Board Games Featured at Tokyo Toy Show

June 7, 2018

Tokyo- Board games that have been popular for decades in Japan are a highlight of a major toy exhibition opened in Tokyo on Thursday.

Japanese game makers hope that such games, which allow children, their parents and grandparents to play together, will stimulate a domestic market that is shrinking amid the declining birthrate.

Epoch Co. showed off the latest version of its six-decade-old baseball board game. This "gives three generations of a family an opportunity to have fun while communicating," a company official said.

The latest version of Tomy Co.'s Game of Life allows players to recall past events, such as oil shocks and the bubble economy, that date back to as early as 1968, when the game was first released.

Some 35,000 items are on display at the four-day International Tokyo Toy Show. The Japan Toy Association, which sponsors the show, expects at least 160,000 visitors.

"We hope the show will create many blockbusters," Kantaro Tomiyama, Tomy chairman and chief executive officer and chairman of the association, said in his opening speech. Jiji Press