finally met my game over screen.
The final thing I saw that I want to leave you with today was a cell phone orchestra. No, really. Walking around, I happened upon group of classy dressed woman and tuxedo sporting men playing cell phones like an orchestra. They had them hooked into small amps and looked to be hitting keys on the pads. The real story here was the conductor. This guy was all over the place and at one point, lost control of his own phone and it flew into the air for a while until in came down to shatter into hundreds of pieces. But he kept on going!
Check back tomorrow as I will be adding more of the things I see right here.