On a cold morning last Tuesday a bunch of people dressed up as game characters to set a world record and guess what? SEGA turned up as well as an official partner for the event!

Yes, I braved the elements (and a restless nights “sleep”) with my guests from the NiGHTS fanbase TRiPPY and DiGi Vallentine who I’d had flown down from EDiNBURGH, er, sorry Edinburgh to participate in the event.  As the first ones there we sort of held the fort for the organisers and others gathered around the NiGHTS shaped becon of cosplay.  Amongst the first people around were a Gordon Freeman, a Saria and a Lloyd Irving who was moderately astonished I knew who he was but then I am the big Symphonia fan. Incidentally OXM, he’s the one you don’t recognise on your photos.

TRiPPY was bedecked in her truly stunning NiGHTS outfit, which garnered a lot of attention whilst DiGi was donning the blue suit and tights- much to his dismay - of Sonic.  Actually DiGi was a very good Sonic indeed, showing off the full range of Sonic manerisms after a crash course from myself and ample costumed “speak” doable for a man wearing a large suit, big shoes and having zero visibility.

There were many characters there from across the various gaming divides and many stories to tell, some of the Sonic community turned out too.  Blog poster extreme Diogo appeared as Assassin (minus his Creed), whilst Urtheart turned up as Pokemon Trainer Red complaining he’d put too much dye in for his cap and that it was itching like crazy.

Here we can see a rather tall looking Tails who was very popular with the kids, especially the primary school class who had turned out en masse as Super Mario.  If you caught Newsround on that day you’ll have seen one small girl claiming that Tails was her favourite by far, admitedly she said he was from Sonic Underground but we’ll forgive her that slight mistake.

Unfortunately Tails had a tendency to dance around rather strangly - “NO ONE KNOWS WHO I AM!” yelled Vger at the top of his voice.  Actually the danger money award should go to Vger as the interior of the Tails head was unprotected chicken wire and frankly looked like it was going to do damage to him.

I was of course busy with NiGHTS and Sonic making sure they were okay, but then look who turned up: Richard Jacques himself!

We got into a very animated conversation about various things Sonic related including SST which is out today in case you didn’t know, but in his small entourage there was an Ulala with a tennis racquet!  So we had pretty much half the line up for the game as well as the composer and the game!

By the way, myself and Richard agree that if that bastion of all things Jacques, UK:Resistance, miss the FOURTH RJ item in a row from these pages then they fail spectacularly and should be ashamed of their fan abilities. Ashaaaaaammmed!

Eventually all the press dragged our costumed heroes away whilst myself and Richard talked “shop”. Though after a while I also went back to defend our bags because they had been left lying outside the Tate Modern. To the TWIT who left a rather expensive looking Nikkon camera, iPod and dog shaped speaker unattended on a bench you have me to thank for it not being stolen.

In the end the day was a success, the record was set a load of children got to dress as Super Mario and I had to send “the first couple of Nightopia” on their way. It was a great day and you can find the whole range of photos from the day on the SEGA Europe flickr account at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/segaeurope/