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Even if they’re not anywhere near as important as they used to be, you can’t beat a good gaming convention. Playing games in a giant hall populated by likeminded people is fun, and we were lucky enough to attend the Taipei Game Show for the second successive year.
Attended by over 370,000 people over the span of four days, this year’s show seemed lighter in terms of content than 2024, even if the actual floorspace filled was generally larger.
Here are some of the things we saw and played over the course of the event.
Ratatan’s Demo Drops a Beat
The problem with attending events like Taipei Game Show is that it’s predominantly aimed at Mandarin speakers, but having backed Ratatan on Kickstarter, we were delighted to see the Patapon spiritual successor occupy an enormous booth.
Queues were long to play, but despite being able to switch the demo’s language to English, we struggled to get to grips with this demo at all. There was no tutorial, so while we obviously understand Patapon’s general gameplay concept – hammer out rhythms to control your troops – we were unable to deduce the prompts needed to make any progress.
The art looks amazing, but looking around at other attendees, we don’t think anyone really figured out how to actually play the game. A poor choice of demo, then, considering the clear investment that had gone into the booth.
Atelier Yumia Could Be a Hit
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Exactly what is going on with Koei Tecmo right now and why is it having such a good year? Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & The Envisioned Land seems like a fantastic RPG, with vibrant visuals and great character designs.
We were dropped into a large world map with very little context and setup, but we immediately got to grips with the fun Final Fantasy 7 Remake-esque combat and rewarding material gathering. The cast looks great, and we love how they gather together when you hit the pause screen. The only strange thing we noticed is that tree stumps simply disappear when you strike them for wood; a more satisfying animation would be welcome here.
But we think this is going to be really good. We’re far too unfamiliar with the Atelier series to recognise how much of a departure this actually is, but we expect it to find a new audience, which may frustrate longtime fans – but will probably be good news for developer GUST and for the future of the franchise.
Revival Turf
One of our earliest gaming memories, bizarrely, is playing Rival Turf on the Super Nintendo. The series – known as Rushing Beat in Japan – is making a comeback as Rushing Beat X: Return of the Brawl Brothers, so we had to give it a go.
This is a pretty standard beat-‘em-up, as you’d expect, with a rather ugly cel-shaded art style. The combat is slow, although there are quite a lot of moves you can perform.
For purists, it’s worth noting that Jack Flak and Oozie Nelson use their original Japanese names of Rick Norton and Douglas Bild. We didn’t get to test them, but Lord J, Wendy Milan, and Kazan will also be playable from the second game in the series, Brawl Brothers.
There’s no release date attached to this yet, and technically it’s not even announced for consoles, although we’d be surprised if it didn’t eventually end up on PS5. It needs work, though.
Double Trouble
Playing Double Dragon Revive immediately after Rushing Beat X perhaps helped us to appreciate the Yuke’s developed brawler in a more favourable light.
This series reboot – running on PS5 – proved a lot of fun, with great animations bringing life to its otherwise plastic character models.
While the fighting is quite straightforward, there’s a lot of character here. You can punch opponents into the screen ala Turtles in Time – or throw them into nearby dumpsters. Throwing cans of paint at your aggressors covers them in the sticky coloured substance, while you can build up special moves which go hard when finally unleashed.
As with most beat-‘em-ups, we expect this to be quite repetitive, but with multiple characters to unlock – including long running damsel-in-distress Marian – this exceeded our expectations and felt good to play.
Indie End, It Doesn’t Even Matter
The Taipei Game Show is divided into three segments: AAA games and gachas, indies, and board games. We spent the entirety of our last day exploring the indie section, and saw some interesting titles we’ll summarise.
Wabisabi: Sushi Derby proved popular, a game where you buy ingredients to make your own sushis, and then train and race them for inexplicable reasons. Win the race and you can reinvest in further training, or get eaten and you can buy new ingredients to start over again. A fun idea.
Japanese developer BeXide – the maker of some classic Toro Inoue titles for PS3 – was showing off a bunch of games, including a still life 3D version of Suika Game, where you need to lob pieces of fruit into a bowl and combine them to evolve them. It also had a similar concept featuring Hololive characters.
