Hyper Japan Again

Before I crack into the Winter Market version of  Hyper Japan there is a brief update to the 419 letter I got, apparently Havering Police are warning about a scam letter with nigh on identical wording from a different chinese guy.  As I said before its a scam, there is no inheritance and they will ask you for a substantial fee up front and all you'll get is Jack Shit in return.

Hyper Japan Christmas Market.

I reported on the summer version of this a few months back but this is less game orientated and much more to do with Japanese Culture overall, also its had a move from Earls Court to Olympia.  So you had guests by visual artists like Siro A and Jpop singers as well as all the geeks and fangirls cosplaying.  There were still a lot of food stands and places to grab a sake, including some traditional sweet stalls and a place selling iron teapots of all things.

Gaming this time was represented by Capcom which had a bank of flatscreen TV's playing Ultra Streetfighter 4 and Monster Hunter, as well as some ugly Minecraft style Ken and Ryu stands.

Ryu + Steroids not a pretty sight.

Square Enix didn't have any games at all just a shed load of merchandise set in display cases, you could grab a plush Cactuar and a Chocobo dressed as a white mage.  Or you could spunk your cash on an endless array of FF soundtrack CDs.  They also had stress balls too but they weren't actually that good.

I demand that this be an actual FF release

Upstairs they had a nice arcade area which housed some cool shit, including an American Snes with its horrible boxy outline and purple colour scheme playing Marioworld, or on the other side you had a Megadrive with Streets of Rage. There was no old guy hogging Ikaruga this time as there was no Ikaruga and the games were hogged by tiny kids in Karate Gis!. Persona 4 Ultimax Arena, the beat em up crossover with Arc System Works was on offer a shame that I never got to play on it.  Did however get to play on Final Fight which was cool and saw a mum with cat ears dancing with her young son on DDR.

There was a lot of merchandise for sale upstairs along with wall scrolls and swords were a shed load of toys from various manga and  games.  Was debating getting a Luigi Keyring for my cousin and me but decided to chance it with some Persona 4 the Animation blind bags.  Got the secret rare as well which is Margaret dressed as Marylin Monroe. Cue crap picture.

About life size here.

They also had the queen of British Anime Helen McCarthy which some of you may remember from the Anime Column in long defunct Snes Mag SuperPlay or from the big encyclopaedia of anime she did.  Sadly I didn't get a picture of her but she did look a lot like the chibi version but of course much older now.

Finally they had a lot of people cosplaying including many many gothic lolitas and Mario and Luigi sitting around which was nice. Don't know when the next one is on but will definitely be going.