Day 13: Tokyo Game Show

I was quite looking forward to the Game Show, but in hindsight I wish we’d gone on one of the days where its only open to ‘business’ and not to the ‘public’. Right from the word go, at Tokyo train station, the train was absolutely packed with Japanese game addicts all going to the show… we were scrunched in like sardines. It got even worse when we got there… once inside the place was absolutely heaving, I kinda expected it to be, but not this bad! You couldn’t move. Even when you wanted to stop and look at a screen of a new game, an official would ‘move you on’… it seemed that unless you were in a queue to play a game, you weren’t allowed to just stand and watch. There were massive queues everywhere, on some games/stands I reckon they must have taken over an hour to get to the front. Crazy stuff. Even so, we managed to curb our mild claustrophobia for an hour or so while we walked around the 2 main exhibition halls. The best bit really was the PS3 stand. They had demos of the new GT game, and a few others, which looked really really cool. There was another game on display called Ace Combat 6 (I think) which had a great trailer playing on a big screen. That looked good too. Quite a few Wii games on display also (another multi-sports game, a baseball game, and a golf game), but most of the hall was dedicated to Nintendo DS games, and, surprisingly, mobile phone gaming! Like I said its a real shame it was so packed. I’d like to have played on some of the games but it was just impossible unless you were willing to stand in a hot and sweaty sardine-like queue for hours on end. Even in the ’sales’ hall, where you could buy models/dvds/t-shirts and general game memorabilia, the queues were ridiculous. Eventually we had to get out of there, so we headed back towards the station and found a Mexican restaurant where we had a meat and salsa taco each. Had a bit of a browse in what was like the Japanese version of McArthur-Glen retail park, stopped for a blueberry-iced-yoghurt, then went back on what was a considerably less-crowded train to Tokyo.

Now I’m back in the hotel, writing up this blog post, and we’re gonna get ready to go downstairs to the Pizza restaurant for dinner. Bit of a disappointing day really, although it was good to see some of the new games that will be heading over to England in the months to come.

Getting up mega early in the morning, grabbing a cab to the station, then getting the Narita Express train to the airport. Flight’s at 11am, and we get back to Heathrow at 15:30 on the same day (Sunday). Kate and I have agreed that if we can stay awake we’re gonna stop at either Nando’s or Tang’s Imperial in Maidstone for dinner. That’s about the only thing we’ve missed here (apart from Samson and of course all our friends and family)… the food!!!

The building has started

Got up early today (as Kate went into work to do overtime) and finally made a start on building my arcade cabinet. For those not in the know, I want to be able to play all the old arcade games on my own custom built cab, with a rotatable monitor and swappable control panels (so I can play all the horizontal and vertical arcade games, with the right controls).

Here’s a pic of my Sketchup plans for the cab…

…and here’s what I did today: the rotating frame for the monitor…

For loads more info an pics on this hobby project of mine, checkout my JIMBO’s scratch designed upright cab… thread over at the forum at arcadecontrols.com.

Gamebase64 on YouTube!

Hahahaha look what someone did on YouTube… a tutorial/intro on using GB64 – the C64 games database that uses the frontend that I wrote (GameBase). This guy really sold it to me, I gotta admit, just listen to his soothing voice. LOL!

100 reasons why C64 rulez…

Is it all over for the Wii?

Some guy on Slashdot posted a link to an article that says the Wii has dominated next-gen console sales so far. This may be the case but I’m a bit skeptical about the future of Nintendo’s console. Alright so its only been out a couple of months but so far, apart from Wii Sports and Zelda, where are the decent games? I’ve not even heard of any good ones coming out in the near future! The current line up of available titles from my point of view are pretty poor. Where’s Wii MarioKart? I can’t find a mention of it anywhere! Even Warioware Smooth Moves wasn’t as good as I’d expected: no simultaneous play in the mini-games, you can only use one controller, crap multiplayer games (where’s the cool othello game that the GC version sported?), you have to finish the entire single player game first to unlock multiplayer (!), you can only store 12 or so player profiles on there (maybe Nintendo thinks nobody who plays their games has more than 12 friends?). Gimme the GameCube version any day of the week. I wanna see some decent games in the pipeline… stuff comparable to Zelda and Resident Evil 4, and some good serious sports sims (this is exactly what the Wii would be great at!). Maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit here, afterall its early days, but I’ve nearly beaten Zelda and I’m looking for my next game… but can’t really see any I fancy. Just check the lineup on metacritic.com – those scores speak for themselves.

Zelda Twilight Princess Progress

Got a bit further on Twilight Princess. Finished off the Snowpeak ruins and the Temple of Time, and got to the City in the Sky dungeon. The Temple of Time was pretty cool – some good puzzles in there where you have to move some robots into certain positions to solve things. The boss was easy in this dungeon too. Just shoot the eye till it falls down then bash it with the statues (once you locked on to them):

Then it was on to the next dungeon. You have to do a fair bit first though because your staff that controls the statues breaks and you gotta fix it, then get hold of a book that contains a magic chant or something to open up a door that leads you to a massive cannon (which then rockets you up to the City in the Sky Dungeon). There was a really cool bit in this part of the game where you have to shoot a load of enemies with your bow without them seeing you, i.e. in stealth. It was in an old hidden village that was like an old cowboy western town (complete with western music). For a minute there I felt just like Clint Eastwood:

The City in the Sky dungeon so far is a real pain in the neck. You get another clawshot in this dungeon, and the whole thing is basically you swinging from wall to wall trying not to fall off (and dying). I don’t think I’ve got far to go now in this one, but I’ll be glad when its over:

Zelda Twilight Princess Progress

Played a little more Twilight Princess last night, and got to the start of the Temple of Time dungeon. Getting past the Twilit Ice Boss was a doddle really. Just a case of avoiding her attacks and then hitting her with the ball and chain a few times:

After collecting the mirror piece, I went off to Faron Woods to look for the next dungeon. Got stuck for 10 mins or so in the Sacred Grove trying to find the Scarecrow-guy with the Lantern, then realised he was up above me in the treetops, but apart from that I found the next dungeon pretty easily – where I saved and went to bed!

Zelda Twilight Princess Progress

I played a bit more Zelda on the Wii last night and got right up to the boss in the Snowpeak Ruins dungeon. Quite liked this one really: there’s some good puzzles, bits that stump you for a bit and make you really think. There’s some good enemies to fight too, such as these big skeleton things that chuck spears at you (tip: use shield to repel) and the little bastards that glide around on the ice and ‘freeze’ you if they touch you (tip: use the clawshot to get from a distance). The dungeon had a couple of hard bits, the worst one for me was the knight with the ball and chain. I must’ve done this about 20 times before I nailed the sucker (I had about 3 hearts which didn’t help – duh I should have gone back and got some more heart-replacing soup from the yeti monster), but once I got the ball and chain (way cool weapon btw) the level was pretty easy. This game never ceases to amaze me with all the new weapons and ways you can use them.

Here’s the ball-and-chain knight in all his glory: