2025 Tokyo Game Show TGS

Tokyo Game Show entrance — I went to Tokyo Game Show again

I went to Tokyo Game Show this year again. I bought a Business Day Ticket for Friday, September 26th. Last time I went on the public day, I thought it was insane, and decided I wouldn’t do that again. This time, I did something I’ve never done before: I made a plan.

It isn’t like I made many, or complicated plans. I just noted a few things that I would like to see, and some things I might like to buy, and the looked up where those would be.

Here is what I had for my plan:

10:00am SF6 Corporate Tournament. Organized by Kagecchi at the Samsung SSD Booth (Hall 07-C01).
10:30am – 13:30pm Yuka Kuramoti is the MC at the Delta Force Main Stage (Hall 02-S03).
12:00 – 14:00 The 2nd Valkyrie Cup at the Samsung SSD Booth (Hall 07-C01).
12:00 – Takeuchi John at the 2XKO booth at Riot in Hall 5.
15:30 – 17:00 Yuka Kuramoti is the MC at the Delta Force Main Stage (Hall 02-S03).
The Capcom Booth is in Hall 7.
The Wizardry Booth is in Hall 4-N05.
The Wizardry Shop is in Hall 9-W119.
The Capcom Shop is in Hall 9.
The +1F Shop is in Hall 10-W13.

I also jotted down some notes for Cosplayers that I knew in case I had time to try to chase people down (I did not).

Line for TGS 2025 — A bit of the line that was outside

I arrived at about 9:30am for the 10:00am opening. I got through the bag search and registration, and then lined up. I ended up waiting outside for about half an hour before the line started moving and we got in. The entrance is in Hall 1, my goal was to try to play C. Viper in the Capcom Booth, over in Hall 7. So I made a beeline for Hall 7, snapping a few pictures on the way.

Kamurocho Cosplayers — Like this Kamurocho setup at the Sega booth

Or this huge helicopter at the Battlefield 6 booth

Trying out C. Viper

When I got to the Capcom Booth they had a lot of fun looking stuff – I wanted to try Pragmata, but thought I had better try C. Viper first.

On my way to find the line for trying out C. Viper, there was a Cammy Cosplayer that you could take pictures with. So I did that.

I got in line for that, and it was about 20 minutes. Great! I’ve never played C. Viper in my life, I’ve only been mixed up by her for my entire SF4 career. She was really nice though! It’s funny because I look at people trying her out and posting all this stuff, what’s plus, combo routes, etc. All I learned in my 12 minutes with her is that crouching strong combos into light thunder knuckle, and seems pretty good. She is fun! I liked playing around with her stuff. I noticed that I went into burnout pretty quick – I guess because I was super jumping and running around like a crazy person. Anyway, I’m not going to main her. Another thing I learned: while I can feint cancel, I definitely am not going to be doing that regularly and incorporating it into combos. It does kind of remind me City of the Wolves Rev Breaking (? I think?) which I can’t really do too well either. Looks like people who want some execution will have it.

Biohazard Diarama — The Capcom booth had a lot of cool stuff

Resident Evil Zombie — This Resident Evil zombie was super cool

After that, I went over to catch the end of the Corporate Tournament. That was fun! If I knew there was going to be one, I probably could have put together a team from Amazon. I’ll have to ask Kagecchi if there will be another one.

SF6 Corporate Tournament — The Corporate SF6 tournament

The finals were between Team Grapht and Team Koikeya. In the end, Team Koikeya won, and they had their mascot there as well.

Valkyrie Cup

The Valkyrie Cup was after that – and I was interested in seeing that since I went to Legevi the other day to watch the SFL match and talked a lot with Mochizuki Ukaru, who was in it. Also many other players I know! So I got a front row seat and watched that. It was lots of fun. I also learned (well, I knew this already) that my 50 year old body is not made to be sitting on the concrete for like three hours. I’m going to be paying for that for a while.

This is the second Valkyrie Cup, the first was last year at TGS, which Betty won. This time they doubled the number of participants from four to eight.

2nd SF6 Valkyrie Cup — Betty, Harumi, Shadow, Otonashi Erina, Yuime, TABA, Moyo, and Mochizuki Ukaru

The competitors were:

Betty, @xxBetty_ (The first champion)
Harumi, @harumy0410
Moyo, @moyoc0
Shadow, @SyadoDIVE
Otonashi Erina, @otonashi_erina
Yuime, @SBAAAAAAAAAAANN
Mochizuki Ukaru, @ukaru1207
TABA, @R_jitabata

Everyone played well, and you could tell they were invested in it. When I chatted with Mochizuki Ukaru on Tuesday, she was really worried since she had the lowest MR of all the competitors. She played Modern Lily, and really used the Modern controls to her advantage, hitting some hard anti-airs, and using SA in burn-out against Drive Impact. I was surprised that Betty lost, she is very strong, but Moyo played very well. Sometimes that kind of thing happen in SF6.

Matsumoto, one of the SF6 directors, was the MC, and it was really fun watching him have a good time. When the event opened, sitting just behind me on my right, Nakayama (the other SF6 director) started a “Matsumoto” chant, and got a bunch of people into that. It really feels like they have a fun time, and I get the feeling the SF6 team has a sense of humor. They certainly put love into the game.

Wizardry Pub Photos

Wizardry Variants Daphne's Shelirionach and I — Shelirionarch and I

I hit up the Drecom booth for the Wizardry bar they set up. I’ve been playing Wizardry: Variants Daphne since it came out, and really enjoy it for a Gacha phone game. It’s the only one that I play, and is essentially a Wizardry game with ignorable Gacha elements.

