Tokyo game show Archives -

Tokyo Game Show 2026 celebrated its 30th anniversary with its biggest and longest edition yet, and it was absolutely worth attending.

I don’t do many video game conventions, or really many events that aren’t somehow related to cars. My company mostly works in the automotive world.

But TGS is different.

It’s one of those events that I never want to miss, and every year I do my best to be there.

This year, Tokyo Game Show was bigger than ever, running for five days instead of the usual four. And from the moment I arrived on Thursday, one thing was immediately obvious: there were a lot more people than I expected.

A lot.

TGS Feels Like a Collection of Small Worlds

The first thing that always strikes me about Tokyo Game Show is just how curated it feels compared with many other events.

When you visit the booths, they aren’t simply stands with a few screens, posters and demo stations.

Many of them feel like small worlds where the characters actually live. They’re more welcoming, interesting and engaging.

They make you want to stick around, look at things, talk to people and figure out what is happening inside.

Even attending professionally, it’s difficult to simply walk past some of these booths.

Thursday was already extremely crowded. At certain points, Thursday morning actually felt busier than Friday would have.

If I hadn’t known I was attending a business day, I would have assumed it was a normal public day.

Saturday made me understand just how wrong I was. The crowd, despite the rain and the approaching typhoon, was insane. The same halls where I was shooting pictures and videos the day before, thinking it was too crammed, became close to impossible to walk.

Yet, the energy remained vibrant and joyful. Saturday was my last day as I won’t be attending Sunday (and there was an update – due to Typhoon 25, TGS have decided to cancel the scheduled last day of the event, Monday September 21).

In any case, let’s move on with my impressions on this year’s Tokyo Game Show.

TGS Understands Cosplay

Some of the best cosplayers I’ve seen anywhere are at TGS.

They look amazing and act amazing. It isn’t simply a person wearing a good costume.

Their expressions, movements, poses and behavior are part of the character, and the booth itself becomes part of the performance.

But what makes the biggest difference is the environment surrounding them.

This is something I think TGS understands considerably better than many cosplay-focused events.

One criticism I have made repeatedly in my articles is that cosplayers often bring an enormous amount of entertainment and visual value to an event, yet somehow get treated like an afterthought.

They’re pushed into a corner, given very little room, and expected to create a show out of nothing.

TGS does almost the exact opposite. Here, cosplayers are integrated into the booths themselves. Exhibitors create these little micro-worlds where the characters actually have somewhere to exist.

Obviously, this is marketing. There’s money involved and the cosplayers are part of the presentation, but the end result is that they actually get the space to shine.

The costumes are impressive, but what I like even more is the immersion it creates for the people watching them. For a few seconds, you’re not just looking at somebody dressed as a character; you’re looking into that character’s world.

The Games That Caught My Attention

There were several titles that immediately caught my attention.

Danganronpa 2×2 was obviously one of them. The first one of the now-franchise was shocking and revolutionary. If you have not yet played it, do it. The second one will have to somehow surprise also the old players who know the game and who are now definitely on the look out for surprises. I’m curious to see what they come up with.

Then there is Grand Theft Auto VI, a game that feels like we have collectively been waiting for since the beginning of recorded history.

And then, of course, there is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Call of Duty is always a mixed bag for me. I’m very attached to the franchise. I used to play it a lot.

But everything moves incredibly fast, and I don’t mean in game, but in marketing. A new title appears, you start playing, unlocking weapons, understanding the meta, experimenting with everything and trying to actually complete the game. Then suddenly another one is coming.

If you spend an enormous number of hours gaming every day, maybe that’s fine, but if you’re like me, somebody who is a completionist but absolutely does not have the amount of free time that a professional gamer has, it becomes complicated.

Monster Hunter creates a completely different problem. I went into that franchise really wanting to like it. I really, really wanted to like it, but for whatever reason, I could just never properly get into it.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance looked good. The presentation looked good, the gameplay looked good, and I imagine that if you’re already invested in Monster Hunter, there will probably be plenty there for you.

For me personally? Meh.

Dragon’s Dogma Still Has My Loyalty

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Dragon’s Dogma II: Dark Arisen.

Dragon’s Dogma, for me, is one of those franchises that has accumulated a massive amount of goodwill. That doesn’t mean every part of it has been perfect.

Dark Arisen itself was never the best game I have ever played, but the franchise as a whole has earned enough credit with me that it can disappoint me several more times before I finally decide that we’re done.

Total War Meets Warhammer 40,000

Then we get to one of the games I was most interested in playing at the entire show:

Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000.

Two of my favorite franchises finally colliding.

Obviously I had to play it. The half-hour demo disappeared incredibly quickly. It mixes very familiar Total War elements with completely new mechanics.

There are certain aspects that feel related to Total War: Warhammer, particularly when it comes to units having individual abilities, but 40K immediately felt denser.

A lot of units seemed to have multiple abilities available from the beginning, and the battlefield itself felt completely different from what I’m accustomed to.

