Getting to play Demon’s Souls was a journey. First you have to show your ID with a passport or other valid identification to certify you’re over 18 years old. Then you walk through a small hallway with trailers of Sony’s 18+ PlayStation games like Resistance 2 and Resident Evil 5 to get behind the booth [...]

Steambot Chronicles 2 was nowhere to be found in Tokyo Game Show this year. Irem presented Minna de Spelunker (Everyone’s Spelunker) in its place. While Irem insists this version of Spelunker is for “everyone” from my hands-on impressions it isn’t. Spelunker has a history of being devilishly difficult since the cave explorer is a fragile [...]

Just like we said Nobi Nobi Boy would be at Tokyo Game Show and Namco Bandai brought a clip of actual gameplay to see. Maybe. The only thing I can decipher from their trailer which randomly flashed in Namco Bandai’s booth is you drift a snake-like creature through a rainbow maze. So… this is some [...]

7th Dragon starts out with the most unusual opening I saw this year at Tokyo Game Show. Rieko Kodama, the producer introduces the game dressed in a cat suit. Once you hear her talk about the trials of game development you get to create a character. 7th Dragon only has seven classes, but there are [...]

Tokyo Game Show isn’t the best place to sit down with Mystery Dungeon Shiren the Wanderer DS 2: Demon Castle in the Desert since it’s a mutable experience determined by random dungeons and even more random item drops. This could be the result of blind luck or a simplified demo, but the first stage in [...]

Sega’s Tokyo Game Show demo of Phantasy Star Zero was immediately familiar sans the cutesy art style. Three players and one helpful attendant from Sega linked up for one multiplayer game session. I got to play as a FOnewearl, a female magic wielding Newman sporting a fancy pink cowboy hat. She could smack Rappys with [...]

At Tokyo Game Show I caught up Ryoei Mikage, the President of Imageepoch, and among discussing Arc Rise Fantasia, Seventh Dragon, and a bunch of other titles we touched on World Destruction. He told me Imageepoch is currently working on the US version of World Destruction which Sega USA will publish in the future. A [...]

Ninja Blade’s Tokyo Game Show 2008 demo starts off with Ken freefalling, but you’re not going to fly around like in Otogi. Instead this scene is chock full of quick time events (QTE) prompting players with buttons to press to kill dragons and shoot wires to make Ken jump into a building. Ninja Blade had [...]

Acquire jumped on the motion control train without looking back. Tenchu 4 implements waggle by having players lift the remote upwards to jump. Wiggling the remote left or right makes Rikimaru roll into cover. The first stage has bushes marked with a black mist that Rikimaru can hide in and shaking the remote automatically makes [...]

The Tokyo Game Show demo of Taiko no Tatsujin Wii didn’t pull any surprises. Sticking to the series’ roots players tap a toy taiko drum in the center to hit red notes and on the side to hit blue notes. The drum itself is solid and feels pretty much the same as the PlayStation 2 [...]

Tucked away behind a Riz-Zoawd was a single station for @Simple WiiWare games in D3 Publisher’s Tokyo Game Show booth. The first two games, a Breakout clone and a Sudoku puzzle compilation didn’t sound that interesting, but I’m glad I gave the Wii demo station a closer look. The fourth game in the downloadable @Simple [...]

There were so many renditions of classic game tunes performed at this evening’s EXTRA Hyper Game Music Event at Shin-Kiba’s Studio Coast that it was hard to keep track of them all. The yearly event organized by 5pb Records assembles game composers to perform their own songs and revive classics from yesteryear by way of [...]

  The reception of the Final Fantasy Fables series has proven stronger on the Nintendo DS than on the Wii, which might explain the reasoning behind the port of Chocobo’s Dungeon for the portable console. In Japan it carries the elaborate title “Cid and Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon: Labyrinth of Forgotten Time +”. However, as not [...]

During TGS, a Square Enix representative shared some information on a feature of the two upcoming Chocobo titles for the Nintendo DS. Chocobo’s Dungeon and the sequel to Chocobo Tales will have Wi-Fi connectivity between them, allowing owners of each title to play card battles with one another.   The card battles are a continuation [...]