THE 2002 TOKYO GAMES SHOW!!!

Woo. Now let me tell you, this place was nerd heaven. Nerd Valhalla. The place where all Nerds must go once they become too nerdy and are absorbed into the mystical Nerd Force that powers all other Nerdsters (By the way, you're REALLY nerdy if you got that reference).

Anyway, for those of you that don't know, and for the benefit of those who are pretending not to know for the sake of social appearances, the Tokyo Game Show is an annual exhibition where all the big videogame companies come out and show all their projects for the coming year. It's set up in a HUGE multi-building convention hall, filled to the brim with kiosks where one may play games that won't otherwise be released to the public for weeks, months, and in some cases, years. Uh, not that I know all that; I'm just gonna claim I got it off the official web page. In any case, this is obviously something that's quite exciting for we nerds, particularly we nerds that happen to be in Japan, but believe it or not, I didn't really go to this thing to play games. No, no no -- but before that, I fear I'm losing the (no doubt few) non-nerds in the audience, so allow me to mention something other than video games present at the show. Better yet, I'll show you -- so for the non-nerds in the audience, and please, anyone who's ever lived with me, don't try to argue that you belong in this category -- think of this show not as the "Tokyo Game Show," but rather...

THE 2002 JAPANESE SUPERMODELS DRESSED IN SCANTY FETISHY-COSTUMES SHOW!!!

Maybe there's more to life than being really, really good-looking...AND BEING MOUNTED ON A FENCE

Yeah, now that's not something one sees everyday, is it? See, these game companies, they're shrewd. They realize that perhaps many people who would like to go to this veritable nerdstock might actually still possess enough dignity to stay away from such a thing, so what do they do? They fill the place with hot supermodels dressed in skimpy outfits, knowing full well that their target audience had only previously been exposed to female flesh whenever Samus Aran died in Super Metroid, causing her spacesuit to blow up revealing the space-bikini underneath. Also, the presence of these models was doubly shrewd for they served to attract people who would otherwise never even THINK of going to such a geek-a-thon. Such as, for example, my friend Mooney, pictured here with a girl from the Sammy booth. I don't know who Sammy is, and neither does Mooney, but he sure looks happy anyway. But again, this STILL is not the primary reason I, or even Mooney, went to this thing. Sure, the attractive women and the electronic nirvana were lures to be sure, but these pale in comparison to the REAL appeal of the Tokyo Game Show. You see, I don't know if some people just take a cue from the many supermodels playing dress-up, or maybe some of them are even out of their mind -- but it seems that some people are WAAAAAAAAAY too into the games they play. And so, and I promise this will be the last fake introduction/retitling of this account, I present to you...

THE 2002 TOKYO COMPLETE-LOSER FREAK SHOW!!!

Which is sadder -- that the girls obviously paid too much for their costumes, or the guy who obviously paid too little?

I'm sorry. But supermodels, unreleased videogames -- these are NOTHING to the rare spectacle of seeing scores upon scores of freaks come out of the woodwork to play dress-up. Japan, to me, is all about weirdness, and I figured that few things could be weirder than people willingly dressing up as video game characters as some sort of demented show of PRIDE. And so, it was with a light heart and a constant urge to giggle that me, Mooney, and my digital camera set out to experience the utter strangeness of the phenomenon known as the 2002 Tokyo Game Show...

'twas a brisk Autumn day in Nagano as I boarded the bullet train to Tokyo. As I anxiously settled in for the hour-long ride, I couldn't help but think that perhaps I was setting myself up for disappointment. Maybe there wouldn't be very many freaks there. Maybe the world's weirdness quotient, and Japan's especially, is not as pronounced as I like to think....then I heard the yapping of a small dog emanating from the duffel bag of a young woman a few seats in front of me. I then watched as she proceeded to smack the bag with her fist for the next few minutes, presumably either to a)physically discipline the apparently concealed dog into keeping quiet, via damaged nerve centers or b)trying desperately to silence her sophisticated dog-shaped bomb, which barks instead of ticking. I coulda been luckier than I'd thought! Either way, I took this little bit of random weirdness as a good omen for the day.

The second omen, signaled by the familiar sounds of someone blasting promises of reform through a megaphone, came when exiting the train station near the convention site. In Japan, it's not uncommon to see politicians doing some down-and-dirty, right-in-the-trenches politicking on presumably strategic yet apparently random patches of the street. Outside the train station, we found one such individual, apparently believing that securing the Geek vote would greatly aid his bid for whatever it was he was bidding to be. He looked just like any other campaigner -- gray suit, white gloves, big, stupid-looking "Miss Georgia"-type shoulder sash -- but there was a little something different about this one that set him apart from your everyday street politician. Or more specifically, something about one of his companions:

He was dressed up as a giant green dinosaur.

