I was planning on continuing my story from the last post, but it is going to have to wait until next time. Why? Because from February 2-8, I went to New York to present MADWORLD at the New York ComicCon!

I had been looking forward to the event, filled with incredibly excited and anxious energy because not only was it was my first-ever trip to New York, but also the first public showing of MADWORLD. And now it was finally here! The morning of the first day was reserved for official business, so the crowd was sparse, but once afternoon rolled around, the line at the entrance gate was ENORMOUS!!!! Even though it was something like -5°C (21°F), which I’m told is actually warm, it seemed there were anime fans from all over the US, and thus I saw tons of different characters being cosplayed in the crowd. I think the characters I saw the most of were Link from Zelda, and Obi-Wan from Star Wars. The sheer variety of Obi-Wan cosplayers was really interesting! It was almost like Tokyo Game Show.

SEGA’s staff worked really hard late into the night before the show started to get ready, and thanks to them we had four awesome demo stations for people to try out PlatinumGames’s very own MADWORLD. That’s right! New York ComicCon was the first time users were able to get their hands on MADWORLD themselves!

I came to ComicCon with two important tasks at hand – to sign autographs for fans and conduct interviews with the press. The first signing was during business time, but there was already a young guy lined up and ready to go… He was waiting to have Inaba-san sign his copy of Okami for him! I was really surprised and also incredibly happy that there were fans this passionate in America.

This was really the first time for me to sign real autographs, so I was wondering what I should write when I sign things. I ended up deciding on drawing a Happy Onion, one of the items in MADWORLD, and then signing my name together with the drawing. When I signed things for fans this way, I don’t know if they were in on the joke or not, but lots of them laughed and seemed really happy. It may have taken some time for me to sign things, but I am really glad I did it this way. I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet our fans up until that point, but it seems we were about to go beyond words and communicate somehow this way. It was incredibly fun for me. I really hope we get to do another signing someday.

I also did lots of press interviews.
The first day I talked with X-PLAY, GameTrailers, and Gamespot. All of the interviews involved me playing the game while explaining how everything worked, so if you want the inside details check out my interviews on those sites.

Thank you so much for coming to ComicCon and playing the game. I’d love to hear what you thought of it, so be sure to leave me some comments!