London MCM 2011: Gaming Coverage
It’s not every day that you board a Central Line train in London to be greeted by Lugia, the cover girl from Pokémon Silver (GBC), and more recently Soul Silver (DS). The 27th – 29th of May marked the taking over of the London ExCeL centre, with hordes of cosplayers, gamers, anime junkies, sci-fi film fanatics coming at you from every direction. This weekend, Adam (StealthBuda) and I were both at the MCM Expo to bring you up to date with news from the event.
N64 OoT soundtrack, SNES badge, Zelda T-shirt & Game Boy card holder
After battling through the crowds, I headed straight to the Nintendo Unleashed stage to try out the games on offer. Unfortunately grumpy stewards wouldn’t let me take close up pictures of the stands but were generous with the play-time you got on each game. Predictably, Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D was the most popular stand, with a queue of people waiting to gets some firsthand 3D experience inside the Deku Tree, but all games were received seemingly well. It goes without saying that Ocarina of Time 3D was the most impressive game on offer, but many people were also enjoying playing Wii Play: Motion as well.
I had a try on Xenoblade Chronicles, using the Wii Classic controller (hunt down a Game Cube controller – much comfier) which from the few minutes I had with it seemed a solid JRPG, yet the level on demo seemed bland and graphically poor in comparison to the majestic screenshots and gameplay videos we have been teased with in the past. I don’t know where on earth I was in the game, but everything was very grey and pixelated. But don’t let my short experience mar your judgement of the game, as Famitsu magazine awarded Xenoblade Chronicles with 9/9/9/9, a high result of 36/40 and the game also debuted at the top spot in Japan, selling 83,000 copies.
There was also a great retro gaming presence at the Expo, with stands selling old consoles and games at varying prices. Any retro games from major franchises such as Mario, Zelda or Pokémon were extortionate, but there were opportunities to bag yourself a cult classic for a couple of pounds. My only reservation with the retro gaming stands were that some stalls were selling foreign games as English, for example a boy next to me was about to buy the original Star Fox game on the Super Nintendo (for about £30) when I noticed it was the American version and pointed this out to him – to which the stallholder didn’t look very impressed. Now I hope this was just an honest mistake on the part of the owner of the stall, but when buying retro games or consoles we must be especially careful to avoid cons or extreme over-pricing of ‘rare’ items. At the same stall, I found a tatty boxed Super Nintendo for sale at £120 – bearing in mind I got mine for £30 boxed.
Other points of interest at the MCM Expo was the Gamespot stage, at which I watched a few sessions including the Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition gameplay footage and mini tournament, as well as the Child of Eden (Xbox Kinect & PS3) Q&A session – which I was thoroughly impressed with. After a close encounter with Duke Nukem, I ventured around the rest of the event, spotting the renowned assassin Ezio sifting through the crowds. Other games on offer were Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3 (PS3 & Xbox 360), Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus (Wii), Arcana Heart 3 (PS3 & Xbox 360), Bleach: Soul Resurrection (PS3), Gears of War 3 (Xbox 360), Red Faction: Armageddon (PS3 & Xbox 360) amongst many others. I also met the boys from Insert Coin Clothing and purchased their Zelda inspired T-shirt, which you can check out in the gallery at the bottom of this article.
With regards to Street Pass hits – I did terribly. At a huge event like MCM I expected to be immersed with Street Pass hits, but only managed to amount 10 Miis, 8 Street Fighter battles and 7 Nintendogs + Cats hits. So where was everyone? If you did manage to ‘capture’ my Mii – let me know in the comments section down below!
Overall, it was a great day out, and I would have loved to have gone all 3 days of the event, had it not been for my deathly cold and lack of voice. If you went to MCM let us know what you thought of the games on offer, or what was the weirdest/coolest cosplayer you saw; for example I spotted a girl dressed up as a box of strawberry flavoured Pocky – genius!
Related articles
- Unreleased 3DS/Wii/DS games playable at MCM! (nintendoscene.com)
- Preview: London 2011 MCM Expo (nintendoscene.com)
- The Buyer’s Guide: Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D (nintendoscene.com)
- Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D – Extra Content Revealed (nintendoscene.com)
- Ocarina of Time Release Dates Confirmed (nintendoscene.com)
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[…] now you should have read Katy’s event report from MCM May 2011. I attended all three days of MCM and I had far more Streetpass success that […]
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I got 67 Miis on street pass and went home thoroughly impressed with the number of DSi and 3DS gamers walking around. I may have nabbed your Mii what’s the name?
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Lucky you! I think it’s just ‘Katy’ – you can check out what my Mii looks like in the gallery, shows a zoomed up picture of my 3DS on my Mii’s screen.
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Wish I could’ve attended. But your article did give me what I needed to know on the Nintendo side of things. Then again I could’ve tried StreetPass to the max.
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great article! Wish I could’ve gone, this has definitely re kindled my mcm love!
Shame about those american cartridges, I think the easiest way to make sure your buying english
is checking the front packaging, i think american cartridges generally have an E for everyone T for teen etc on the front as opposed to 3+ etc but sometimes in the “heat of the moment” you can get carried away and not realise 😉
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It’s pretty much as Daisy said, this makes me want to go again! I might do in October, no promises though ahaha.
Great article Katy, shame you couldn’t stay the whole three days!! It’s typical sickness strikes right when you don’t need it too!
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I’m thinking of going in October too – might be helping out RSG if they have stuff to show around that time 🙂
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I went along on the Saturday and like you expected to get loads of Street Pass hits (and finally get those last few puzzle pieces I’ve been after) but when I got home I was disappointed to discover I’d only manged to get 10 Street Pass hits!!
When I went on Twitter to moan about this fact, someone else told me that 10 Street Pass hits is the maximum you can get before checking your Plaza and then starting over! That’s the first I’d heard of it and I’m sure it doesn’t mention this anywhere else…! So what you (and I) needed to do was keep checking in on our 3DS to clear the number of people in your Plaza! Gah! Wish I’d known this sooner!
Anyway, hope that info helps when you go to the next big event!!
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Ahh I didn’t know this – wish someone would have told me sooner! I decided not to keep checking my plaza, as I thought it would be more exciting at the end of the day getting lots of hits. Will keep that in mind next time!
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If only you’d both read my previous streetpass articles. I’d said that a couple of times, once in a Streetpass Meet article and once in the Kapow report.
All of the games have a streetpass limit too. DOA:D is 8, SSFIV is 10 and SW:C is 6.
SB
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Arrrgh I do remember reading that on your Kapow article now! Damn…
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It’d be good if the green light flashed or something when you’d reached the max number of Street Pass hits…
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Katy: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Plus I didn’t want to run down the battery on my 3DS by keep checking it
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If all you’re doing is clearing streetpass hits, turn the 3d off and turn the brightness down and it’ll last all day. I was charging mine each night, then clearing streetpass hits every 30 mins and doing DOA:D throwdowns during the day. Then clearing SSFIV and SW:C streetpass battles on the way home on the train and not once did I go below 3 bars of battery. It’s only solid gaming in 3d mode that kills the battery.
Listen to the Streetpass Sensei. I will teach you the ways if you are willing to open your mind.
SB
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