Last week, both the US and Europe had press preview events for Rise of Nightmares! Lods has the lowdown on the London event, and I’ll cover the San Francisco event.

London

An event for Rise of Nightmares took place in ’24 London’, a swanky club in Kingly Street, (centre of London), where we were able to show off Rise of Nightmares to press and community journalist, giving them the chance to literally get their hand on the game.  We had the pleasure of Ito-san, from CS1 in Japan, in attendance who was available for interviews.

To set the mood we hired an electric chair, which was positioned immediately in the entrance, placed spiders with human skulls around the venue, used spider webs to help divide up the booths had eyeball cocktails and blood energy drink refreshments on offer.  The game and the event seemed to go down really well, getting a positive reaction from everyone who attended.

San Francisco

Later that same week, we had our preview event in San Francisco. We were in the basement of Club 6, and it definitely set the mood right. It was dark in there (great for the game, not awesome for photos), but we had fun props in addition to the gaming stations. Like the London event, we also had Ito-san on hand for interviews.

To help us demo the game, we had blood-covered zombie nurses. If you’ve seen our recent trailers, you know that this is inspired by the game itself. As we were there early to help set up the event, I watched these girls be transformed into what you see above. It was a few hours of makeup, but I think you’ll agree that they look amazing.

Everyone got a chance to play a few levels of the game, including a boss fight. It was great to see people getting right into the game, and instinctively understanding how the controls worked. Everyone seemed to have a great time with the game.

When they weren’t playing the game, people were having fun with the props and zombie nurses. I think Jon Carnage from Destructoid was fearing for his life!

Luckily for him, Greg (from the SEGA media lab — he works on our trailers and videos) got the chainsaw and started exacting some pretty epic revenge.

Other SEGA employees came to hang out and support the event as well. This is Mary and me — Mary (on the left) is our Production Manager, and she helps us make the swag, logos, game manuals, and stuff that you see at SEGA events and in our games.

More Rise of Nightmares Info & Goodies!

We’ve got more photos from the San Francisco event on our Flickr. Rise of Nightmares is out on September 6th in North America, and September 9th in Europe. Don’t forget to pre-order at Gamestop or Amazon to receive a special item. If you are at PAX and pre-order at the show, you’ll get a bonus gift! Just come to the reception desk at the SEGA booth and show me your pre-order confirmation to claim your gift.

Tweeting about Rise of Nightmares? Use the hashtag #riseofnightmares !