For those who thought that Sega had come and gone, leaving behind a legacy of titles, think again. Sega is a mammoth company with a long list of titles that are about to release for a plethora of consoles, ranging from PS4 to the now popular and widespread mobile universe. This past weekend’s Sega Fes in Akihabara just confirmed just how much gas Sega has left in their tank, and how determined they are to reassure the world that they mean business. Sega Fes took place over the weekend, when Akihabara is known to be packed full of curious tourists, and passionate otaku, so we made sure to make our way in immediately to get a closer look at everything. This was the first ever Sega Fes that Sega had organized and boy was it a show packed full of excitement and surprises. The event looked at all of Sega’s upcoming releases and gave people a chance to play demos, buy merchandise, and watch live events of their favorite Sega titles. We most certainly feel like there’ll be another Sega Fes next year, but for now this year's event proved to be a spectacular one and we’re going to share all of the goodies as to what went down.

Sega Fes Official Website: http://segafes.sega.jp/

Within 0.5km of Makuhari Messe:

Since this was the first ever Sega Fes that took place here in Japan, it was most definitely a surprise to many, especially us because we never really saw it coming. Sega Fes was more or less just an event that popped up out of the blue and allowed just about any passerby to come in and soak in all of the Sega fanboy/fangirl goodness. The minute you walk out of Akihabara station and make your way towards the event, you’re immediately greeted by a huge SEGA sign that lets you know exactly where you are. It was an official event so all of the famous producers were there as well as Toshihiro Nagoshi, the director and CCO of Sega Japan. The fact that we were able to get in as press and get close to touching Nagoshi was satisfying enough, but since the event is free, it pretty much sealed the deal. Expect there to be a lot of Sega material of course, with merchandise flying off the shelves, and live events that take place at different times throughout the day. There were tournaments for games such as Puyo Puyo Tetris, as well as Code of Joker which is an incredibly popular title here in Japan. Live demos allowed everyone to try out fresh titles like Yakuza 6, and a crazy live concert by Hatsune Miku herself was beyond incredible.

As we stated earlier, this is the first ever Sega Fes that’s taken place in Akihabara so we only managed to bring our passion and business cards so we could get access to photographs. If there’s anything that we suggest you bring if Sega does decide to revamp the event next year is money. Money is most definitely something you should bring not only for Sega Fes itself, but because you’re in Akihabara for crying out loud! Sega gave away really big (and blue of course) swag bags filled with Sega goodies to take home. One of the rules was you had to be wearing something blue in order to get one. So it wasn’t just for anyone to grab one, you either had to know ahead of time, or be lucky enough to wearing blue that day. Another thing that was suggested that you bring along with you are friends, because no experience can be without them. The Sega Fes was packed full of great activities which covered 3 floors and had just about everything for anyone. Unsurprisingly, because this was sort of like Sega’s public press event no photographs were allowed to be taken, especially during any live events. That still didn’t stop people from taking photos because Sonic the Hedgehog himself raced to the scene and everyone stood around waiting to grab a selfie with the blue hero. All we can recommend is just bring your excitement because you’ll walk away from it all with a huge smile.

Sega Fes had plenty of things to do and if you managed to stay the entire day, you were rewarded with a live Hatsune Miku concert which was amazing. Now the event was split up into two days, Saturday and Sunday, with Saturday placing its focus on some of the more popular titles such as Persona 5, Valkyria: Azure Revolution, and the very popular Phantasy Star Online 2. The event began at 11 and ran until around 7PM and had numerous setups scattered all throughout for viewers to take part in. We did a lot of walking back and forth, keeping track of the time schedule so we wouldn’t miss out on any of the fun. Fortunately Sega did a wonderful job of streaming the event also, so even if you did miss a brief section of the event, you could always just relax inside the building and watch the live event from all of the TVs floating around.

Saturday felt more like a demonstration of upcoming titles and streaming the information out to the masses, but Sunday was most certainly the bigger of the two because there seemed to be a lot more happening. One of which was the highly anticipated Sega Auction, where anyone could take part and bid for their favorite Sega item. One of these items was an incredibly cool looking jacket that we would’ve loved to get our hands on, but the bidding was crazy high. The basement floor was where a lot of tournaments and press shows took place, along with a huge wall of Sega history spanning all the way back to the Game Gear and Megadrive. It was most certainly a nostalgic feeling to walk in and see a wall full of all the games we grew up with, such as the classic Virtua Fighter, the popular Initial D, and even Daytona USA. After savoring your childhood memories you could sit down and watch some pretty intense tournament action from Code of Joker, Puyo Puyo, as well as tuning into some great announcements for upcoming titles. We were wowed by the sheer quality Sega put into this event, because from looking at it from the outside, you’d think it was all a paid event because the female staff were dressed up in the usual Sega attire, while everything was organized exceptionally well.