Now, I don't claim to understand politics, Japanese politics in particular, but I must say that this particular politician must have the absolute WORST campaign advisor EVER. Or maybe, as Mooney suggested, this politician happened to be basing his platform on a stringent Anti-Godzilla Defense Policy. But this would of course be typical political short-sightedness, because without Godzilla who would protect us from the likes of Mothra, to speak not of Rodan? Gamera? Please, can't count on that shelled bitch for shit.

Anyway. After those mild distractions, finding our way to the show was simply a matter of following the trail of nerds, many of whom were helpfully toting giant "X-BOX" bags as part of Microsoft's increasingly aggressive presence in Japan. Microsoft's console, you see, isn't doing so well here, partly due to Japanese lack of interest in the genre of its marquee game, Halo, and partly due to well, a sort of technological racism. There's actually a stigma in Japan against Western-made games; the greater majority of Japanese gamers have as much interest in Western games as most Americans have in say, Asian movies. For this reason, most Western-made games that are wildly popular in their native lands -- Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto 3 -- sell horrendously poor in Japan, or sometimes aren't even bothered to be released at all.

Hence, as big as Microsoft is, it's still a Western company, which makes their battle to break into the Japanese game market quite a difficult one. I mean, the X-BOX is routinely outsold by a Gameboy knock-off called the "Wonderswan Color" and maintains only a slim lead over the years-defunct Sega Dreamcast. And this is a machine made by MICROSOFT, for God's sake, a company with enough money to convince Jesus to take part in gay beastiality porn. Horrible blasphemies aside, I think this explains why Microsoft's booth had the overall best-looking models, the most models, and even the most AGGRESSIVE models by far. Some of them would actually shove people into a crowd in an effort to pack in as many people as possible, or push people up to fill even the tiniest spaces in a line. Now, there are some people who might enjoy getting pushed around by 6-foot supermodels in skimpy outfits, but I assure you, I definitely refuse to admit I am one of them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. Now then, when we finally reached the entrance we found ourselves in a huge industrial complex filled with TV monitors, loud music, smoke machines, and stage shows. If you squinted, it almost looked like a rave; if you looked normally it simply looked like the World's Nerdiest Rave. Never mind the fact that I was already freaking out due to the presence of so many Westerners ("White people!!"). I mean, stuck in the countryside as I am, usually whenever I spot a whitie it's an EVENT; here, in Tokyo, at this Nerd Mecca with pasty white skin abound, I was on Cracker OVERLOAD. But it was then that I bumped into someone dressed as the ninja from Samurai Shodown, and I realized I had a lot weirder things than white people to see.

The show, to say the least, was one of the more surreal experiences I've ever had. Mooney and I were there for hours, not quite trusting our senses the entire time. Afterwards, recuperating at a fast food restaurant, we both admitted that we weren't quite sure that the show really, actually happened -- that is, until we noticed how many other people in the restaurant had X-BOX shoulderbags. We were also both extremely exhausted. Not just physically, but emotionally as well, simply due to the utter strangeness of the previous few hours. I never thought it was possible to actually tire out solely from being weirded out repeatedly, but believe me, it can happen, and Mooney and I are proof.

Actually, the show was rather a mix of emotions, at least for a little bit. At first, naturally, I was laughing at EVERYTHING, the humorously-attired models especially. Then I found myself actually feeling sorry for them, being forced to stand there in skimpy outfits while sweaty perverts unabashedly zoomed in our their privates with telephoto lenses. I became embarassed, quite frankly, not for being at such a nerdy event but rather for being a man with a camera. I became rather self-conscious of being lumped in with the other weirdos with cameras; of course, I was after sheer weirdness while they were after stroke pics, but how was anyone else to know that? I became shaken and dejected, disillusioned with my purpose at the show...until I noticed that models of certain booths had been instructed to actually PLAY the games they were so breastfully hawking, with the patrons, and try to maintain a happy demeanor on top of that. Seeing models in tiny plastic skirts hold their controllers as if they had just burst from the womb of a diseased bear, trying to feign interest in the game AND lack of nausea towards the patron, was simply too much not to laugh at. After that, I thought, fuck it, these were freakin' models, they could doing stuff a lot worse for, no doubt, a lot less money. The sweaty perverts did still unnerve me, but I shook it off and got back into Giggle Mode. After all, I had a job to do.

Of course, the true amusement of the show was not the people who were paid to dress up, but rather the people who chose to do so OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL, probably investing a lot of time and money to do so. For these sorts of people I felt a mix of derogatory amusement and abject curiosity. I mean, for instance, what possesses two otherwise normal-looking girls to dress up like this, and pose with sketchy-looking Mooney besides? (By the way, any nerds out there know who they're supposed to be? I proudly admit that I know not.) Actually, that was probably the strangest thing about these weirdos: besides the fact that they were dressed like video game characters, they actually seemed and even looked like normal people underneath it all. And I'm not trying to make some touchy-feely sappy point about the inner beauty of people here -- I mean that many of them were HOT. Okay, maybe not "hot," per se, but certainly passable, even more so when you consider that they're voluntarily dressed as characters from Final Fantasy. I mean, could you go to a Star Trek convention in America and constantly think, "Mmm, I'd sure like to or at least be willing to bang that chick dressed as a Klingon?" Well, okay, some of you could, but I'd like to pretend you don't exist and in fact want you off my page right now. But seriously, most of the people I talked with seemed like normal, nice, polite people, who were more than happy to pose for pictures with whoever asked. And I suspect they'd do the same even had they known that I was then going to mock them on the internet.

