Japan's gaming industry moves to improve accessibility A player uses eye movement to play a game during the Tokyo Game Show held in the city of Chiba in September. The Japanese gaming industry is working to improve video game accessibility by developing equipment and systems that allow people with disabilities affecting their hands to play by using other parts of their body, such as their cheeks, feet and eyes. There were people playing games without using their hands at an area dedicated to accessibility set up for the first time at the Tokyo Game Show in the city of Chiba in September. One of items on display was a special gaming controller system developed mainly by Tokyo-based Technotools for Nintendo's Nintendo Switch game console. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Tokyo Game Show takes place at the Makuhari Messe, a series of cavernous halls in a suburban complex about 45 minutes east of Tokyo city centre, and given its late September slot in the calendar, it is always either horribly hot or pouring with rain. Either way, it's humid as heck, and there are many thousands of people crammed in, creating what can only be described as a suboptimal sweat situation. Nonetheless, I've always had a soft spot for TGS. I attended my first one in 2008, and so the experience of playing games in packed halls while understanding very little about what is happening has become powerfully nostalgic. And I surely wasn't the only person feeling nostalgic in Tokyo last Friday, because the halls were filled with series and characters from 15 years ago.

They came for the 27th Tokyo Game Show, which was back in full ostentatious form this year after a pandemic hiatus and a timorous return in 2022. Most came hoping for the chance to play one of the hundreds of as-yet-unreleased video games on display within the show's 11 hangars. Others hoped to broker deals to have their video game published, or to publish someone else's. To step through the front doors was to enter a scene of roaring overstimulation. A babble of tens of thousands of voices clashed with a competing timpani of video game trailers.

The Tokyo Game Show welcomed back influencers and media as it opened Thursday, but fans were only allowed virtual access to the top games confab. The exhibition showcases Japanese video games and was regularly thronged by more than 250,000 people a year pre-pandemic, but last year it was held entirely online. While many major game shows maintained the virtual format this year, TGS is welcoming media and influencers such as Take, a Japanese YouTuber who was at the event to make content for his 180,000 subscribers. "Seeing the images and getting the latest information is great, but the real essence of video games is playing them, controller in hand," he told AFP. "Even if this year it's only open to influencers, I think it's great that we have a space to test things out." With only a select few able to attend in person, the high mass of Japanese gaming is offering an enriched online experience for fans at home and abroad. Virtual attendees can experience a space in 3D using either a VR headset or just a simple browser.

An incredibly'life-like' android appears to show how the line between woman and machine is starting to disappear. Footage captured at this year's Tokyo Game Show has already amassed three million views on one video-sharing platform alone, but not everyone believes their eyes. A fierce debate has broken out among people who have seen the reputed robot with many believing it must be a person, while others think she is the genuine article. The upcoming game for PS4 allows players to travel to the near-future metropolis of Detroit. The city has been rejuvenated by an exciting technological development: androids.