Wizardry Variants Daphne's Ophelia and Marianne — Ophellia and Marianne

In the game sometimes your party members ask you to meet them at the pub, and you have a drink and talk about your adventure. Usually that means they complain to you either about traps or ambushes. Anyway, the number of party members that shows up is random, and rarely do you get the full six member party. The booth had cosplayers (Ophelia, Milana, Shelirionarch, Marianne, and Flut reclassed into Knight) at different times that you could take pictures of (sometimes) or with (other times). I stopped by there three times and got a few pictures. It was fun!

Wizardry Variants Daphne Ophelia, Marianne, and I — Later on Ophellia tries to feed me some bread

I also got the rare full party shot as the venue started to close up at 5pm.

Wizardry Variants Daphe Full Party — The rare full party shot.

Marvel Tokōn

Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls — The only picture I took was of the poster, since I didn’t think we could take photos/videos of the game, and I was busy playing anyway.

I wanted to play Tokon, and walked by the Sony booth. They had already distributed all the tickets they had for the day for that game (and many others!) I found the Arc System Works booth though, and that was only a 20 minute wait, so I played there. This was my first time with the game – and I’m traditionally terrible at / do not enjoy tag fighters. This was lots of fun though. I chose Spider-man, Ghost Rider, Ms. Marvel, and Iron Man. I loved the motion inputs, which felt super natural, and was able to figure out the special and tag system. Kind of. The game was beautiful. I also was having a lot of fun just getting light autocombo, and sometimes mashing medium or heavy for different cool stuff. I think ASW really have a game here that casuals will enjoy (I am nothing if not a tag team casual), looks beautiful so Marvel fans that pick it up on a lark will play around and have a good time, and I believe has some depth that will lead to a long competitive life. I hope so anyway. I also hope this comes out for PC, since the newest Sony console I own is a PS3. Well, my Vita is newer, but it’s an older platform.

2XKO

The other game I wanted to try was Riot’s 2XKO. I was able to find the Riot booth, and that had about a 10 minute wait to play. I had tried this once before, but didn’t really understand it too well. This time I had a bit more of a grasp on it, since I had seen some people playing the open beta. I chose Braum and that SPD Robot guy. It was hard for me to understand how specials work. I think you press a direction and the S1 or S2 button. They only had leverless controllers, and that was like the second time I every tried to play on a leverless controller so that was a bit tough too. Anyway, I found the robot’s SPD (down and Special 2 I think?) and his Scorpion “Get over here!” move, and was enjoying that. Once that comes out in general release – where I can just boot up Steam and play it – I’ll give it a try. It should be fun!

I didn’t get a single picture of the Riot booth! I probably should have, they had a big booth.

Silent Hill f

There is a new Silent Hill game out now, not that I will play it. Silent Hill games are scary, and I do not like scary things. It just came out a few days ago as far as I can tell, and the Konami booth had a big display for it. There were cosplayers as the creepy schoolgirl monsters, and they were amazing. Jerky, infrequent movements, and unnatural poses. I don’t know how they did it.

This was the only video I took at the entire Tokyo Game Show.

Video of the Silent Hill f cosplayes

Code Vein II

I’ve been slowly playing Code Vein over the past year or so. I’m at the White Cathedral and I have no idea what that means in terms of how much more of the game I have to go. This is the first Souls Like game that I’ve been able to play – well, actually I recently started playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and I think that is a Souls Like as well. At least, you have potions that replenish when you rest and the monster re-spawn, which to me is the core component along with some sort of action play. Strange for an RPG to land there, but it does in my mind.

Anyway, I’m excited about Code Vein II, because I’ve been enjoying Code Vein. Hopefully I can finish it some day. So I took some pictures of the Code Vein II stuff.

Code Vein II Booth — Somehow a motorcycle is important in this one. The new Metroid Prime also. Is there something in the water leading to more motorcycles in games that didn’t have them before?

I don’t know much about Code Vein II. I guess it is set much later than the first one? There were some cosplayers, but I don’t know who they are supposed to be, since I don’t know anything about the characters in Code Vein II. If you asked me to name characters in Code Vein I I would be at a loss too, but I guess there is some guy (Louis?) and the companion tank guy I like to fight with, and a woman that seems to think bandages are clothes. So there is that.

Code Vein II Cosplayers — They look cool anyway!

Shopping

Fallout Boy — Vault Boy was hanging out at the Bethesda booth

After that I headed to Hall 9 and 10 for some shopping. It took a while for me to find the Capcom shop – some stuff was already sold out, but there wasn’t anything I really needed. I had a hard time finding the +1F shop, and they had some really cool stuff (I almost got their denim jeans, but held strong). I then went to the Wizardry shop and bought way too much stuff I absolutely did not need (like, way too many acrylic character stands and a cap).

One of the booths had this cool Warhammer 40k suit

Wandering around

Tokyo Game Show — There was a strange bar type setup for some game with lots of cosplayers

Then I grabbed a sausage to eat, and wandered back to the main hall. I didn’t get to see much of Halls 1-5, so I wanted to get through those. I kind of bumbled around, but only made it to Hall 3 by 5pm, which is when the place closed. That’s really fast! I feel like I didn’t have nearly enough time. It was a lot of fun though.

RedBull area — There is a Red Bull area outside near the food court

Next time I need to keep up with making a plan, and more importantly, I’ve got to reach out to people I want to see and plan something with them. I’m always hoping to bump into friends / acquaintances (and I did!) but really it’s impossible to do stuff with people without planning it out first. A lot of people are here on business, already have busy schedules, and so on. I think I need to start reaching out to people and inviting them to do something instead of hoping people will reach out to me.