Otaku Expo 2012

Kind of a late post here. There have been a lot of things happening all over and I’ll share some of them with you readers soon. For now try to enjoy the pictures from the last event which I’ve helped out recently.

Otaku Expo happened last January 21-22, 2012 and is produced by Ozine, the same people who brought the three day long convention, Ozinefest, to the Philippine convention fray. I have to say the videogaming booth this year is a bigger success because of the variety of games available this time around.

Ozine’s Dennis Uy asked me to be in charge of the videogame booth for Ozine events, and I was more than honored to accept the challenge. Instead of focusing on a certain genre or one game, I’ve decided to target casual gamers who just wanted to play games during the convention. So we’ve decided to go with multiple games this time around.

The booth charges per game as well (P5 per game, that’s 10yen. Do the math =3) which is really cheap. The people guarding the booth have to eat too so making it a wee bit profit oriented helps our meal budget ^^

Gundam Extreme Vs being played here. I’m pretty sure nobody expected this game to be part of the booth, but it was nonetheless a hit among con-goers. It also helps if you play it in split screen on a wide TV ^^ Some Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 on the side too.

The latest incarnation of Blazblue, Continuum Shift EXTEND, also makes an appearance. The game isn’t readily available to everyone yet, since people have to order it and the cost isn’t exactly friendl. Everyone is waiting for the cheaper US version to come out on the 14th of February, so in the meantime they can play the games here. The game on the left looks familiar ^^

Hatsune Miku’s Dreamy Theater 2 is also up for playing in the booth as well. We didn’t expect the lines to be so long just to play MIku on a big TV ^^

The Vocaloid booth also had cosplayers playing the game as well.

Pretty interesting to note that there were more stick users among Blazblue players than Marvel vs Capcom 3 players during the convention. The guy in stripes on the upper left is Chase, the current Blazblue Champion in the Philippines. He’s the guy handling our meal money  ^^

Unlike previous conventions where the videobooths had the PS3s facing inside the booth, we’ve decided to make the booth more welcoming to other people by simply positioning them as such. The result was simply more people played the games and the volunteers who manned the booth had more personal space to rest within it. We occasionally let people inside the booth to play as well if we felt that there are too many people waiting in line (which happened a lot lol).

Special thanks to KL So Chan for providing us with a poster free of charge ^^. You can view more of her works in her deviantart or her tumblr account.

The person in black is Q, one of the people in charge of the gaming booth.

I think this was during the middle of the day, when customer count skyrockets. And as you can see, even the insides of the booth is getting full to accomodate customer demand. That’s why we have a sword-wielding samurai in the background to help guard the booth.

Sadly, i wasn’t able to visit Team Onii-chan’s figure booth and take pictures of em figures.

The indie artists booth.

The Gundam Caravan where you can get free Gunpla and assemble them on site. Best part is you can win a prize if your recently assembled Gunpla looks awesome enough. Oh and you can keep em too!

Stage Area, this be the tech booth.

Audience area. I think was minutes before the cosplay show.

Took pictures of some of the cosplayers during my break time ^^

Kids on the right are my brother and sisters.

Hmmm what are all these people looking at?

A lot of people here are watching some big matches in Blazblue. Look at those life bars, pretty intense match we have here! I think it’s Q’s Noel Vermillion vs Andrew Ting’s Lambda 11.

It was pretty magical to see people become attracted to the screen the moment the OP music started. Everyone was glued to the screen as the exhibition matches unfolded.

We also had a Vocaloid contest wherein players compete in getting the highest score in “Storywriter”. Pretty hyped up side event.

We made it a point that the booth closes around 7pm so that the volunteers and even other staff members from ozine or other booths can play as well. We all need the R&R ^^

These guys were the Sunday Team, some of the people who helped out during Saturday weren’t able to make it. From left to right we have Nicole Escutin, Gelo Morelos who is the current head of Blazblue Philippines, Q Sancio, BM Ibita, Me, Kyle LIm, Chase Villanueva and Andrew Ting. I’d like to thank everyone who helped and everyone who went to our booth. Thanks again to Ozine for the opportunity of being part of this event.

If you guys are from the Philippines and enjoyed the gaming booth, then we hope to see you again on Ozinefest. I’ll reveal some of the games to you soon, but for now I still have to finalize some things to help make the event bring more smiles than before.

Do you guys also do things like these for fun? I’ll have to admit, a good portion of the skills I’ve gained came from free work and I do encourage people to participate in work that can help you network or enhance your skills. Volunteering helps.

11 replies
  1. Miette-chan
    Miette-chan says:

    That’s pretty cool. Usually there is only fighting games available at game booths so it only attracts that crowd. It was cool to have stuff like the Miku and Gundam games.

    Reply
    • Duqs
      Duqs says:

      Yeah, i guess it was a pleasant surprise to everyone to have those games there. Been thinking of what other games to place as well. Any suggestions?

      Reply
  2. Nopy
    Nopy says:

    Changing the set up of the games to face outward does look like a good idea since the players would have more room and more people can watch. I see a lot of Vocaloids are gamers too.

    Reply
  3. Wieselhead
    Wieselhead says:

    cool, that you actively participated in making the event a success, it can create lots of nice memories and its of course more exciting than just beeing a expo visitor.

    hehe at picture 27 I nearly fell off my chair, she looks great <3, the phillipine cosplayers look always so nice ^-^

    Reply

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