Can Scent Change Game Reaction Speed!? Calmoa Seriously Investigates 'Smell'

At Tokyo Game Show, numerous solutions for creating a 'comfortable gaming environment' are on display. The theme of the Calmoa booth was, surprisingly, 'odor countermeasures' in gaming spaces.

While an unusual approach for a game event venue, experiencing it firsthand proved quite interesting. The booth featured a fragrant room and a nearly odorless room, allowing visitors to test if there was a difference in reaction speed when playing games in each environment.

In other words, it was an experiment to personally verify, 'Does game performance change with the presence or absence of scent?' While we received a very serious presentation from the staff about the mechanism, most people probably don't pay attention to 'room odor' when they usually play games. That's precisely why I was curious if there would actually be a numerical difference.

Of course, there seem to be individual differences, such as scent preferences and daily condition, making it difficult to definitively state the effect based solely on this. Nevertheless, the idea of considering the gaming environment not just from PCs, monitors, and devices, but from 'the air itself' was quite novel.

So, would a good-smelling room really make you react faster to enemies? Despite my skepticism, I couldn't help but want to try it. It was an exhibit with such a strange allure.

ASCII is continuously publishing articles from its on-site reporting team as 'Tokyo Game Show 2026 Reports'. Furthermore, in addition to live breaking reports from the venue, we will also broadcast special live coverage where our editorial team members enthusiastically introduce noteworthy gaming gadgets!

We will keep sharing stories about the latest technologies and interesting products found at the venue. Let's fully enjoy this year's Tokyo Game Show 2026 together with ASCII!

Scenes from Tokyo Game Show 2026 venue