Today (Sunday) is the final day of the 2006 Tokyo Game show. Jools and I are exhausted from 2 full days of this crowded event. Still, it’s what we love and we are here to cover as much of it as possible. I wanted to take it slowly today and find all of the little things I may have missed.

Upon entering the game show, I waved “good morning” to the cosplayers who had been up since the crack of dawn getting prepared for a hard days posing.

The next few hours were spent wandering around the main floor as I have done every day. I bought the “King of Fighters: Kyo” T-shirt I had been eying from the SNK store and then checked out the games. The “Tales of…” games at the Namco booth were very impressive. I have been a fan of these colorful games for many years and really hope that Namco will bring one to the Wii. The lines were as long as the day before at the Namco booth. Actually they were long everywhere. Except in one area..

I know I have criticized how Microsoft has handled Japan in the past, but they were really making an effort this year. They had a great booth with some very impressive looking games and some that were actually even geared towards Japanese gamers!

Blue Dragon was good, not a genre altering amazing game, but one that is fun and should please JRPG fans. Microsoft was pushing this title hard with billboards up at the train stations and the largest group of booth babes of the entire show handing out Blue Dragon bags.

Viva Piñata looked way more polished than I had thought, but I don’t like the disembodied control interface. The game seems to be trying to be “Animal Crossing” and “Black and White” at the same time. Still it is far richer and has more depth than I expected.

Dead or Alive Extreme 2, was jiggly, jaggy and not really all that fun. I am a great fan of beautiful character graphics and advanced body physics but DOAX2 was a fairly boring compilation of mini-games with the sexy girls being it’s only selling point. I felt dirty playing it.

This was really interesting. A cell phone game company had set up this little cafe where you could use a cell phone to chat with the maids. They also set up four park benches outside the café. Each bench was complete with one “schoolgirl” waiting for someone with a cell phone to sit down next to her. They could then go on a cell phone “date” via chat. I didn’t try it myself but it seemed the cell phone itself was actually breaking down communication rather than enhancing it. But who am I to judge? This guy in the picture looks happier than I will ever be in my life.

Today I noticed a lot of Star Wars things that I hadn’t seen the first two days. Perhaps I just missed it or maybe they change things around each day to give people an excuse to come back. So many people were taking photos of the droids I wasn’t looking for. I am not sure if these were original props or replicas. I wasn’t able to get very close to find out for sure, but my money’s on replica. Either way I wouldn’t be surprised.

Around noon I got an email from one of the 4cr readers who was attending the show. He and his friend wanted to meet up and I am always happy to meet fellow rebels. I met Matt and Mason at the SEGA booth and we walked around a bit and talked about the show. I was pretty busy and couldn’t chat long but before running back to the press room, we took this photo in front of the SNK Playmore booth. This is (from left to right): Vinnk, the luckiest booth babe in the world, Mason and Matt.

At this point I retired to the press room where I would write posts and hang out with the other writers. The Joystiq guys were really cool all weekend and today gave me one of those hip orange t-shirts like they gave Miyamoto.

When it was finally time to leave, Jools and I were just in time to catch a parade of stormtroopers. I only caught part of the group in this photo but there were a ton of them.

At the end of the line was Darth Vader. He was being cleaned and polished by a small Japanese woman as he walked. It made total sense to me. If I was an all powerful evil lord I would also hire a small Japanese woman to follow me around making sure I was all shiny before I menacingly entered a room. Wouldn’t you?

After the show ended Jools and I were running late to catch our planes. Still we had vowed to record a roundtable before leaving Tokyo. As we had a dinner of take-out food, we recorded a roundtable on the street outside of the station. Passersby were confused, but it was one of the better roundtables I have been involved in.

We then dashed to the airport and I made it on my plane with mere minutes to spare. I had to make a same long journey I reported on my first day, but now in reverse. It was 1:30am when I finally got to my apartment and 1:31am when I went to sleep. TGS was great and I would love to do it again, but there’s no place like home.