TOKYO — Tekken 6 has been in Japan’s arcades since November 2007, so the audience’s relative lack of interest in the demo at the Tokyo Game Show last month wasn’t terribly surprising.

A closer look, however, revealed something special at the corner of the Bandai Namco booth: One of the demo stations for its latest fighting game was running the new “scenario campaign” mode that is unique to the upcoming Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. Instead of the traditional one-on-one fighting game experience, this a throwback to the beat-em-ups of years past, where you take Tekken characters onto the streets to fight various thugs.

Previous games in the Tekken series have tried this sort of gameplay, but I like this one more.

Continue Reading “Hands On: Tekken 6’s Campaign Mode” »

TOKYO — Here’s a game in which you fend off ninjas with a boxing glove at the end of a stick.

Wait, what?

Students at Nihon Kogakuin College have made a game called Don’t Lose the Secrets that puts you in just such a situation. On the screen, your character is standing in a feudal Japanese palace while ninjas crawl across the ceiling. Jabbing your stick upwards at the right time will knock out an interloper, while a mistimed strike will send your stick flying out of your hands. This forces you to wait while your character prepares a new stick, but this penalty is meaningless as there is no way to fail. There are no points to score, no quotas to meet and no clock to race against. It’s just you, a clan of colorful ninjas and a big stick.

Continue Reading “Don’t Lose the Secrets: Fighting Ninjas With a Boxing Glove” »

TOKYO — In the race to put more polygons on the screen than their competitors, most new videogames are defined by how they look. There was one game at Tokyo Game Show, however, where the graphics didn’t matter at all. That’s because it’s designed for the blind.

Blind Braver was created at the Tokyo Communication Arts school on Microsoft’s XNA development platform. The screen isn’t entirely blank, as your character is not completely sightless, but the main points of reference are auditory ones, with a little assistance from the force feedback of the Xbox controller. The booth was equipped with 5.1 surround sound and the volume was sufficiently high enough to stand apart from the din of the TGS show floor.

Your character starts in a hallway and is holding a cane. Pressing the right stick waves the cane to either side to check for obstacles. The left stick moves forward while the D-pad is used for 90-degree turns. Occasionally, a strong wind can be heard, indicating which way to turn next.

Continue Reading “Hands On, Ears Open: Blind Braver, a Game With No Graphics” »

TOKYO — Motion controllers and the promise of Project Natal might be all the rage this year, but why move at all?

The Adventures of NeuroBoy is a game that monitors your brain activity via a Bluetooth headset (called a “MindSet”) and uses that data to interact with virtual objects. The technology is still limited to measuring “concentration” and “meditation,” so the game itself still relies on keyboard and mouse commands to maneuver NeuroBoy on screen. In order to handle any object it must first be selected with a mouse click. Players have a choice of four abilities: pushing, pulling, levitating and burning.

The short demonstration I received on the floor of the Tokyo Game Show was as much about the technology itself as it was the software. The MindSet fits over your head like a set of stereo headphones, with a small arm and sensor that presses against your forehead. The staff warned me to make sure my hair didn’t cover the sensors, as that would obscure the signal.

Continue Reading “Hands On: NeuroBoy, a Game You Play With Your Brain” »

TOKYO — Indie developer The Behemoth had a booth on the Tokyo Game Show floor, a small installation in the corner that was easy to miss. I certainly didn’t take notice of it during the first couple days of the show, or else I would have made it a point to visit sooner. The company brought two games to share with the public: a PlayStation Network demo of their Xbox Live Arcade hit Castle Crashers, and its forthcoming third game, temporarily known only as Game 3.

The new game features the same 2-D hand-drawn look that their previous games are known for, although Game 3 is not another side-scrolling adventure. Instead it’s an arena fighting game with multiple game modes, three of which are playable but not yet named. All three games in the demo are two-on-two multiplayer online contests, though producer John Baez told me that more options will be available in the full game.

