HYPER JAPAN is a wonderful cultural festival that celebrates everything Japanese, and returned to Olympia in London, UK for its three day summer showcase this past weekend. We've been to the show a couple of times before but this was our first time visiting the Olympia West Hall.
Nintendo had a host of activities planned for the show which we've covered in previous articles, so this time we'll stick to the photos, okay?
You can view our entire album of photos over on our Facebook page.
If you're interested in attending HYPER JAPAN in the future, the next show is HYPER JAPAN: Christmas Market which takes place 25-27th November, 2016 at the lovely Tobacco Dock venue in central London.
Did you attend HYPER JAPAN this year, if so, what did you think? Let us know in the comments below.
[source facebook.com]
Comments 13
They should have had the Zelda: BOTW demo freely available to play like they did at E3. Not limited to just 30 people.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE ??
looks like i didnt miss much
Comes across people playing Pokémon GO
Nice to see Japan Centre there. Love those guys.
Been enjoying a ton of their products for the past few years.
The Nintendo stand was good, but the rest of the show was a rip-off. Full of counterfeit goods from China that you can find on any market. Poor show for £17 entry. Luckily I did manage to find a pikachu/gyarados cosplay plush for £7 that I'm 95% sure is genuine. The NHK World stand and food related stands were okay too. But mostly tacky for everything else and not very Japanese.
If you've ever flown from a rural airport in Japan and seen the little souvenir shops, that's basically what you got at Hyper Japan.
EDIT: I see my and my daughter in photo 6!
I just got home from there.
I bought a Drilbur plushie.
I also bought Gauntlet Legends for N64.
I went in order to see the Breath of the Wild demonstration, but was mostly interested in the secondhand games corner upstairs, lol.
@Phil_Kavadias I'm pretty sure that the organisers are not too interested in the quality - just the money. That said, if Nintendo see themselves as a quality brand and are worried about associating themselves with this sort of thing, and if they then pull out then Hyper Japan would have zero going for it as a commercial event.
@riChchestM I didn't feel it was great value. Thought last years was much better. There was a lot of tat there. Not sure i'd go all the way to Olympia again for that. If it came back to the O2 then maybe, but the kids were looking forward to it, and none of us thought it was good. Nintendo stuff was OK. A 20 minute Zelda demo and it would have made the trip worthwhile. The kids got their photo with Pikachu which was their highlight.
It was alright. There were some cool Japanese arts and things, but a lot of cheap tack there as well. I grabbed a Lugia plush there, but it looks a bit dopey.
Nintendo did well with their booth. They had lots of 3DS Consoles with plenty of demos to try out, and the staff were very helpful and always asking me how I was getting on in the demos.
@riChchestM nice that you took your daughter, I'm glad the Nintendo stuff was at least good, hope they made it worth it?
I wanted to go to HYPER JAPAN, but judging from the commenters negative thoughts on it, I'm sort of glad I didn't.
I think the consensus was that it wasn't as good as previous years, but for my first time it wasn't too bad. Nintendo really carried it though and I enjoyed the stage coverage.
If you were there shopping you were doing the wrong thing. The panels were interesting and you had live music. To be fair they need a better place for the main stage and better speakers, but Charisma.com were the highlight for me.
Would I go again? Yes. All 3 days? No. You can spread stuff out over 2, but the final day I was wandering around with nothing to do.
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