Hey Hive!
I'm taking a pause from documenting international travels, as I just wrapped up my series on our 2023 trip to Tokyo - a trip that took over 10 months to write about! During this break, I'm excited to explore and share some of the hidden gems and vibrant spots we have right here in Singapore!
Back in Oct 2023, Sean managed to snag free tickets to Gamescom Asia! Gamescom is a trade fair or convention for video games normally held in Germany, but they also have an Asian branch that they host over here once a year. I guess that goes to show how big Gamecom is that they even have region-specific events.
Anyway, since we had some free tickets we thought we'd go check it out!
That year, Gamecom Asia was held at our biggest convention hall which is attached to Suntec City, one of the biggest malls in Singapore.
Source: sunteccityoffice
We had plenty of time to go check out the event so we decided to go get some lunch first!
There aren't a lot of affordable options in this mall since it's right in town so we decided to go try the Singapore version of our favourite Japanese gyudon chain - Sukiya!
Source: danielfooddiary
They had a new special gyudon (beef bowl) with spicy garlic sprouts and it looked pretty good!
I tend to add chili to the gyudon for that extra spice kick so I was curious to see how this would taste. It even comes with a half boiled egg, which is something I love to get with my gyudon as well!
Sean ordered a gyudon topped with black pepper sauce and a half boiled egg as well.
If I recall it wasn't very spicy but it was definitely savoury and tasty! I enjoyed it quite a bit but the portion was a little on the smaller side. Thankfully I didn't have a big appetite since it was my first meal of the day.
It was definitely too small a portion for Sean though but he said it tasted alright. Nothing too spectacular but was tasty overall.
After that it was time to head to the convention! I think we saw a Peanuts pop-up and stopped by to try on some cute hats!
After that we made our way up to the convention center and saw one of our favourite series on the big screen!
Not me geeking out over seeing my husbando on the big billboard
There was quite a crowd gathered at the convention entrance, mostly cosplayers and photographers.
I feel like this is the case every time there's a convention though, with lots of cosplayers around the convention halls.
We made our way upstairs and headed to the entrance!
It was our first time attending Gamescom so I was quite excited, although I know this Asia one was not going to be as big as the main one in Cologne.
Since we had special VIP badges, we could go in through the VIP entrance and the first thing we saw was the Capcom Premier Street Fighter tournament!
I've only ever briefly played the older Street Fighter games but it was still really cool to see these pro players come here for across the world to compete.
Since this was an open Premier I think technically anyone could come and compete. There were some setups where people were fighting it out on PCs while the tournament was going on, but I wasn't sure if they were playing to qualify or just for fun.
I think Sean was involved in helping to bring the tournament here and it was the biggest thing in the event to bring in the crowd so kudos for his hard work!
There were even some famous Street Fighter players who came by to participate and whom got exclusive interviews.
We stuck around watching some matches before going to check out the rest of the booths. All the big gaming companies were represented here like Sony, Ubisoft, and Capcom of course.
There was quite a huge section for Capcom, where they were showcasing their newest releases and you could play demos for them for free!
We ended up taking turns playing Dragon's Dogma 2, which we've never played before.
It looked like Skyrim though; a medieval adventure game.
There were quite a few PS5 setups for this game, I guess it must be pretty successful.
Most of the crowd were gathered at the food truck section where they served some overpriced bougie snacks. I thought there would be game-themed items but it was mostly standard finger food like burgers and fries.
There were many cosplayers gathered here as well. Many of their costumes look quite elaborate and I bet they put in a lot of effort in their cosplay.
The only one I managed to get a picture with was this giant Chun Li though, but she's the only one I recognise anyway.
Capcom really went all out promoting all their different series, from Ace Attorney to Street Fighter and Devil May Cry.
The longest queue for the game demos was definitely for this VR version of the RE4 remake. I can't imagine playing RE in VR though, since it's a zombie game and it's probably pretty terrifying in VR.
I recall seeing the waiting time for this line was more than an hour! I guess there must be a lot of horror fans wanting to try it.
Capcom was definitely the biggest booth at this event. I think they also had a merch store but most of the items were already sold out unfortunately.
When the queue for the Ace Attorney demo died down, we went in to see if we could try for the demo and managed to get a slot! So I could finally see my hobo husbando in HD for about 15 minutes or so.
We also tried to take a photo in front of the screen but alas, the lighting was not to be.
It was still really cool to see and try the demo for games not released yet though!
There were plenty of other booths as well though, and we just wanted to soak in the atmosphere and see what freebies we could get.
I also learnt of different gaming companies I've never seen before like Arc System Works who apparently make a lot of anime games and have been around for 35 years!
There were a few gaming stations as well like this Retro Games section with a few old arcade machines.
I would've loved to try one of their games since these are hard to come by these days but there were quite a lot of kids here.
There was also a pretty big merchandise section with different artists and companies selling merch of their game characters and the like.
There was this bok choy lion that was pretty cute, I think it was the Gamescom Asia mascot.
There was also a Meet-and-Greet area where you could meet some famous content creators and voice actors but I wasn't familiar with any of them.
The other area that was full of people was the indie gaming station, where different local indie developers were showcasing their games.
There were some that looked pretty interesting, but all the stations were full so I couldn't get to try any.
We took a brief look at the Ubisoft booth, remembering the playtest we did for them years ago for their big game that turned out to be quite a disappointment.
I was surprised to see how big the neopets booth was, or that they had a booth at all. I guess they're trying to revive all these old games.
The only other booth that interested me was the free snacks station! You could get a small cup of popcorn and a small teh tarik (pulled tea) for free!
It was an interesting event nonetheless, and Sean met up with some important people in the industry as well.
After that we got invited to an afterparty at a bar for all the people who made this event happen, including some people from big companies like Amazon, Riot and Blizzard!
Sean did most of the talking and networking while I sipped some free drinks. I felt very overstimulated being around all these people tbh but it was interesting.
That's going to be it for today though, thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
First Olympic Esports Event! - TacoCat’s Travels #293 (SG)
