Konami Vs Square Enix – TGS Supremacy

September 20th, 2007

square enix konami tokyo game show

This years Tokyo Game Show is definitely gearing up to be a fantastic event, mostly due to the hype surrounding big hitters from Konami and Square Enix. With Nintendo once again out of the picture and other companies having fairly average showings, its time for these guys to strut their stuff. So lets breakdown what to expect from these guys

Line up of Games

Square Enix

Konami

Square Enix’s Showing

SE have a nice selection of first time and already played titles on their list with a number of core titles still in video form. There is obviously a strong showing of mobile phone games which for most of us probably isn’t much of a big deal although the new Tobal title was a bit of a surprise.

I think that titles like Rings of Fate, Crisis Core and FF: Tactics A2 will really be what we are expecting out of these titles. There has already been plenty of news and media on Rings of Fate and (just recently)Crisis Core, so really we’ll just hear more on how they play. Its also pretty safe to assume that FF Tactics A2 will play the same as its predecessor especially with no touch screen field control.

I think that the two remakes(DQ and FF IV) as well as Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon should be the more interesting titles of the show. The new videos of FF XIII, Dissidia Final Fantasy and Last Remnant should also maintain quite a buzz. Hopefully these trailers will contain a solid amount of gameplay video. Chances are they all should.

The other bit of buzz around Square Enix’s showing are the number of surprise announcements that people are expecting. Here is a list from QJ of all of the rumoured titles to be announced:

Now, as of writing Square have shown the media video of 3 new Kingdom Hearts titles being:

These were all shown off in a montage behind closed doors.

Konami’s Showing

What Square misses out on Konami fits in. Playable versions of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Solid Online(6 vs 6) is definitely the highlight here. Konami much like Square are also into the mobile phone gaming market and announced several big franchise titles for mobiles at their conference.

Overall they have plenty of Metal Gear Solid to show off:

Along with MGS there are the 3 new Silent Hill titles; Origins, Silent Hill 5 and a new mobile phone title. Sticking with their best franchises there will also be a slew Wining Eleven on show. The Wii also won’t be left out with titles like Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party, Big Head Baseball and Big Head MLB. All of these titles are designed for the non gamer in mind.

As of writing, news has been put out of even more titles announced at Konami’s TGS Conference. So to find out about more of what they have on offer click the following link.

Conclusion

More big hitting franchises definitely seem to be the theme this year. With Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and Wining Eleven all due for at least 3 new titles(per franchise) being released in the near future. Its clear to see that key, stable franchises seem to be the future of gaming. Look below to see the current highlights.

News Links

Metal Gear Solid 4 Trailer
Kingdom Hearts Announcement
Konami Press Conference
Square Enix Rumoured titles
Metal Gear Online Package Announcement

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Avcon 07 Adventures

July 22nd, 2007

avcon 2007 adelaide

What is Avcon

Avcon is Adelaide’s Anime and Gaming convention. Next question, what is Adelaide Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia, an important Australian state. This is an annual convention situated at the Adelaide University. The events lasts for a weekend including the Friday night launch.

Introduction

I’ve been so busy lately with training for my new job that I didn’t have much anticipation for this year’s Avcon. Which is somewhat unfortunate as the event was quite a significant improvement over the previous year. I can whole heartedly say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Despite only going on the Saturday due to other commitments, I still had an awesome time. Judging by the timetable Saturday had most of the hows meat. I’m just gonna now run thru my personal highlights of the event.

Major Improvements

Are something that stood out this year. Throughout the day I noticed some great changes, big and small that improved on some of last years issues. For starters they let people in a bit earlier in order to avoid the long wait. Last year the wait was over half an hour, this time we got in in about 3 minutes. The overall layout was much easier to navigate through and also more spaced out over several areas. The staff levels, range of activities and the BBQ where improved greatly from last year(yay, bread!).

