This weekend saw the 17th bi-annual London MCM Expo at the London ExCel centre where the presence of games is steadily growing bigger. As usual there was a large variety of reasons to attend the show, Gamercast were there checking out some of the great gaming cosplay, and playing some of the latest games, as well as a few unreleased titles also.
The fantastic Rising Star Games were also present at the show, with the magnificent No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle and Samurai Shodown Sen, they were also selling many of their recent titles, including a few obscure ones that retailers like GAME wouldn’t stock, we also had the pleasure of interviewing Rising Star’s Tyrone Walcott on No More Heroes 2. (subtitles following shortly)
On show from Nintendo were Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies, Samurai Warriors 3, Monster Hunter Tri, WarioWare: Do It Yourself, Dragon Quest IX, Professor Layton, Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, and best of all Mario Galaxy 2; two weeks before its release in the UK it was understandably popular, so unfortunately Gamercast never managed a hands-on, but Mario Galaxy was a great formula, and it looks like Nintendo have only improved on it ten-fold.
Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies is really not the sort of game to be playing at an event, although we still haven’t managed to get a hold of the original, this spiritual sequel is extremely difficult, and tricky to get used to the controls, however you can’t deny the release of a new on-rail shooter; they’re one in a million! Another interesting title to play was WarioWare: Do It Yourself, which seems great fun, and from the innocent but simple creation aspects of the game, it is a real surprise that Catherine has not yet picked it up.
As usual there was a solid presence from Tecmo Koei, who had brought along Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage, as well as Quantum Theory, we couldn’t keep our hands off of Fist of the North Star, you can read our impressions of the game here. As a standard they had a lot of merchandise for sale, the usual games for cheap, and numerous Dynasty Warriors related items, as well as a couple of limited edition Kotobukiya Kasumi figures, and the Fist of the North Star Treasure Box, which unfortunately was not for sale.
Activision were showing off Transformers: War for Cybertron, alongside the extremely fun Blur; whose booth was constantly bursting with gamers trying the title out, their games were tremendously popular throughout the show, though we have previously played Blur and weren’t particularly interested in the new Transformers game, however if Adam were there we’re sure he’d of been stuck on it for hours.
Every year the show seems to be getting busier and busier, which for us quiet lot isn’t so fun, but it’s great to see the massive turnout, especially as the more people turn up, the better the cosplay seems to get, there were some fantastic gaming fans out in London, you can check them out in our video.
The most interesting and unique event at the show was the attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the largest DS Gaming Party, unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my DS in the end, but the amount of attendees that showed up was astounding, and they broke the Australian record with 586 people.
Although we left a few hours later than we expected, a great time was had and if you want to hear Paul and Catherine’s impressions on the show, you should check out this week’s episode of the Podcast. The next London MCM Expo will be on the 30th-31st of October, Gamercast will be attending, we hope you will be too, only another 5 months to go, plus it will be taking place after all the video game trade shows so hopefully there will be lots of new games available to play.