Tourism by Matt S.
One of the features of Tokyo Game Show over the years has been the booth ‘babes,’ or women and men that are dressed up in costume (or, often, dressed down to as little as possible) in order to manage the booths, help players get into the game demos, and hand out leaflets to promote the games.
Love them or hate them (and they’ve been banned from most western conventions, so these days their presence is a bit of a culture shock to some), it’s unlikely that they’re going away any time soon. And to be honest I rather enjoy their presence. With the rare exception of a costume that goes too far, it’s fun, rather than sleazy, and the audience plays along in the spirit of it all. In fact with a lot of the costumes these days they’re closer to hired cosplayers than anything else. I’ve not been to the show during the public days, but I imagine that the models stand out even less then, given what the cosplayers get up to.
As always I’ve pulled together a couple of galleries of the weird and wonderful booth costumes from the year’s TGS. Enjoy!
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| Yakuza games always have booths of beautiful women in hostess club costumes. |
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| Yep! Overwatch’s D.Va is popular in Japan too! |
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| Every year you’ll see these cats at TGS. They’re from Koei Tecmo’s Nobunyaga IP, which takes the Sengoku heroes of Samurai Warriors etc and turns them into cats. We need these games localised. They’re mobile, but they’re great. |
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| Mafia tried very, very hard to compete with Yakuza this year. Sadly for Mafia the lines for Yakuza were about four times longer. Still, full points for trying. |
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| To be completely honest I was just trying to get a photo of the girl behind these two <_</ |
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| Capcom’s newest mascot character has a far bigger head than Airou. |
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| Prinny! |
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| To be honest, Koei Tecmo always hires the most beautiful women. This year was no different. |
– Matt S.
Editor-in-Chief
Find me on Twitter: @digitallydownld
