TGS2008

Ok I’ll start by saying that I realise that I don’t post as often here as on the French side. I thought I could keep up the rhythm, since every post is usually 1 hour to write, I tend to do the French part of it first and then I’m so bored with writing that I skip the English part telling myself that I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m sorry. But still continue to post anyway.

Ok, so. Last Saturday, ototo (Young brother in Japanese) and I decided to go to the Tokyo Game Show 2008. I didn’t tell about it before cause honestly I was a bit disappointed with this experience, and, secondly, I’ve been wasting myself on alcohol since Friday. I found on that Friday that Japanese beer is cheap. Curse you Japan for making me an alcoholic. So anyway, I’ll do my best to get the exact same translation form the French side. SO the TGS is supposed to be one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world. Hundreds of participants and thousands of visitors in 4 days. The first 2 days are closed to the public and the last 2 are open. So here we come. GANBATTE!

Saturday, more or less a fresh start. Still a bit drunk from my Friday night. Happens I guess. WE want to be there for noon. SO as well leave the apartment at 10h30. Meet my brother at 11h, take the train and ride to the Makuharu Messe for noon, more or less. Sounds good to me and my brother. The subway system here is really effective. And the Makuharu Messe is really not that far. So we think. HAHA! I leave at 10h30, Ototo a little bit sooner because his ride is longer. WE meet at 11h at the smoking square. Not here that in Japan you can’t smoke in most of the streets, you have to search for what they call “Manner parks”. Little parks every here and there where you go to smoke. Or you hide in an alley. Policemen won’t come after you in the alleys if you have a portable ashtray.

Anyway. Meet then wait a bit for Aymrik to show up. He doesn’t. Too bad for him, we won’t wait. Enter the Kudanshita Station; I already know where we have to go. WE have to hop on the Tozai Line till the terminus at Nishi-Funabashi. Should be easy. HAHA! Yeah sure! I don’t know why but Saturday at noon seems to be a rush hour for the subway. So when we show up the wagons are already full. 1-0 Tokyo. Next train in 20 minutes, no way. I push to enter and a pusher helps me with his shoulder. You can call me back pain. But refuse to let enter my brother. So he makes a head sign to me and I brace for the impact. He takes 2 meters starts and hit me shoulder first in the stomach. I fall behind, lot of Japanese do so around me and, I guess everyone know what are dominos right, half the wagon fall more or less on the ground. Japaneses looked at us angrily, my brother has a little nervous laugh and I grin to the pusher well making “bebye” with my hands. 0-1 Québec.

The subway goes on and we are stuck between 150 Japanese that don’t like us. Good. As the train goes on it empty a little. I take the opportunity to take a pic with my japanese cell phone. Smile! 30 Minutes later we’re at the Nishi-Funabashi station. Everything is fine so far. WE try to find a map and try to make sure which line we have to take. And this is 1-1 Tokyo. We don’t understand anything on the plan. WE see our station, we see the station we want to go, but we don’t have a damned idea as to which line to take. Two lines seem to go the red and the orange one. But can’t find the difference. And in Japan, when taking the subway, never assume that two lines going in the same direction are going to bring you to the same place. So we try to know for sure. We finally think that we should take the red line. Well I think we should, my brother is more looking on the orange side. So we wait and 2 oranges subway pass before us and the red seem to not exist so far. When the third shows up, my brother decide that we take this one. OK.

Hop on the train. One station later, the train stop. TERMINUS!!!! WTF?!? Hop out and still wait 20 minutes for a red one to show up. Hop in. God I hate this. 2-1 Tokyo. 45 minutes later and a really disastrous look at the city border side we arrive at the Makuhari Station. (Is it me or I change the name of this station every time I write it?) And then, hell, people like you never seen before. I’m sure Shibuya is not that populated. We make lines with hundreds of Japanese. And when we look around we realize that it’s gonna take us one full hour to reach the gate. No... fuckin’... way!!! Step aside, we are from Québec, we are Nordic people, bigger, stronger and meaner. Go *beep*…rself. We pass on the other side of the walk, the one reserved for the people going the other way. 2-2 Québec.