Initial Screenings

This time around I didn’t spend most of my time watching anime screenings. I had a good variety of anime, games and shopping. The best events in the morning where the screenings, so I watched the early stuff being: .hack//Roots and Devil May Cry. .hack//Roots was alright, I’ve seen some of the series before and got the same impression. It’s just a bit bland overall, although it was a premiere which was cool.

Devil May Cry should be renamed to Alucard May Cry. This series looks so similar to to Hellsing its not funny. The style, camera angles, voice acting and even the sound seemed to be almost identical. But it’s got one thing that Hellsing will never lay hands upon; Dante. Dante is a cooler dude than Alucard anyways. Plus he uses his fists more. It’s worth mentioning that it surprised me too that there was a DMC anime, never knew about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ3iSUDS0c4

Watch a trailer for DMC

Vendors

If posible I like to reserve my purchases relevent to the show for the show because of all the savings. Although there where considerably less vendors than last year the quality was better and more relevent to the show. Personally I’m not interested in goth wear or oddball dress up people no matter how interesting their personalities may be.

This year I most enjoyed the new stalls; namely EzyGames, but I’ll get to that a little later on. The usuals had a good show, Shin Tokyo, Pulp Fiction Comics and Madman. Madman had their own computer survey set up, by filling in their survey you received a free DVD with 3 full length episodes and 60+ trailers, nice.

There was a small stand with some guy selling dating software with young ,attractive anime babes. When I talked to him it seemed a little awkward and he wasn’t quite sure on how to pitch it to people. Interesting. There was also a stand from a second hand games shop that I have seen out the bus window a few times on the way to Uni. They had a notable collection of games, including an almost perfect SNES + Mario All Stars package. I spent a considerable amount of time chatting to him about the store and games in general. There where a few games that would have been great for the collection. I saw Street Fighter Alpha 3(GBA) for $29 which was a major pain. I decided to hunt around for this game and couldn’t find it so I bought SF Alpha Anthology for the PS2 after the Connection Tour.

EzyGames

Ezygames had a stall this year which was quite surprising and also useful. You see I recently ordered some rare games through the site and haven’t recieved them for almost two weeks now. Concerning I know Only a few days ago I had sent an email in to query this, so I went to the stand to ask what was going on.

The first guy that I talked to was the owner of the business, he pretty much runs the whole thing himself. He knew who I was straight away and explained the situation. We then spent a bit of time talking about games, the business and his business ethos. The guy was straight out genuine and shares the same strong but level headed passion for games that I have.

ezygames.com online games reseller

Later that day I returned and bought some stuff with my brother. He provided us with some excellent deals and was a true champ. I promised that I’d link out to him because he won us over with his genuine passion to deliver great games with great service and prices. So check out his site, its relatively new but already has made a good dent in the Australian online games market.

Competitions

Throughout the day a number of tournaments where hosted, I myself only took part in two of them being the Tetris DS and Smash Bros Melee. I wasn’t too keen on playing Smash Bros. as well it’s Smash Bros. it just sucks playing a game that is seen as being so superior to everything else when its not. Plus it’s not a skill based game either, ugh. I played against a group of campers which wasn’t much fun. I came 3rd because they all ran away and I managed to slip and lose a life amidsts the excitement and having not played it for a while.

The Tetris tourney was much better, I came 5th out of about 20 people which is really impressive as I only play the game with mates and I’ll often lose to my brother(whom was knocked out of the first round :p) during thse times.

Games

The overall gameplay set up was more spaced out the previous year. There where 3 main areas for gaming if you don’t include the hallways littered by people with their pastal coloured DS Lite. Two areas where general gaming and one for mature gaming. Mature gaming had games like Gears of War, Golden Eye an Halo. I also demoed the first level of Timesplitters Future Perfect for the Gamecube(I didn’t even think that a GCN version was made!). It felt like a much more interactive game than TS2, I guess that I gotta hunt this game down now as well. 🙂

The smaller gaming area had two tvs and some Mario Strikers. I think that the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo tournament was there as well. I was impresed by the idea of playing the movie; The Wizzard on a project in the centre of the room. Shows a lot of character.

