If you don't care about the Anime Expo junk and just wanna read the gaming stuff, just scroll to the bottom half of the entry or hit CTRL+F and find the word 'GAMINGSTUFF' !

My weekend started a bit early as I got off work early on Thursday and decided to make a last minute trip to LA with friends n8nmonster and x-raze to see if we can squeeze in an hour or so of walking around the Anime Expo exhibit hall...


I browsed through the exhibit hall most of the day on Friday, we left early though so we could get back to San Diego and spend time with our families for the remainder of the day. As usual I didn't really see anything that I wanted to get in the exhibit hall. But I was sure that my daughter Kailee would love to buy a bunch of stuff when I were to bring her there the next day, Saturday.


Saturday was pretty busy. I took my daughter shopping around the exhibit hall for a good amount of time in the morning. Then had my sister pick her up from the convention so I could attend the panels etc.

GAMINGSTUFF

Soul Calibur IV. Or is it Soulcalibur IV now? I forgot, why did they stop putting spaces between soul and calibur again? Oh well. I played it for a good bit one of the days, tried out all the characters, you can read my impressions starting here.


First up was the AKSYS Games panel. One of my best friends works as the marketing manager for AKSYS so it was fun to see him running the panel. They covered their upcoming titles and announced dates/timeframes for upcoming games. The best part was, unlike most panels that are very formal/straightforward, AKSYS staff was hilarious with a good amount of cursing and suggestive themes going on. If ESRB were there to rate the panel it would be straight M maybe pushing AO lol.


There was a wealth of Guilty Gear fans in the audience... they went wild with the Guilty Gear related prizes that were given out. One of which was a special limited Guilty Gear art book that was signed by Daisuke Ishiwatari and another being a one of a kind art piece from the artist designing characters for Battle Fantasia. To make a long story short about the AKSYS panel there...

• Battle Fantasia announced for Xbox 360. Slated for September release.
• Theresia coming to the Nintendo DS. A Shadowgate/Myst style exploration/adventure game that relies heavily on touch screen functionality.
• Guilty Gear 2 Overture will be tweaked from the Japanese version and feature some new things. By preordering you will be guaranteed some bonus DLC via Xbox Live.
• Princess on Ice for the DS is geared towards girls gamers and is a musical game much like Elite Beat Agents but with RPG elements.

That's the PR stuff... I can say a lot more, but I don't want anyone to get in trouble. If you're wondering why Battle Fantasia was announced for 360 only, blame Sony for not approving it yet. But don't worry, I'm sure it'll see a US release.

Also someone during the Q&A session asked about Cave shooters. If you read my posts around CAG you might have remembered me mentioning the STRONG possibility of them being ported to the US. AKSYS commented by stating 'we're looking into it...' so YOU do the math.

AKSYS and Arc Systemworks will have more announcements in the future, fighting game fans should be excited and keep the ears to the streets for upcoming news.

AKSYS, in my very honest and straightforward opinion, is doing a great service to a very niche audience. They're bringing out games that no one else would bring out here. IMO AKSYS is up there with Atlus as one of the best publishers out there right now. They're really giving fans something to look forward to.

Speaking of Atlus... I also went to the Atlus panel or should I say, Shin Megami Tensei Panel. Thank god I didn't have to wait in that crazy line of people to get in. I had 2 press seats up front reserved... It was nice to see some familiar faces and the panel was strictly about SMT games.


It was a very well done and informative panel... Atlus went over the various SMT games and side games in the Megaten franchise. The biggest news from the event was of course, the announcement of Persona 4 coming out in North America on Dec. 9th of THIS YEAR. Woo hoo!

Here are some random notes from the event:

• Persona 4 coming out with bonus disc that includes selected tracks from the game.
• Persona 4 will go on sale for $39.99!
• Project Lead Yu Namba is currently swamped with the initial localization process for this game and has commented that the difficulty is definitely increased from Persona 3.
• The reason why the North American release of Persona 3 wasn't the FES version (like Nocturne was Nocturne Maniacs from Japan), was due to Atlus announcing the FES version when P3 was already well into (3/4ths) localization for the NA market. It wasn't feasible to go back and change things so the team immediately started working on FES right after P3 development wrapped up.
• Innocent Sin (Persona 2)? Yea right lol.

Atlus put on a good show! If anyone cares though, Innocent Sin fan translation is currently 87% complete. For more information on it, check here.

Oh yea, we got these cool shirts! Each person got one from the event, why do I have two? I'm MarkMan aren't I? lol jk. ^_^


It was nice seeing some people from CAG there. Word up to kainzero and JEKKI! It was nice seeing you again Joe and nice meeting you JEKKI! See you guys at SDCC!?

My actual favorite part of the weekend was when I was in the arcade playing Tekken 5: DR there... someone asked if we were tournament players... I replied... "we play in them sometimes..." and then he asked, "are you from SDTEKKEN?" I nodded... "MAN I LOVE YOUR WEBSITE!" That felt good to know someone actually visits it! lol.

Good night all!