Day 2 Enter the TGS Hall

Day 2 TGS, First DAY Open to Public
Going to Makuhari Messe is fun on this day. The morning TV show was suggesting places to go during the weekend. TGS is one of them. Let's talk about things at the train station. First, there are many many people heading to TGS, so the train station has a long line going to the same direction. Second, since Tokyo Disney Land is on the same way as Makuhari Messe, so there are many families going in the same direction as well. It is really interesting, all of us are going that direction for fun.

You can sense the heat of the console war with Microsoft staff (Promotional girl dressed in Xbox360 costume) started distributing Xbox360 bags at the Makuhari Messe station. Usually, there is another male staff by the side helping the female staff. The man will hand out xbox360 bags to the woman, while she give them out to the convention goers. Within 5 seconds, the 10 bags she is holding are gone. Microsoft strategy is quite effective as many people are "wearing" the xbox360 latest fashion before going in the convention hall.

SNK Playmore
Another pre-emptive marketing is SNK which put their KOF Maximum Impact 2 characters along your way to the TGS main hall. Just like last year. Very nice, this indeed is the first viewing of upcoming games from TGS. Because I was so eager to go inside the convention hall first, this picture of Iori is actually taken after the show. You can see it is getting dark and people are gathering around Macdonald. (Wait, there is a Macdonald? I didn't realize that.)

TGS Ticket Box Office
Q: For the world second biggest game show with 176,000 visitors over 3 days. Guess how many atdoor ticket booth are there?


1 ...
2 ...
3 ....
ANS: ONLY 3!!! That's right. I am not mistaken. These are the only 3(each has 2 or 3 sales counter) Still, very amazing. 99.99% of people I saw hold an advance ticket already. (Well, only to those people attending in the morning I guess. I have no idea how many people are there outside the hall in the afternoon. Somebody can email me if you know.)

Unlike the rest of the world, Japan is a very organized place for line up most of the time.
You can see these people standing up with a big sign saying where is the end of the line. Very clear.

The line up isn't too bad yet since I was there very early. They let us into Hall 4 to 6 (where the main action are) directly bypassing hall 1 to 3 which is a good management. You really have to say CESA has a job well done.

Once you entered the hall, the first thing you do beside showing your ticket is grabbing this year TGS Guide Book. CESA has said this year is biggest in record (didn't they say that each year?) but really judging from this year's guide, this year has been a lot bigger. The book is getting a lot thicker, with better quality paper too! Now, this is the real thing, THE TGS 2005!