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Trigger Happy
243
huge inflatables of Spyro the Dragon and Crash
Bandicoot, in Japan it offers a live stage show, with a
rock band fronted by performers in the cuddly, furry
costumes of Um Jammer Lammy and Parappa the
Rapper. These two forms of entertainment marketing
have quite different functions: Sony’s American
inflatables point backward inevitably, merely
illustratively, toward the games from which they are
taken; the prancing figures in Japan, however, imply
that game characters have a continuing inner life
elsewhere.
In fact, game characters are everywhere. For the
Tokyo Game Show also features a contest for visitors:
come dressed as your favorite videogame idol. Young
Japanese men and women wander round as black-clad
soldiers (many bandanna’d Solid Snakes this year after
the huge success of Metal Gear Solid), scary-masked
orcs from dungeon RPGs, or blond S&M princesses
with fishnet stockings and leather harnesses. These
game fans pay costume obeisance to their virtual heroes
and heroines with a lack of self-consciousness that is
remarkable to Western eyes. Game characters are also
available everywhere in the form of Action Man–style
figurines, or on collectors’ cards. They feature in
posters, on T-shirts; in Japan, a videogame