Japan-Expo is an event taking place each year. From a few hundreds people 8 years ago, this year there were 70000+ visitors.
Japan-Expo works with different associations to propose animations, related to certain aspects of japanese culture.
Last year, while working like every year on the rythm-games part, we (me and Radigo from
www.shmup.com) suggested a "shmups" stand to the J.E. staff, more like a one-time experience.
This was a huge success, because of the various types of games proposed (old/new/console/arcade...).
We did it once more this year, with more people and games, a nice Ibara cosplay, and more happy visitors ! Now I think there is a place for arcade games in japan-style conventions (the AAFDP association does it many times a year in France, and they're good at it), but it takes a lot of time and logistics to make things work.
Next year in Japan-Expo, there are 95% chances that there will be again something like that, and maybe before that also, but it's not decided yet.
and people said that the versuscit-ies had hours of people waiting to play...
, not about shmup studios, but some japan stars were here : ex-xjapan yoshiki, sakaguchi, kamimura, ..)
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