Tokyo Game Show 2008: Deconstructing the Japanese Booth Babe
What? You think we got our diplomas out of a vending machine?
10/10/2008 6:45 PM | 6 Comments | Page 1 of 8
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
Going to a convention like the Tokyo Game Show isn't ever just about the games.
Attending the show is also something of a sociological study for us. We carefully observe other gamers and game journalists. We study their occasionally odd behaviors, not unlike the way the great Jane Goodall studied chimps.
We know this much: They're certainly an odd lot, these game journos.
The same way that chimps might fight over a particularly tasty bug, we have witnessed game journos making wild gestures at one another and squabbling over what appeared to be a Neopets keychain that was worth less than negative one cent.
We have witnessed game journos stampeding towards bright, flashing lights and loud noises (i.e., the EA booth). And we have actual audio recordings of them shrieking loudly and beating their chests at the mention of the word "Mario" during convention press conferences.
Yet nothing tantalizes and confuses the game journalist quite like the creature colloquially known as the booth babe.
"Can I possibly mate with this creature wearing a plastic dress?" the game journo wonders to himself. He shyly moves towards the creature, a.k.a.
Bootheus babous in the Latinate, trying to reconcile her short skirt with her disinterested smile. At a loss for how to proceed, the game journo will involuntarily hover within a 10-foot radius of the creature for a period of five to 45 minutes while wearing a decidedly puzzled expression on his face.
From this moment forward, the game journalist has only two options. Either he can sit through a 15-minute demonstration for
Celebrity Cooking Mama: Fondue with Marie Osmond. (The game that this particular booth babe happened to be promoting.) Or he can be quietly escorted from the premises by security.
In the name of science, Crispy Gamer has brought back several highly classified volumes of visual data from this year's Tokyo Game Show. We only ask this of you: As you proceed through this data, kindly gauge your own emotional and physical reactions to what you are seeing.
Ask yourself: "Is what I'm seeing intoxicating enough to make me sit through a 15-minute demo for
Celebrity Cooking Mama: Fondue with Marie Osmond?"
As our beloved colleague GLaDOS once said (rest in peace, brave lady), "I'm doing science and I'm still alive."
She's smiling at you, but she's actually thinking...
... If this one comes any closer, I'll scream.
