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When it came to hosting legends of the industry, this year's Tokyo Game Show couldn't really have been much better. Hideo Kojima's stage shows on Sony's booth, full of camp theatrics that strike a little discord with the more sombre tone the series is presented with in the west, saw Metal Gear Solid 5 come into brilliant focus, while elsewhere Yasumi Matsuno stepped out of the wilderness to announce his new project, Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians. Before the show itself, the opportunity to meet Polyphony's Kazunori Yamauchi was a rare treat that made some things about the Gran Turismo series that little bit clearer: the six wardrobe-sized wine chillers in Yamauhci's office, all fully stocked, go some way to explain how famously ponderous the series and studio can be, and why mere months from its release Gran Turismo 6 still looked far from finished (of the four demo pods on display at Polyphony's office three were still playing Gran Turismo 5, while the one playing the newer game suffered from a frame-rate that lurched to uncomfortable places).
But while some legends endure, others are quietly dying away. Treasure, the cult studio behind Radiant Silvergun and Gunstar Heroes, made an overdue appearance after two years of silence with Gaist Crusher, a 3DS action game that takes the toy collection of Skylanders and gives it a Japanese twist. It seems unlikely that Gaist Crusher will ever make it outside of Japan. And even if it does, it'll likely never find much appeal to an audience of Treasure fans who must by now have come to terms with the fact that, with key people such as Hiroshi Iuchi and Tetsuhiko Kikuchi having moved elsewhere, the studio's days as a creator of daring and original games are most likely behind it.
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