We then find ourselves on something, I must say, is totally cool. Air walkway. Walkway suspended over the streets. You can actually walk for hours in those and never have to touch the streets with your feet. Those walkways are making a web between all the hotels, shops and the Makuhari Messe. I didn’t take to take a picture sorry. But anyway. 30 minutes later, the TGS is right before us. First thing we see:

Second thing we see:

I don’t have any idea what it is supposed to be. And you see the kind of black cage on the bottom right corner of the pic. There was a girl in it. Don’t have the pic.


Anyway. We show up to get our tickets. 1200¥. Of course. Then straight to the door right above the stairs. At this point a rent-a-cop tells us that we have to go through the first floor gate. Ok. Go to the first floor. The rent-a-cop there tell me I have to go through the second floor gate cause I have a bag. Holy hell! Back to rent-a-cop A that tell me again that I have to go through the first floor gate. WHAT? I show him my bag and then he decide that I may pass through this gate, but not my brother cause he doesn’t have a bag. WHAT THE!?! You’ve got to be kidding me. Try to argument with Rent-A-Cop A but he doesn’t want to hear anything. WHAT THE FUCK!?! Got to be kidding me. Finally, the other guard tell us that it’s ok we can pass. Yeah thx. But still, so near. Show up at the entrance of the actual exposition rooms and... We get turned back cause we’re not Japanese. Oh fucking hell. The girl point us to the information center. The girl there doesn’t understand a word of English or French. But she points us to the international information center. Ok. And there a gal who speak English really badly.... PAUSE

Maybe some people notice that every time I talk about Japanese people speaking English I say they suck. It’s not that they actually suck at it, they actually know really well. But simply try to speak a proper English we you can’t pronounce R and L correctly. That you inverse, for some reasons, the A and the O. And that you have one hell of a time saying a word that contains the letter V.

Ok. So the gal there looks surprised to see us. And when we explain what happened she looks surprised again. She then point us to the entrance right next of the information center. WE show up there, and once again we are being refused. I’m going to punch these girls in the face when the information gal shows up and start talking with the girls at the doors. We finally can pass. And the TGS unravel before us. But still 3-2 Tokyo for all this stupidity.

And I must say that I’m impressed. There are pics only of the first part of the exposition. The TGS is separated in 5 distinct sections. Well, let’s say 4 cause one of them is for the restaurants. But still really huge.

WE try to navigate as much as we can. But there’s a big lot of people, we’ve been there for 5 minutes and we are already sweating like we just did 1 hour of jogging. Honestly would be easier to be naked and actually swim in the sweat than walking. It stinks, we are so close to other people that I only know one other way to be closer, and it implies being inside someone. Of course, we were expecting this. And, don’t forget, Quebecer are from the north, which bigger, stronger and meaner. We move around the Japanese and make our way while a line from behind us as we walk. 3-3 Québec. And we start the tour. Hudson, Namco, Sega, Xbox, PS3 and Wii. To just name a few. But there actually were a big lot of companies, a lot of them I didn’t even know they existed or were still alive. There was even a stand for Québec but since there was no one there, I don’t even know what they are supposed to do. Lot of little companies that are trying to show their products, games and technologies. I respect that. There was a complete set of stands with companies that only create games for cellphone.

Of course we can try games. I first wanted to try Resident Evil 5 (Biohazard 5) but the line was way passed the sign telling “1 hour from here” and since I didn’t want to wait 2 hours for a 5 minutes play of a game I wouldn’t even understand cause it’s in Japanese, I passed. But I tried Street Fighter 4. This is going to be one hell of a hit. Really. Still the same good old feeling but better, faster, prettier and just more awesome. Still 2-D, but simply better. You liked Street Fighter before, you have absolutely no reason to dislike it now. But right after that I have the second best moment of this day.

