After a quick breakfast of some potato chips left over from last night, Jools and I made our way to Makuhari Messe where the show is being held. Japanese reporters had to wait forever to receive their press passes but us lucky foreign press were able to get in fairly quick.

While waiting in line we got into a heated debate about Smash Bros. Melee with the guys from Gamerz-Edge. The argument was whether or not it should be considered a fighting game. The debate was all about semantics. Such a geeky conversation. I felt right at home.

The fist mistake we made was to go to Ken Kutaragi’s keynote. We had great seats. Third row. We were literally within spitting distance of Kutanagi. I don’t want to sound bias, but even the strongest Sony fanboys have got to admit that the presentation was dull. Really dull.

He talked at length about the possibilities the Internet holds for the future and he barely mentioned the PS3. The only real highlights were the trailer for Final Fantasy XIII (which looks great) and pictochatting with the Joystiq guys during much of it.

After the keynote it was time to hit the show floor. I tried to capture the vast hugeness of this area but it’s impossible in photographs. There were so many people, games, booth babes, and cameras.

We stopped at the Sega booth first. Jools and I broke up and tried a number of DS games. There were many SEGA reps scurrying around helping press through the games and giving tips as they played.

I found that the new Bleach game suffers from a lot of slowdown. Jools dived into a new medical-themed game called “Blackjack” which he will write impressions of soon. I also tried a number of other games that I will talk about later.

After this we visited Konami, where Elebits was being promoted heavily. You could stand and watch cute girls play the game. Now here is where I had the biggest problem with TGS. There were many Wii games and consoles on the show floor but none you could try. It was a “look but don’t touch” experience. Luckily the people playing the games were usually quite attractive and played through many different parts of the games, giving the viewers a good look at what to expect.

This lucky girl was playing the new Sonic the Hedgehog game.

A somber young woman was playing Bleach for the Wii. She barely moved while playing it and her expression never changed.

We visited several other booths and picked up press kits (which I will look at one of these days). Occasionally we would stop to play a game or two. Some of the booth girls were very persistent and this one practically dragged me to play this baseball game.

I saw Hideo Kojima giving and an interview and a few minutes later we walked past the director of the Dead or Alive games. Adoring groupies surrounded them both.

If I am a fanboy of any one company it is SNK, so it was vital that I was able to go to the SNK Playmore booth. I tried a bit of Card Fighters DS and was impressed by the artwork, but the game system is a bit different from the Neo Geo Pocket Color version, so I will have to give it a bit more time.

I was surprised to find that SNK Playmore had posters for 3 new DS games (2 RPGs and a Dating Sim.), I was not surprised however, that they didn’t have demos of any of them.

Tecmo was showing Swing Golf Pangya for the Wii, but I came right at the end of the demo and didn’t get to see much of it, I will try to catch it again tomorrow.

Jools tried to begin his life of crime today by stealing a crate of DS lites, but his gimpy leg prevented his from getting away with it.

I decided to give the PS3 a try but made the mistake of playing Coded Arms. These girls insisted that is was a great game and that logic was hard to argue with. But the game was choppy (felt like watching a slideshow), slow, and ugly. Also 3 minutes into the game the PS3 I was playing on crashed. It took 2 or 3 minutes to reboot the game. It felt like an eternity. The guy who rebooted my machine just shrugged, seems that this has been happening all day.

While taking a close look at the Wii, we ran into Mr. Cube! He runs the largest Nintendo fan site in Japan, Nintendo Inside. He was actually the one who found us. He said “4 color rebellion! I love 4 color rebellion!” Jools had interviewed him last year so we got to talking right away. Great guy.

The show closed at 5:00pm. We hung out in the press room for a bit but that closed 5:30. not nearly enough time for me to get much done. But the free drinks were nice.

At Jools’ suggestion we decided to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant called “It’s Vegetable!” The food was very good, but it took us like 2 hours to find so we were very tired by the time we finished.

Jools and I just barely caught the last train back to the hotel at around midnight and went immediately to sleep in a game induced exhaustion. I can’t wait until tomorrow!