My Day at Gameforce 2023 – Inside.Gamer

A call was recently sent over the airwaves. It was fellow Inside.gamer aRc who was looking for fighters for Gameforce 2023. This looked really cool. a question? What exactly is Gameforce?

Gameforce is a game fair where you can play the latest games, buy hardware, software, all kinds of merchandise, and if you’re really brave, you can even participate in a cosplay contest. The latter doesn’t really work for me, although I can still find the idea compelling 90s baby From the YouTube channel Above the Fourth Wall. “Extremely!!!“

Fortunately, there was a treasure map for both islands.

This is not a review of the exhibition, but rather my experience of the time I spent there. Isn’t the review based on your experience? Yes, but I barely played anything and was just walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. Oh, and of course I was looking for aRc.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with these bands.

When I wanted to buy my ticket a few days ago, I saw that there was a more expensive version that let you in an hour earlier. I also received a gift bag with a cover and sticker. It’s fun in its own right, although I wouldn’t do much with it, but I think it would be more useful with a single game in mind. Super Mario Bros. Wonder can be played and I expected big queues there in particular.

This line was much longer later in the day.

When I got there, there were only two people in front of me, so it was my turn fairly quickly. When we got to the match, there was someone explaining some basic things to us. I’ve of course been familiar with the controls for a long time, but there were some new things that I would have missed otherwise.

What!? Toadette is adorable and so sweet.

The game looks really nice. It also has more new features than I expected. Before that I had no interest in buying it at all, but after playing with it I was completely sold. Very much looking forward to it!

Fortunately, my switch at home was set to English.

Then I wandered around for a while to see what else to do. There was a lot to play, but often it was things that didn’t really interest me or that I already had at home. But you also saw some arcade games and a corner with retro games, so there was something for everyone.

At the PlayStation booth, you can play four of the latest PS5 games, but unfortunately there’s no Spider-Man 2.

The drum game on the right looks fun.

All kinds of old games are set up in this room, like Tekken 3 and Super Mario Kart.

In the meantime I was beginning to feel a little hungry, but that was also taken into account, because there was plenty to get.

Players’ food for players.

I decided to get two hot dogs. They had two different types, classic and spicy. I took one of each and it was definitely not bad. In the meantime, I was able to take a look around at my leisure and you can see that some of the cosplays were put together really nicely. I can’t imagine how much work that must be done sometimes. What I also couldn’t imagine was how they survived there. I was only wearing a t-shirt and I actually thought it was warm in there.

On the table!

After I was fully recharged, I moved on to the merchandise sections. There was also a decent selection. Of course there were t-shirts and Funko, but also art prints, game and anime-based weapons, and other types of gadgets.

You can never have enough nerd gear.

At the stand above I found a nice Elden Ring jacket, but unfortunately it wasn’t available in my size. Later, I found it elsewhere in the right place, but when I went to pay for it, it turned out there was a tooth missing from the zipper, so I didn’t buy it. Good thing the seller noticed this and had the courtesy to report it.

In the middle was a cleaver saw from Bloodborne, which looked cool.

On my way to my next destination, I passed by a girl selling soft drinks for the umpteenth time. I’d never seen anyone buy anything from her, so I thought I’d have a quick chat with her and buy a bottle, because she was standing there all alone, while everyone else was milling around. Refreshed, she continued.

In addition to Super Mario Bros. I wonder if there’s another game I wanted to try, Sonic Superstars. I’ve never been a big fan of the blue blackout, but now I had the chance to see if this part would appeal to me. No. It looked nice, like most other Sonic games, but there’s a certain disconnect that makes it unappealing to me. It’s a shame in itself, but that’s the way it is. Unlike the new Mario game, I wasn’t allowed to take a photo of this one. I discovered this after I took a photo of the booth from a short distance, but when they saw it I was asked to remove it.

I’ve heard about the one on the left.

But what would Toy Fair be without influencers? I have no idea, because I don’t really care, but there were long lines out front. I also took a photo of the board with three (probably) popular Twitch streamers, but it was so blurry that I left it. Speaking of which, there are more images that are unfortunately less clear than intended. Apologies for that.

Even the police were there with… a game?

all in all? Definitely a successful exhibition and as is already clear, it wasn’t all for me, but it shouldn’t be. I got my happiness out of it. Unfortunately, I haven’t met aRc anymore, but I would still like to thank him for the suggestion. I don’t think I would have gone here differently, but I can see myself there again next year. until that time!

“But Rob, you must have bought something there, right?” Ghehe, that’s true, although not much. All my purchases come from one kiosk, Press-Start Games. I talked about them in a road trip article once and thought it was good to have them there because their store is three hours away from me, so I don’t visit them every day. It was nice that they wanted to come my way a little more for once. I could of course order some items through their online store, but I always think there would be more human interaction.

So I bought a bunch of anime DVDs that sounded great to me.

I’ve always been very curious about Lodoss’s war record.

I’ve also seen a PlayStation Classic for relatively little money. Not new of course, but the box looked so good I always wanted to get it again.

Well, you finally got your hands on one of the lesser-known classic mini controllers!

Butrrreeeeeeeeee…that wasn’t the end of it. In last Friday’s What to Play thread I talked about being away from home most of the weekend. Today I wanted to go to Joydo again, the store I wrote an article about about six months ago when they opened their new store. After wandering around Gameforce for over four hours, I’ve seen quite a bit of it. I was already halfway to that store, because it was located almost in the same direction from me. I can also easily arrive well before closing time, plus it will save a lot of fuel. So I decided to combine my weekend plans and at two-thirty I was in the car heading to Derain. When I got there, I still had a few hours to wander at my leisure and it worked out great.

For example, I saw two Japanese PSP games on their webstore and thought the box art looked very nice.

On the left is Vanillaware and on the right is Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest in one game.

I also found some Japanese Nintendo games. I think the Wario World game in particular looks really cool.

Japanese Gamecube boxes are much smaller than ours.

I’ve said before that Cammy is my favorite Street Fighter game. Her move set is very good and she moves nice and smooth. It looks good too. I’ve looked at this doll before, but I decided to take her with me now, even though her clothes don’t have the natural colors. #CamiForLife

Spin the Engine Smasher!

I already had a few spin-off figures of Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, but Lucy Heartfilia was still missing. This “problem” has now been solved.

It goes well on the rack next to the other Popup Parade ladies.

Kunstschilder1987 recently had some screenshots from Wallachia: Reign Of Dracula. I also have that game and have seen that soundtrack there before. I may not make it often, but I thought it was cool to have.

Really beautiful cover.

Remember that drum game on Gameforce? There’s apparently a version of this for Switch, including drums and sticks, though it’s much smaller than an arcade cabinet and probably won’t be quite the same experience. OK we will see.

We have drum games at home.

Anyway, thank you so much for putting up with the nonsense and playing!