The larger room held the Smash Bros competition. I was pleasantly surprised to see a large TV an couch dedicated to King of Fighters XI. Awesomeness, I sat down and played this game with a Chinese student from ShangHai. He was really good, a pure master of the button mashing technique. Unfortunately we had to take turns as there was only one controller and it wasn’t even a dual shock pad. In the same room DDR, Donkey Konga and Tekken where being played to death.

Conclusion

Avcon has seen a large improvement over the previous year. This can be seen in the presentation, organisation and personality that this event holds. Even the small things such as whats includinged in the goodies bag when entering. The reference guide is a great example of how professional this event has become, with its ultra trendy design and clever layout. Avcon was a lot of fun, had a good vibe and I overall had a great time. Can’t wait until next year.

Unfortunately no pictures have really surfaced yet. 🙁 I forgot to take my camera too, so I’ll post some up in the following days, if they become available.

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Getting out and about::The Social Gamer

June 30th, 2007

If there’s one thing that I sometimes feel guilty about is not being social enough. This is normally a result of me focusing too much on one particular thing and whoring it out until I am satisfied. Now I must admit, for the last 2 weeks I have been doing this for my Chinese study. I guess its a good thing though as I have made some astounding progress and am very proud of it.

Fortunately for gamer nerds like me(and probably you) I can have a great social life and game at the same time. I wanted to bring this up as I am now officially on holidays an there are a slew of great gaming events going on that are going to keep me constantly busy. Plus I had one of our regular gatherings with the boys yesterday, so it reminded me to post this. Here’s a list of what is on this holidays:

Avcon Adelaide’s Anime and Video game Convention
LPC Lan Party Central(meant to be more consoles than PCs)
Nintendo Connection Tour
O-LAN Street Geek(prolly won’t go, but its likey that my brother + friends will)

Now add to this a few general gaming sessions with the usual friends as well as catching up and doing non gaming social stuff and you have a pretty packed 3 week holiday. Don’t even let me get started on the 60+ list of games that I need to finish or future blogging plans.

I decided to post this to prove that gaming can also help out in your social life, there are plenty of great gaming events going on in your community, so I strongly recomend getting some mates together and taking a look. Even if there isn’t something on in your area create something, its not too hard to organize this sorta set up.

If you need some ideas of what events go on then here are a few suggestions:

LAN Parties

There are piles of these on all the time, everywhere. They are definetly not too hard to find. If your into your PC games then this is the event for you. Personally I’m not really much of a PC gamer(just ain’t my vibe) so sometimes they have a few consoles set up for the softies like me.

Promotional Events

These are definetly more popular in large/important places in the world. And down here in South Australia we don’t get enough of these. But in America they do, basically these events are to plug games to the public. So stuff like the Nintendo Connection Tour, the Fusion Tour or the Final Fantasy party that I mentioned in the last entry. You can also get freebies, so go there!

Expo’s/Concerts

Expos are like promo events but much larger. There are a few down here in Australia, so if we have them then everywhere else in the world must have at least a few per country. I also added concerts here for game music concerts like Eminence.

Community Regulars

Basically like LANs, but they happen on a regular basis. Usually weekly/bi-weekly. These are pretty popular at places like Universities or community centres, so look around to see whats going on in your area.

Get your mates around

Probably my favourite as everyone that attends is your friend. All that you need to do is get some mates around(usually at least 3 + yourself), get the gear and game on. This is cool as you get to choose what systems you want to play, the food etc etc. Plus there’s no sponsers. You can also mix and match, have people playing some consoles while others are on the PCs in a LAN, have a Singstar/Guitar Hero/whatever themed party.

So there you have it, go out there are get socially active fellow gamers. And be sure to drop us a little comment to tell us how you use gaming as a tool for social activity. I’d be totally interested to hear what other people do.

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