Lost Planet

So many pictures you’ll feel like you where there!

Our launch event for Lost Planet last night was a huge success, with over 1,000 people making their way to downtown San Francisco to help us celebrate. The line was huge, and even though we had food inside the venue, we also got pizza for people waiting in line outside before the doors officially opened at 8PM.

See the full gallery HERE.

Click for details of what happened and to see all the pictures.

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Capcom’s own Chris Kramer was the big man in charge that put together the event. It was incredible, and I found it was even bigger and better than I had imagined once I walked through the doors.

Click to read about the rest of the event.

We had food, a DJ spinning tunes, ice sculptures, a rock-climbing area, and an area where attendees could have a Lost Planet t-shirt made.

We also had this awesome Vital Suit made out of Legos, created by Nathan Sawaya.

One of the biggest draws was the fact that the development team, including Executive Producer Keiji Inafune, Producer Jun Takeuchi, and Director Kenji Oguro, accompanied by 8 other members of the development team.

For the “main event” of the event, Seth was able to put on a massive multiplayer tournament. Approximately 180 people competed in multiplayer sessions, vying for top spots in matches in order to move on the finals where they would face the developers themselves in an intense Team Elimination match. Bystanders watched the action on the giant projection screens we had set up.

Winners that moved on and went up head-to-head with the developers were:

These 8 talented guys went up against 8 members of the Lost Planet in an extremely heated Team Elimimnation match on Crimson River. At first it looked like the Japan team was going to win, and by a landslide at that. After all, they’ve been working on and playing the game for 2-3 years now.

But then the US team started working together better and started coming back. It was a tight race for first place in the Team Elimination match and both teams were hovering around 10,000-11,000 points for good 5-6 minutes. But in the last minute or so, the US team started to pull ahead, and gained a lead that was just too much for the Japan team to come back from.

The US team expressed their awe of the teamwork and skill exhibited by the Japan team, and althoug the Japan team was surprised to have lost, they had fun and congratulated the winners.

Next up was a surprise event that we sprung on the Japan team. The Capcom USA marketing team took on the same Japan team for some Team Elimination matches. I sat out the first match, which didn’t go too well for the Capcom US team. We were also missing one of our star players, due to his having had a bit too much fun during the course of the evening. I traded spots with someone for the second match, and although it went better than the first match, that simply means we held out longer without hitting 0. I gave them a hard time about relying on the homing laser so much, but in good fun of course.

After that, the Japan team were great sports and offered to continue playing team matches so more attendees could get a chance to test their skills against them. Needless to say, the Japan dev team’s only loss was the very first match against tournament winners, and they won the rest of the matches with ease.

After that wrapped up, the developers hung out and were signing posters and other things. We gently ushered everyone out at 12 midnight, and packed up everything and headed home (or to the hotel, where I’m blogging from).

All in all, the event was a huge success. This is the best event Capcom has ever put on, and the Japanese team thought so too. This event wouldn’t have been what it was without the efforts of everyone at the Capcom US office, nor without the support of the team in Japan. Of course, it helps that Lost Planet is such a good game.

So thanks, Capcom, for making this event such a success. And thanks to all the people who came to the event to hang out, and to all the people who have supported the game.

—Brian

Official Lost Planet Giveaway!