Tokyo Game Show 2023 has officially come to a close. While the 2022 iteration of the show was much more of a hybrid kind of event with limited attendance, this year brought things back to more or less to pre-pandemic levels in a lot of ways. When it was all said and done, over 240,000 people attended the show over the four day course of the event. For me, I attended both of the business days on September 21 and 22 and had a good time playing games, meeting up with friends and just enjoying the general atmosphere. I had to think about this for a minute, but TGS 2023 was actually my tenth time covering the event (2011-18, 2022-23) and my eleventh time going to the event overall. Time really flies!
On the first day of the event this year, I was able to try out almost everything that I set out to play. I checked out the massive Metal Gear Solid area of Konami’s booth and got to try out the game on Switch, Decapolice over at Level-5, Sonic Superstars, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Macross -Shooting Insight- in the partner section of Konami’s booth. Shooting Insight really surprised me as I had absolutely no expectations for the game going in. This fun arcade shooter had tight controls, looked great and featured an IP that I haven’t thought about for years. Of course, I really enjoyed getting to try out some of the upcoming titles form the larger companies, checking out a Macross game in 2023 was not something that I imagined I would be doing at TGS this year. Not only that, but I got to meet up with Genki on and off throughout the day and also ran into friend of the site/podcast, Haitani, and chatted for quite a bit.
Throughout my two days at the show this year, I got to try out almost everything that I set out to play. There were a few games that slipped through cracks, though, most notably for me being Konami’s huge party game, Momotarō Dentetsu World and the upcoming remaster of Retro Game Challenge. Regardless, I had a good time at the show playing games, soaking in the experience and hanging out with friends. Of course, getting to meet up with the rest of the Famicrew, Genki and other friends from social media (Will aka PushDustIn) and our Famicast Discord (Haitani! It was great hanging out!). I’m looking forward to future gaming events or other opportunities to hang out with friends and play some cool games sometime in the near future. Oh, and if you want to read any of my in depth impressions from the show floor, be sure to check out our TGS 2023 Hub Page here.
- Danny - @dannybiv on X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky
This year's Tokyo Game Show was really fun. It was my second ever TGS and this time it was even bigger than last year and extremely overwhelming. But I had a lot of fun playing a few games and hanging out with and meeting people. I was able to attend the two business days and one public day.
On day one I was able to check out Final Fantasy VII Rebirth over at the massive Square Enix booth. It is the second entry in the FF7 Remake trilogy. It was very impressive and expands upon the first entry in so many ways from gameplay to having more open and larger areas to explore. I was blown away by the game. I also got to try out Dragon’s Dogma 2 which is still not so far in development but the gameplay and world felt solid and combat was great. I enjoyed being able to pick up small goblins in battle, especially the ones that constantly used their shields. In the evening I was invited to an Xbox content creators watch party to view the Xbox TGS stream together with Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond. I got to ask them a few questions about Japanese games on Xbox. Even though the stream was not as exciting as I hoped, it still had one or two good announcements, such as Octopath Traveler 2 coming to Xbox and Like a Dragon The Man Who Erased His Name coming to Game Pass.
On day two I was able to hang out with the Famicast crew a lot. I wore my Famicast Season 7 FF7 themed T-shirt along with Danny and James who wore theirs. First, we checked out the Konami Metal Gear Booth together with Danny and Ty. Then we played a cool Macross Shooter game. James arrived at lunch time and we took some photos together and me and Ty played some Tekken 8. It was a really good game. Ty is a fighting game expert and picked up the fight stick to play with. I went with the controller. I got my butt kicked but it was fun trying out the characters and they look more amazing than ever before. They had some really stylish animations and new abilities too. I was very impressed by the quality of the game. I also managed to play Sand Land at the Bandai Namco booth which is very open world and I loved the art style. At the end of the day I bumped into Yoshinori Kitase, Director of OG FF7 and Producer of FF7 Rebirth. I managed to get a picture with him and felt my FF7 Famicast T-Shirt gave me lots of good luck! It's a great T-shirt!
Day three was a public day and the amount of people was crazy. I played RE4 VR and Decapolice in the morning. Also Sonic Superstars but was unable to get to anything else due to the waves of people. Decapolice was a big highlight for me. The world reminded me a bit of Astral Chain which is one of my favorite Switch games. You could solve crimes using a crime board with notes of evidence strung together in order to find the culprit. Then the battles were ATB based but you could run around during them and use cool abilities and moves.then you could arrest the enemies and handcuff them. It was a good surprise and played really well. Sonic Superstars was very fun too. It was so colorful and I really enjoyed the new cyber levels in which you become pixelated in different shapes. Later whilst walking by the Square Enix booth, I saw Yoshi-P (FF14 Director, FF16 Producer) doing signings and photos. I ran straight over to the line and got my pamphlet signed and a photo with Yoshi-P. I felt he really loves and cares for his fans. On the evening of the third day, I attended an Xbox fan meet and greet hosted by IGN Japan at a hotel nearby. It was cool to talk to Japanese Xbox fans and meet Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond once again. Phil said he was hoping to expand more in Japan by expanding their current staff or maybe even expanding in other ways too. It seems they are really trying to grow and improve in Japan atm.
In all, I really enjoyed the TGS experience this year.. I got to play a few cool games and the spectacle was amazing. From the big booths and decorations, to the developers and massive amounts of people, it was awesome! It was fun hanging out and seeing the Famicast guys again and I could really feel Japan’s love for video games here. It looked like so many people had a great time! I hope I can visit again next year.
Genki - Genki_JPN on X (formerly Twitter)
No comments:
Post a Comment