Yup! The new Bionic Commando. I totally liked this game when I was a kid. Me and my bro would spend hours on it. And I didn’t have much choice, I had to try it, japanese or not. Get in the line wait 1 hour. And finally I hold the Xbox360 controller. This game is pure awesomeness. Of course, you have the opinion of a hardcore fanboy who played every single version of Bionic Commando that ever existed and liked them all. But the 3-d and design are goods. The first stage is in a bombed cit or something like that, it’s marvellous. You have a kind of spider-man feeling while playing. The main character design is totally bad-ass, but I’m still wondering how he can take out his t-shirt without having to rip it first. A mystery really. The game have a surprising good feel to it. It was 10 minutes of pure bliss for me. And then happens what is the most absolute event of my TGS.

Are you reading that well? I hope so. This is an error screen from an Xbox360 while my brother was playing Bionic Commando and simply tried to press start to change the stage. Yup. How surprising, error screen from Microsoft. It took me 5 times to be able to take the picture. Of course the tech guy there didn’t want me to do so. But I couldn’t leave the TGS without an error screen of something; it would have been a waste. 4-3 Québec.

Concerning the pictures. I don’t have a lot of them. Mostly due to the fact that every time I tried to take one, someone would show up saying: « No pictures, no pictures. » There was a lot of bad-ass costume there. Lot of thing to see, but couldn’t get away with taking picture most of the time. And can someone explain why in a convention made to show the entire world the newest product I can’t take picture? I’m totally lost. And finally the only thing I was allowed to catch in my camera was the “brand girls”, as the Japanese call them. You know those pretty girls that are there only to be taken in picture with the products. You know them for sure. So that’s what I have form the TGS. Just for my own pleasure, I’ll post some right now.

So. We entered the TGS at 14h and left at 15h30. Honestly not much to see since I already saw on the internet everything showing up there. I was expecting a lot more new stuff. But apparently no. So we left and decided to take a walk around the Makuhari messe. And then we saw that.

While walking we see this gigantic glass tower. You already know about him, my last post was made from there. So I’ll skip that part. As to answer some question about this place. No I didn’t see any western comics there. And must say that I don’t see any very often. Second is no I don’t have any picture. The place was really quiet, much like a library and taking picture of all this would probably have used my entire memory card. And if you want one more fact. Without having to rent a room, you can rent shower time and eat at that place so when you enter you don’t have to leave before a long time. Which would be kind of dumb cause it cost a lot. Anyway we leave. Upon reaching the first floor, my brother has pressed every single buttons of every single floor. 50 in total. I really pity the guy that entered the elevator right after we left. 5-3 Québec.

Ok, from there everything went fast. Back at the train, we bully our way to the wagon. Everything fine we hop on. Ok. I know that it’s really disrespectful of us to actually toss Japanese away so we can pass. But there is that kind of day sometime when you don’t want to waste your time and don’t have the patience to be kind and good. That was one of those days. SO back to Nishi-Funabashi station. On the Tozai Line back to Kudanshita. Brother and me separate here he has to take the Hanzomon Line and I take the Oedo Line. So I go to the line and when I reach in my pocket to take my pass I notice something is missing. Search my pants, search my bag. Search my pants again, my shirt, my boots, my bag, look around, walk back to the Station. Nothing. Holy.... fucking... hell.... I lost my passport. Holy shit I can’t believe it. Tokyo ate my passport. As much as I hate to say it, that certainly is 2 points in one shot for Tokyo. So 5-5. And already called at the embassy and all. Really it’s fine nothing to panic about really. But, I’ll talk more about this when I’ll get my passport back, but it’s one kind of hell to get a new passport here. And I don’t have any choice to lend another point to Tokyo for this shitty bureaucracy.

Final score 6-5 Tokyo. I’m not giving up; in 2 weeks it’s the Halloween festival. I’m planning on winning this one.

That’s all for now. Already long enough in my opinion.

Cya.