Now, granted, this was literally my first time playing it. Initially, everything felt fairly chaotic. There were a lot of colors, effects, units and information blending together on screen, and I found myself wishing some elements were visually separated a little more clearly. But that could very easily be because I simply didn’t know what I was looking at yet. I’m also extremely sound-oriented when I play games, and during the demo I couldn’t really hear much of the game itself.

For me, that meant trying to understand almost everything visually.

From that first half hour, I definitely think there is going to be a steeper learning curve but I also think Warhammer 40,000 fans are going to find a lot to love, and Total War players are going to have a ridiculous amount of new material to learn.

The number of factions alone creates huge potential.

If Creative Assembly gets this right, I think it could have the kind of impact on Total War that the original fantasy Warhammer crossover had when it first arrived.

And Then There Was Palworld

Of course, while walking through an event like TGS, occasionally you encounter the booth that simply refuses to let you take pictures, for whatever reason. This time, it was Palworld.

On Thursday, this honestly annoyed me.

There were cosplayers posing around the booth, but people weren’t being allowed to photograph them. This was during business hours, and there appeared to be something like 30 staff members surrounding the area, with a surprising number of them seemingly dedicated to making sure nobody took pictures. That included media.

I didn’t particularly understand the logic, especially at an event where so much effort is being put into building spectacular environments that people naturally want to photograph and share.

That said, I went back to the Palworld booth on Friday morning, and it was visually phenomenal. The booth was extremely well curated. The lighting was great, the environment looked fantastic and the cosplayers were absolutely on point.

It was an amazing booth. I just don’t particularly enjoy the way I’ve personally experienced their approach to media access, especially because I’ve encountered similar issues around Palworld at Comiket before.

Friday: Time for the Hardware

By Friday, I started spending more time with hardware rather than only games.

One of the first things I tried was the full MOZA Racing motion simulator.

And it was honestly kinda awesome.

It was the whole experience: Seat. Rig. Movement. Everything.

I was more than just slightly concerned about whether my weight would be a problem. I didn’t particularly want to climb into an expensive motion simulator and discover, in front of everyone, that I had found its structural limit.

Apparently, however, the setup can handle somewhere around 350 kilograms. I’m heavy, but I’m not that heavy.

To make things better, I got to drive a Lamborghini Huracán GT3. That made the experience a little more personal because my friends at The Spirit of FFF Racing have been campaigning a Huracán GT3 EVO2 in this year’s Japan Cup. And with the Huracán reaching the end of its racing life, it was kind of nice getting to drive one, even if only virtually.

The simulator itself was genuinely impressive. On my second run, I started pushing considerably harder. The simulator challenges you even physically to hold the car on its track.

Azeron Might Be My Biggest Surprise of TGS

The biggest highlight for me on Friday, however, and something I don’t think is going to be topped very easily, was Azeron.

Saying that this product fascinated me, is an understatement.

Azeron has created a gaming keypad that is difficult to properly describe until you put your hand inside one. You could call it an alternative to a keyboard, but you really wouldn’t do it justice. The amount of customization is ridiculous.

Virtually every movement of your fingers can become an input. Everything you touch, clicks. Everything that clicks is a key. Every key is fully customizable.

Presses. Flicks. Different directions. Different fingers. Multiple layers of commands. The result is a device that allows you to interact with a game in a way I had genuinely never experienced before.

Physically, it fits your hand like a glove. The size can be adjusted, but it goes much further than that. The individual finger mechanisms themselves can be repositioned, allowing the entire device to effectively form itself around your hand. Once properly adjusted, your fingers naturally rest where the controls are.

I spoke at length with the guys at Azeron, and I want to publish that full interview separately because the story behind the product is almost as interesting as the device itself.

As they explained it to me, the entire thing began because the creator was frustrated with using a conventional keyboard for gaming.

Azeron’s basic philosophy makes a lot of sense: Keyboards weren’t actually designed for video games.

The original prototype was apparently made from wood. Later came 3D printing, experimentation, prototypes and eventually the device I was able to try at TGS.

What I find particularly interesting is that, according to the story they told me, there wasn’t initially some enormous business plan behind it. It was a gamer trying to solve his own problem. Then things moved very differently.

That personal solution eventually became a real product, and potentially one that could fundamentally change the way some people interact with games.

I want one for a proper test.

Actually, I want one badly enough that after trying it, I immediately started thinking about all the people I wanted to show it to.

For shooters, I can immediately understand the appeal.

For MMOs? That’s where I think this could become a literal game changer.

I want to test it properly before making any definitive claims, but Azeron was easily one of the most interesting things I discovered at Tokyo Game Show.

And it absolutely deserves an article of its own.

TGS After Hours

Another completely new part of Tokyo Game Show for me this year was experiencing what happens after the doors close. For the first time, I attended some of the parties surrounding TGS.

I went to the Red Bull party.

I went to the TGS party.

I was also planning on going to the Twitch party, but by the time I was ready to head over, it was already too late. Apparently, that one only ran from around 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. Still, seeing this side of TGS added another dimension to the experience.