And so my brain returns from Anime Expo (part 2)

Way back when I was still a naive con attendee, the dealer's room was the only thing I went to during con. Now I know there are more interesting things like panels and main events (when programming operations are on time anyways). Still the biggest life pulse of Anime Expo to me is the dealer's room, or exhibit hall. Although it's Anime Expo, there were plenty of things for a gamer too. Afterall, this year is getting a lot of good fighting games, and fighting games are at home with anime as anything else. What was there?

Capcom booth
There biggest presence there was Tatsunoko v. Capcom in it's localized form. None of the new characters promised to fill the void of one of the removed giant characters were present. In fact, both giant characters, PTX and Golden Lightanwere still there, but the most popular characters that I saw were Ryu, Morrigan, Ken the Eagle, Jun the Swan, Tekkaman, Megaman, Viewtiful Joe. People also played some Soki, Casshern, Alex, and Chun-li.
The game is an ambiguous mixture of fast gameplay from tags and air combos and slow methodical character movement. Dashing was underplayed for a lot of air dashes and jumping in and fireball game was weak because almost every projectile in the game has tremendous start up animation. However, when you launch you opponent, people familiar with MvC2 style air combos would feel right at home.

Aksys booth
Their booth was hawking all sorts of Blazblue tie in merch from Japan, like mini posters, t-shirts, and the game itself of course. Their biggest item was the bundle bag, which was a canvas bag carrying the game and almost every piece of swag in the counter including the shirt, poster, Mana drink, and more (I have no idea what the drink tastes like, but it imagine potions from rpgs). On the side was maybe one booth for Battle Fantasia (meh) and both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Blazblue in play. The 360 had sticks while the PS3 had pads. Competition looked relatively tame, but there was one person who was obviously domination. I find out afterwards after getting my Tager beaten by his v-13 that he was apparently the best player from NorCal. What a humbling experience!

Various used gamer booths
There was a large assortment of smaller used game store booths displaying their niche Japanese import games. There wasn't a whole lot interesting since I was caught up in Blazblue fever on my 360, but there were plenty of interesting DS games. One which caught my eye was Super Robot Taisen Original Generations for the DS (or something to that tune anyways).