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One title we spent quite a lot of time with was Danchi Days, a GBA-inspired adventure game based on a danchi, or Japanese housing complex. The main thrust of the gameplay revolves around a ‘Sense’ mechanic, which allows you to effectively tune into your environment and complete minigames to progress the plot.
This didn’t seem especially mechanically dense, but the writing was sharp even in English, and we liked the cosy vibes.
Lastly, we got confirmation that Maid Café on Electric Street, already available for Steam, is in-development for PlayStation right now, and hopefully launching soon.
One for Nintendo Life
A highlight of the event was the attendance of long-time Super Mario voice actor Charles Martinet, who recently retired from his role but still works as an ambassador for Nintendo.
While not necessarily PlayStation related, it was an honour to briefly meet such a gaming icon and thank him for his contributions to the industry over the years.
Making Waves
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Just to round out some of the other things we observed during the show, Wuthering Waves’ popularity exceeded our already-high expectations, with hundreds of fans queueing for exclusive merch from the new Rinascita storyline on every day of the show.
HoYoverse was relegated to just merch this year, so there was no massive Zenless Zone Zero or Honkai: Star Rail area, but plenty of cosplayers from Genshin Impact wandering around.
Koei Tecmo was also showing off its new PS5 dating game Venus Vacation Prism: Dead or Alive Xtreme, although due to the heavy text dependence of this title, we decided to give its demo a miss.
We were happy to get a photo with Momo, the anthropomorphic cat from Infinity Nikki, and were pretty excited to see the title getting a lot of promotion in and around the show, because we really like this game.
And that’s another year done, time to attend to the post-convention lurgy. Until next time!
Comments 18
Flashbacks to visiting my cousin's house and Rival Turf being the only game he had for the SNES.
A revival that almost no one asked for.
Removed - trolling/baiting; user is banned
Is there a chance Team Asobi could give us a Momo Bot bedecked in fashionable attire?
This is the sort of convention I would have loved attending in the late 90s as a teenager, though I would have been too scared to get a photo with the girls.
BeXide's "Suika - Still life 3D game" is already out, it´s called "Fruit Mountain" on PSN store. Great and relaxing game.
Wondering if it was a bigger deal for Sammy to get a picture with living breathing legend Charles Martinet or a cardboard cutout of Momo. 😂
Without hopefully getting myself banned, this event is in Taipei, Taiwan, correct? Do they ban Chinese made games like Wukong, Phantom Blade and Where Winds Meet or is it just a coincidence they aren’t there? Hoyoverse being regulated to merch got me thinking about it.🤷🏻♂️
Very nice cosplaying from the lady on the bottom left. Very nice indeed.
@8bit4Life I was just thinking that it looks very 90s E3. Full of colour and noise and fun. I miss those days.
Great round up . Clever Linkin Park ref but my favourite sub heading has to be Revival Turf , huge fan of the SNES masterpiece !
Considering that Atelier Yumia doesn't have turn-based combat, I think you played the wrong game.
@Dalamar It’s kinda like Final Fantasy 7 Remake, right? Fair point, though, I didn’t describe that well. Will edit.
@get2sammyb a big piece of news is we found out y the suikoden remasters were delayed so long thay had to re-balance the games and added 3 difficulty options for the 1st time in the series history
Thanks for the read. I always get jelly reading about interesting conventions, gaming-related or otherwise, that are to my liking but that I could never afford to go to.😆
I need to move to Taiwan...
I cannot see/hear "Taipei" without getting the Refreshments' song stuck in my head!:
"We came all the way from Taipei today
Still, Bangkok's pissin' rain and we're going blind again
And I haven't seen my girl in fifteen thousand miles"
I really appreciate these articles and the insight it gives into gaming culture elsewhere - many thanks for doing these specials.
Meeting the voice of Mario is definitely a bucket list entry!
@JbumiSandra : for me it's R.E.M`s "Daysleeper"
Hong Kong is present, Taipei awakes
All talk of circadian rhythm
I see today with a newsprint fray
My night is colored headache gray
Daysleeper
@Titntin I was very happy! Haha!
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