Today (Saturday) was madness. Yesterday Tokyo Game Show was only open to members of the press, but today anyone who wanted to could come in. I thought it was busy yesterday but today was utter pandemonium.

I knew we were in for a big crowd when we saw this scene at the station. This was in the morning, long before the doors where open to the public. The line that these people were standing in was literally a mile long. It took 12 minutes to walk from one end to the other. I felt kinda bad that we could go right in.

This was also the first day for cosplayers. In the open area between buildings were dozens of young people dressed up as characters from their favorite video games. Some of these people will work on these handmade costumes all year.

Originally I had intended to do a cosplay gallery. I stated at one end of the open area and I was going to take pictures all down the line. But there was at least a 3-minute wait for each cosplayer and some really popular characters having up to a 15 minute wait. I got one good photo if Iori from King of Fighters before I decided that it would take me the rest of the day to get everyone. There are many cosplay sites on the net that got every picture so I figured this year 4cr didn’t have to be one of them.

Speaking of King of Fighters, the SNK Playmore booth had set up a number of tournaments and tutorials on how to improve your 2D fighting technique.

My investigative journalism skills were not in full force at the Hudson booth. I was trying to see if I could get any information out of them about the PC-Engine Virtual Consol games they are planning to release.

I asked a few of the show girls, but they didn’t know what the Virtual Console even was. Fair enough, they are not getting paid to know that. Next I went to the information table and asked the staff. They acted as if they had never heard of it either and they ARE getting paid to know it. I stated to walk away, having gotten no answers, when a PR woman caught up with me and told me that they were not announcing the titles yet, but she took my business card and told me that I would get the press release when they did. It warms my heart to know that someone who works for the company actually knows about the products they sell. Though in retrospect the “I have no idea what you are talking about” might be a Japanese way of saying, “I can’t tell you”. Either way, I didn’t get any new information, but I got a neat keychain.

Most Japanese people drive cars like this, but this is the first time I have seen one in a game booth.

These girls were here to bow to us as we left the game show. It made us feel special. But it was also a kind way of saying, “Please go home now. If I have to smile like this for one more minute for one more sweaty fanboy I am going to scream.”

There was a nice Indian restaurant near TGS so we decided to eat there. The food was expensive but very good. Since it was right after TGS the entire place was filled with gamers. A cell phone went off in the next booth and the ringtone was the Animal Crossing theme. It just seemed perfectly natural.

After dinner we took a train and sang karaoke with a bunch of other reporters and bloggers. Their names and faces are being withheld to protect their dignity.

On the train ride home a very friendly; very drunk saleryman who had lived in New York previously started chatting with us. He said he used to work for a game company. We asked which one but he had already forgotten what we talking about and kept asking us where we were from and laughing at anything we said. As I said, he was very drunk. When it was our stop, we got off the train and he just followed us. I wondered how long our new friend was going to walk with us. We decided to take a picture to remember him by. He walked with us a little more and then we had to run to catch the monorail. We looked back and he had vanished. Was he ever really there at all?

Back at the hotel I decided that I should find out if my pillow was soft or not. I decided that a 7-hour test was in order. The experiment was a success.