TGS shopping report! Forgive the not-great photos. I’ll try to swap better ones in if I manage to get any better ones.

Since Tiny Cartridge is, for all intents and purposes, our personal blog, this is the hot destination for all of the non-news-related ephemera from my Tokyo Game Show trip and subsequent Tokyo vacation. And nothing is less news-related than “hey, I bought stuff.” Still, I thought you guys might enjoy seeing it!

By the way, hi. I’m officially back. Eric did a killer job of holding the site down while I was away, and I hope you can all accept the return of my mediocrity.

TGS has a separate expo hall dedicated to shopping. On the two business-only days, I found this to be ridiculously excessive. However, when the public arrives and the thirty-minute line forms just to get into the Capcom booth (and just forget about even getting close enough to the Square Enix booth to see it), it makes rather a lot of sense.

The Capcom booth is where I spent most of my cash. Joystiq’s Ludwig Kietzmann, who is just as much of an Ace Attorney fan as I am, accompanied me, making the act of coveting the Blue Badger jacket a lot more fun. I purchased, instead of the jacket, this little plush Blue Badger, along with an adorable plush Mega Man I couldn’t not buy.

In a last-second impulse purchase, I grabbed the Okamiden screen-cleaning strap, though I realized that buying swag for an unreleased game I’d never played was a risky endeavor. What if the game turned out to be terrible, and I had just committed an act of fandom for something sucky? Luckily, the game has actual promise.

Near the Capcom booth was the Game Center CX booth. I purchased a little strap featuring the King and Arino sprites. When I went back the next day to take pictures, there was a significant line precluding me from further purchases … but there was also a capsule toy dispenser containing these other different straps and badges with caricatures of the ADs.

Finally, my favorite purchase of the show, the Spelunker business card holder. If you ever meet me in a professional context (and some of you have), and if I remember to act like a professional and give you a business card, you’ll see this little beauty in real life.