Continue Reading “Hands On: Frantic Fighting in Behemoth’s Game 3” »

TOKYO — The annual Tokyo Game Show isn’t just a place for gamers to try out demos of upcoming games. It’s also a place to exchange their hard-earned money for swag.

See also:

Scenes From the Peripatetic Tokyo Game Show

Hands On With Tokyo Game Show’s Hottest New Games

Japan’s videogame publishers long ago realized the benefits of selling all manner of tchotchkes to gamers. When fans have to wait three years in between versions of Final Fantasy, why not make a little extra money on the side by selling them statuettes of the game’s characters? Or sterling silver replicas of the jewelry worn by said characters? Or just a good old-fashioned stuffed Mario doll?

Here are some of the more interesting items that were for sale at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, including cool stuff we would have bought if we were slightly crazier, expensive things we couldn’t hope to afford and weird things we wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot gunblade.

Above: This Lagiacrus Head Ring, made in the shape of Monster Hunter’s fearsome sea serpent, will set you back about 25,000 yen ($250). The multiplayer action game is one of Capcom’s most popular titles, spawning the usual array of T-shirts and other items as well as this pricey and bizarre jewelry.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

TOKYO — Last year, The Last Guy on PlayStation 3 took a very basic game idea and made it remarkable by using aerial maps of real locations as levels in the game. Someone at Square Enix must have loved that idea, because it has done just that with its upcoming shooter 0 Day Attack on Earth.

Square Enix has taken the concept a step further by making 3-D renderings of major cities around the world, rather than simply borrowing images from Google Earth.

The trailer being shown here at the Tokyo Game Show boasts “defend real cities” without listing how many there are. The action moves too fast for me to pick out many locations, although I definitely spotted the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The demo level was unsurprisingly limited to Tokyo, a city I don’t think I could recognize based on urban topography alone save for the Tokyo Tower.

Continue Reading “Hands On: Defend Real-Life Cities in 0 Day Attack on Earth” »

TOKYO — I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the trailer behind Square Enix’s booth here at the Tokyo Game Show. Thexder is back after all these years! Who would have thought it was possible?

OK, I guess I should explain to everyone under the age of 25 what the hell a Thexder is. Released at the height of the Transformers craze, Thexder was an arcade-style shooting game for starring a robot that could change into a jet. It was later ported onto a variety of different platforms — Square handled the Famicom version.

Flash-forward to 2009, and the game is getting a sequel: Thexder Neo, an upcoming downloadable game for PSP. The original was made with 2-D sprites but the Neo version is entirely modeled in 3-D. True to its roots, however, the sequel is decidedly 2-D in gameplay. As a robot, Thexder can jump and shoot a laser in any direction - targets are chosen automatically. As a jet, Thexder moves much faster but will only fire straight ahead. Thexder can activate a shield in either form and transformations are unlimited.

Continue Reading “Hands On: Thexder Neo Still as Frustrating as Original” »

TOKYO — As the lines surrounding the Square Enix booth at the Tokyo Game Show stretched longer and longer, I found a delightful selection of downloadable games hidden in the back of their exhibition space that was surprisingly crowd-free. Of these, the most visually striking was an Xbox Live Arcade game called Death by Cube.

There’s only the hint of a story on display, but all you really need to know is that your character is a robot and you must do battle with other robots in a stark outer space arena. Most of your enemies are cube-shaped — hence the title. Even though everyone involved is mechanical, once the lasers start flying the floors become awash with blood. Sure, the promotional materials call it “red oil,” but that’s not what it looks like. Besides, how much oil does a floating cube really need to operate?

Continue Reading “Hands on: Robots Slaughter Robots in Death by Cube” »

TOKYO — As of a few hours ago, Tokyo Game Show 2009 was closed for good. We’ll still have plenty of coverage in the next couple of days, however, as we go through our notes and write about other games that we saw this year — from Square Enix’s suite of Xbox Live Arcade downloadable games to some unique student-made games that were on the show floor. Not to mention two more giant photo galleries.

Photo: Chris Kohler/Wired.com