High lights:
The Eye of Judgement for PS3.
A board/card game using the eye toy. Really cool. A girl in the booth demonstrated it and it was very responsive. Fun that the eye toy is used for enhanced board-game type of stuff.
Final Fantasy XIII.
Beautiful. The story set-up seem to be the classic for the FF series. Lovely. I saw the videos in the “Closed Mega Theatre”. The screen shots I have seen on gamespy, gamespot etc doesn’t do it justice.
Pink PSP.
Seeing this awakened the same type of obsessive compulsive “I have to own” feelings that hello kitty stuff usually create. I hope I can get the PS3 in pink.
Generally
- I was surprised to not see many games using input devices requiring physical action, such as dance mats etc. Maybe tomorrow.
- I was impressed by the games made for mobile phones.
- There was a dedicated area to game schools; there are a lot of them in Japan. I went around the area asking for information in English to bring home, but the only one I found was from the Tokyo University of Technology. Anyhow, the map below shows who gives courses about games, so that should be a good base for a web search for those interested:
Misc:
Square-Enix shopping! I’m now the proud owner of some posters a t-shirt and an FF ring!
My favourite booth girl, featuring FF Online:
To my surprise, in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the show, I was hit by an almost religious feeling of the greatness of games. Games being, in my opinion, the greatest art form of them all, using all other art forms at the same time plus adding the skills and passions of the players. It may seem a pompous thing to write, but after all, since I have dedicated the last six years of my professional life to games I’m glad I still have this feeling.
There is much more to say about TGS06, but I'm off to the show now, I'm curious about the cos-players that will be there today. Gamespy and Gamespot have good coverage of the show, also translating the japanese keynotes and more for us non-japanese speaking persons.
