Brussels Expo, March 14, 2014. For the first time since its creation, the Made In Asia convention opens its doors as soon as Friday morning for one extra crazy day. Although that day was pretty quiet, it contributed to the impressive total of 43,730 paying visitors. As usual, a free access evening was held on Friday from 19h to 21h, attracting 6,000 additional visitors. Like last year, the show occupied three halls of the Heysel: Hall 5, Hall 9 and Patio.
The organizer wanted visitors to be able to catch plush toys in crane games, so we asked to the Jeux Américains mobile arcade to join the show. The consequence was that we had to share our booth. Unfortunately, what seemed possible on blueprint proved unworkable on site. Especially as the showman brought more machines than expected. The only solution was to extend the stand on the setup day. As it was not expected, we exceeded the background wall and we were short of carpet. No problem, all the machines were in place and ready to welcome the players. In addition to the cranes, Jeux Américains came with two arcade machines: Initial D 4 (which was played non-stop) and Winter X Games SnoCross. Unlike our cabinets, games were not free on those.
Once again, we brought our share of new games, including the recent fighting games Chaos Code, Daemon Bride, Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code and of course Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Ver.2012. All these games were presented in their latest version (v1.02 for Chaos Code which includes the MG Hikaru character and v1.07 for Melty Blood AACC), all hidden characters were unlocked when possible. Players could also try Senko no Ronde DUO v2.00, the versus shoot'em up by G.rev.
Other games featured for the first time at Made In Asia were Knights of Valour - The Seven Spirits and Asian Dynamite (the third episode in the Dynamite Deka series) beat'em alls, Virtua Striker 4 Ver.2006 soccer game and the Puyo Puyo DA! music game. Bu also the fighting games The King of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation A and Tekken 6 Bloodline Rebellion as well as the Crazy Taxi car driving game.
Other games presented were games that proved popular in the previous years: the beautiful Azumanga-Daioh Puzzle Bobble, lightgun shooters The House of the Dead 2 and 3, vertical shoot'em up Mamoru-kun wa Norowarete Shimatta!, racing game OutRun2 SP - Special Tours and the fighting game Sengoku Basara X. So yes, it's the first time we didn't have a Tetris game.
As said before, Friday was quite during the day. It's the day chosen by the RTL-TVI TV channel to film a short report for the evening news. Friday's evening was of course less quiet thanks to the free entrance which attracted a younger and more turbulent audience.
On the other hand, Saturday has been really crowded as evidenced by these photos. It was hard to walk around in some places. Sunday was less busy. Obviously we were organizing several tournaments as reported hereafter.
Puyo Puyo DA! tournament
The Friday tournament was placed under the sign of Puyo Puyo DA! This is the first time we held a music game tournament. Because it's not a fighting game, moreover a little known title and that the public was in smaller numbers that day, we were expecting to have fewer entrants. This was the case but that doesn't mean there was no fun! Especially thanks to the music of Katsumi Tanaka whose most chosen song was obviously "I Sing ". So, "Itsumademo" was often heard on the stand. Ok, we recognise the volume was a bit too loud...
Bog won the final against J-Twite. He's definitely comfortable in all styles of games! All participants left with various items: figurines, 1UP slippers, DVDs and goodies offered by the Made In Asia exhibitors. Thanks to all contestants who took part in the tournament.
Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Ver. 2012 tournament
The main event was kept for Saturday. It is our policy to never organize two tournaments on the same game. Nevertheless, we are often asked for Street Fighter tournaments. Fortunately, the many iterations of this title makes this possible. After Hyper Street Fighter II at MIA 3 and Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition at MIA 4, voici Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Ver. 2012. Some technical details; it was a special version prepared by us featuring English text and Japanese voices (impossible to have this in the original, it's either all English or all Japanese). Rest assured that we haven't sacrificed our expensive original hard disks of the game to make this version. We had to restart the game several times during the tournament because of a crash with the "COIN ERROR" message displayed on the screen. Here's why: last year, we used one of these cabinets for Shin Koihime † Musou. It appeared that version 1.1 of that game had no freeplay mode. We therefore connected the coin wire to the start button so that each pressure would "inserts a coin". It worked well. Alas, we had forgotten to undo what hack and Street Fighter b> (configured in freeplay) didn't really like that. Sorry for the inconvenience.
A refereeing error during the first round eliminated AMGVanilla by mistake. In compensation, he was given a chance against Dragen and was given a Yoshi plush toy of his choice by Jeux Américains.
Chaos Code tournament
Like all previous tournaments, the Chaos Code tournament was broadcast on a plasma screen at the front of the stand so that everyone could enjoy it. FK Digital themselves announced the tournament on Facebook. Sunday was also the day we distributed posters to all visitors who passed by our stand.
Let's go straight to the semi final between Ramiz (under the name of Big Mararamiz) and Esash from team Player (2-0).
At third place, Esash won a Hello Kitty mug, a Pix'n Love book, a "Moi dix Mois" DVD offered by Ryokii and a Made In Asia poster.
Winner of the tourney, Dragen got an Assassin's Creed decorative knife, a Dragon Ball figure, Yu Yu Hakusho and Initial D DVD boxes as well as a poster.
Cosplay
Video
Games
Media
Find us at the next Made In Asia shows: on September 12, 13 and 14, 2014 at Namur Expo for Retro MIA and on March 13-15, 2015 in Brussels for Made In Asia 7!
Text / pictures: Sophie & Nomax.
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