Pushing Buttons: At Tokyo Game Show, I saw the Japanese games scene I grew up with is still live and kicking

In this week’s newsletter: Konami, cute RPGs, weird but wonderful indie games – everything I saw at Japan’s biggest gaming convention

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Tokyo Game Show takes place at the Makuhari Messe, a series of cavernous halls in a suburban complex about 45 minutes east of Tokyo city centre, and given its late September slot in the calendar, it is always either horribly hot or pouring with rain. Either way, it’s humid as heck, and there are many thousands of people crammed in, creating what can only be described as a suboptimal sweat situation. Nonetheless, I’ve always had a soft spot for TGS. I attended my first one in 2008, and so the experience of playing games in packed halls while understanding very little about what is happening has become powerfully nostalgic.

And I surely wasn’t the only person feeling nostalgic in Tokyo last Friday, because the halls were filled with series and characters from 15 years ago. Silent Hill 2 was back on the Konami stand, along with Solid Snake’s grizzled face for the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater remake. Capcom had two huge areas given over to Monster Hunter, a series that was unbelievably popular in Japan throughout the 00s and finally broke through to the world with Monster Hunter World in 2018. Sony was also back at the show in a big way for the first time in five years, showing off the PlayStation 5 Pro, and its especially gorgeous-looking PlayStation 30th Anniversary special edition. The Japanese-made Astro Bot was also everywhere at the show – I hope its sales have reflected how brilliant it is.