Horrible natural disasters. Blackouts. Enduring hardships. This spring, as Japan was pulling itself out of earthquake and tsunami rubble, few thought there was going to be a Tokyo Game Show. Few thought about TGS at all.
When the show's floor plan was unveiled, it wasn't as sprawling or impressive as in the past. The booths weren't as big, and TGS 2011 was looking to be a low-key affair. Foreign game-developers like EA skipped out on having their own booth. Level-5, one of Japan's most popular developers, decided to turn the space it rented into a rest area and filled it with tables and chairs instead of games. But, for a show that was supposed to be small, this year's TGS turned out to be the biggest ever. Thank Sony's PS Vita for that.
On the two business days before the show opened to the public, the assembled media were greeted with smaller booths — causing some of them to dismiss the show before it even began. Yet, even on those business days, the PlayStation Vita, Sony's upcoming gaming portable, was packing them in early — almost as soon as the show had started, the wait for the PS Vita version of popular adventure game "Uncharted: Golden Abyss" was already two hours long.