The first TGS was in 1996.

TGS was held twice a year until 2002.

176,000 visitors over 3 days made TGS 2005 the largest ever.

This year the show's focus was split between the current generation of game systems, with what seemed to be an emphasis on the recently released portables the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS, and the next generation of game systems, which includes the Microsoft Xbox 360, the Sony PlayStation 3, and the Nintendo Revolution. Although there were a fair number of games for the Sony PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo GameCube, the Microsoft Xbox made almost no appearance whatsoever.

The conference kicked off with a Microsoft press event and then two keynote addresses, one from Robbie Bach, Microsoft's chief Xbox officer, and the other from Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo. Typically Nintendo doesn't appear at the Tokyo Game Show with first-party information at all, because it's always held its own event: SpaceWorld. However, with no SpaceWorld scheduled this year, Nintendo took the opportunity to show up at TGS to unveil the Revolution's controller. The first day of the show was open to game industry and press only, but the following two days were made available to the public for the low price of 1,200 yen a day (around $10).

The following pages recap some of the highlights of the Tokyo Game Show 2005, from the biggest news and trailers, to the editors' favorite demos and trailers on the show floor. Read on to discover two different perspectives on the Japanese version of Final Fantasy: Advent Children, a photo gallery guaranteed to have lots of cosplayers in it, what makes Japanese cell phones so much cooler than ours, and more.

If you missed anything from this year's Tokyo Game Show, be sure to check out GameSpot's TGS page for complete coverage. And stay tuned a year from now when we bring you Tokyo Game Show 2006.