The London MCM Comic Con has just closed the doors on the first of its biannual events this year, which attracted crowds from far & wide to experience the sights & sounds of the show.

Each year, London MCM seems to continue to keep growing, especially in terms of the number of people that show up for each day, prepared to queue for hours to get inside. As the show has gotten larger, it seems that its begun to spawn several smaller, more focused areas inside the event that focus on different aspects. In one hall, a large portion of the gaming booths were fairly close together, like Bandai Namco, Koei Tecmo, PQube and more, while another area featured more booths for airing or upcoming TV shows like ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Preacher’. Grouping the similar booths and stalls helps a bit in trying to find parts of the show that might be relevant to your own interests, as aimlessly wandering around can prove time consuming, especially on the busiest days of the event weekend.

 

As always, you can expect to see loads of cosplayers around, dressed as characters from various series including quite a few cosplaying characters from various games as well. Even though it only came out a week earlier, there were quite a few Overwatch cosplayers around MCM this year, along with many cosplayers who went into great detail on their costumes and props. The ‘Paper’s Please’ cosplay was one of our favourites, complete with official-looking forms, and the inspector’s booth set up at the entrance to one of the event halls, ready to cross-examine the credentials of those planning to enter Arstotzka London MCM.

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Around the show floor, several anime publishers, like Anime Limited, MVM, Manga Entertainment had their usual booths for fans to check out the latest series, find out about new licences and also buy some anime releases to take home. Some of these booths have grown into more than just places to buy anime, like Anime Limited’s booth, which had some props and items based on their anime releases, such as a replica of the Dominator weapon from the Psycho-Pass anime on show for anyone to take a look, as well as several life-size standees from Tokyo Ghoul. At one of the areas for Manga Entertainment, they constructed a stage area which held host to several events, and even an anime karaoke session for you to sing your favourite anime classics.

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Back in the gaming areas, we found loads of different booths around, for eager gamers to see and play some recent games and many coming out later in the year. 2K’s Battleborn area marked the centre of the one of the main gaming areas, with dozens of gaming stations set up for people to try their hand at the upcoming “hobby-grade, genre-blended, FPS” along with large screens front and centre and of course, plenty of free promo materials available for passers-by. Not too far away, One of the fearsome Aragami from the God Eater series was also looming over the show floor, but luckly it’s just a giant inflatable set up to promote the new God Eater releases (God Eater Ressurection & God Eater 2: Rage Burst), and for fans to take photos with for a chance to win fabulous prizes! While God Eater was definitely one of the main titles Bandai Namco had at the event, they also brought along a couple of Tekken 7 arcade cabinets, which drew large queues throughout the weekend, as well as One Piece Burning Blood and Warhammer  40K: Eternal Crusade.

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This year’s event saw an even larger representation of smaller, indie games, with several different developers and games housed in the ‘Go Indie Games’ area, featuring games such as the 4-player physics based brawler: Gang Beasts, the dystopian cyberpunk bartending game: VAL-HA11A, and the alternate-history Victorian choose-your-own-adventure game: Fallen London. With so many games in the indie area, there weren’t a lot of space for each one, with most having their games playable on around 2 computers. Hopefully, the indie area will continue to expand in future events to bring on board even more indie developers and also give each of the games more room for more people to try out each game.

Further down the hall, we spotted many other game publisher booths, including NIS America, with Odin Sphere, Psycho-Pass and Grand Kingdom playable, Idea Factory International with and also Rising Star Games, which chose the MCM weekend to have the surprise unveiling of DJ Max Portable Encore which we were lucky to find at the show and playable at their booth! Even in just the gaming area, which is one of several segments of the entire event, there was plenty to see and do for gamers of all types and we can only imagine the gaming aspects of the event will get even better in the next London MCM.

 

More photos from the show: