With record figures of 81,469 attendees last Saturday and 77,185 on Sunday, the public days at Tokyo Game Show were swamped with more people than the game companies could handle.
Despite many of the bigger booths — Sony, Sega, Capcom and so on — introducing a ticketing system to cut down on the notorious TGS lines, which in the past have stretched for anything up to four hours for a short play of a single game, many fans gave up on the major titles completely, instead turning to independent developers or finding alternative entertainment.
"There are so many people, and if you get here after noon there's no way you can play anything," said a man who goes by the nickname "Tencho" when we spoke at closing time on Saturday. "That sucked. So I spent the whole day in the cosplay (costume play) area and took loads of photos instead."