Of course, not all the costumed weirdos were all bright and shiny and happy. The Game Show took up about 6 buildings, with a wide walkway connecting each one. These (relatively) little alleyways were where the seedier costumed element hung out, presumably because they were disenfranchised with mainstream costumed society and thought themselves badassedly above it. While the dress-ups in the main hall were friendly and eager to show off their handiwork to "civilians", some people I met in the alleyways were extremely surly and even seemed RESENTFUL that people were staring at them. Now I ask you -- who the hell gets together with their friends dressed as, for instance, the THE ENTIRE CAST OF FINAL FANTASY X and then gets all uppity at the understandable attention passersby are paying them? I mean, look at the people in the picture. Mooney asked the entire group for a picture, and the only one who complied looks distinctly unhappy to be there, while the rest moved to where they believed was off frame. The girl on the far right looks like she's trying to become invisible, and the guy on the far right looks so infuriatingly smarmy that even now I want to track him down, force him to put his costume back on, and THEN beat the shit out of him with a shit-covered croquet mallet. These weren't even the worst offenders, there were lots of people strutting around dressed as fighting game characters, and you could TELL they thought they were somehow hot shit by doing so. Urrgh.

That wasn't the only seedy thing going on in the alleys between buildings, either. There were also scores of middle-aged men waiting patiently in line to take pictures of young, amateur girls dressed provocatively as game characters. Take Cammy here, for instance. She staked out a small plot of floorspace, began striking supposedly seductive poses, and the men lined up to wait patiently for their turn to take pictures of her. Why didn't they just grab a shot off from the side like I did? Why, so they could request things like ass-shots -- I'd see the guy say something to her, make some sort of motion with his finger, and she'd turn around, stick her ass out, give herself a bit more of a wedgie, and wait calmly for the man to take the picture. Then the next guy in line would move up, take a picture, perhaps request an ass-shot, and so on. Over and over. The whole process struck me as extremely sleazy, much more so than the relatively harmless perverts inside the buildings. In terms of raunchiness, the sleaze inside the building would be like Playboy, whereas the stuff in the alleyway would be oh, Spread Brown-Eye Weekly. What with the one girl, and 30 guys waiting patiently in line for their turn to approach her, shoot, then leave, I couldn't help but make an immediate mental connection to "bukkake"...I was going to post a link there, but I figure that's something best left to discover on your own.

Well, after all that sleaze, I could only think of one thing: I was hungry! So I headed over to the crowded mini-cafeteria in the first building, selling such delectably pedestrian Japanese fare as ramen, udon, curry, and, oh yes -- corn dogs. I actually didn't get a chance to eat anything, but I DID spot Hyrulian hero Link apparently taking a break from his quest to save Zelda, defeat Ganon, and retrieve the Triforce to enjoy a corn dog. And hell, if the Hero of Time was so heartily devouring a corn dog, then it MUST have been good! I must say, if there's anything more amusing than seeing people dressed as video game characters, it's seeing people dressed as video game characters EAT. I think it's always kind of funny to see people who are so different from you doing the same normal, everyday things you do, such as eating, or yes, waiting in line for the bathroom.. It's kind of like when you were little, and you'd bump into your teacher at the supermarket or something, and you'd think how weird it was seeing someone you know only in one context doing things that signify he/she has an existence in another. The difference is, we eventually grow up and realize that everyone has lives outside of how they intersect with our own, but it's not like there are little intermissions in video games that show Donkey Kong washing the dishes or doing his taxes or something. But there they were, the freaks dressed as videogame characters, burping, eating, farting, just like you and me (that last one being especially like me). There's probably a lesson to be learned here, but hell if I know what it is.

Anyway, I'm about out of pictures, so I guess it's about time to wrap it up. Well, I hope you all enjoyed this little peek into nerd culture. I know it's only human nature to look down on those members of society that seem a little different from the mainstream, but please, try to remember that underneath the $4 wig, mutilated spandex pants, and 7 foot-long cardboard sword, these freaks, these nerdy, nerdy freaks, are people, just like you and me. Hard-working, passionate, corn-dog-eating people, just like you and me. Now, in light of that, I ask you -- just because someone voluntarily dresses up like a video game character, does that make him some kind of freak?

...well, yes. But at least they're not dressed up as characters from Magic: The Gathering or something. The only tolerable solution to THAT would be death.