Tuesday, May 17, 2005
E3 - Perfect Day Zero
E3 doesn't even start until tomorrow, and already I'm exhausted. Between waking up early for Nintendo's press conference, walking up and down this transportless godforsaken city, downing Yoshinoya beef balls, In and Out Burgers and some borderline-shady sushi, and exploring the convention center trying to get a peek at the show floor while picking up our press badge holders, I'm ready for a nap. Or five. We're not even going to the Midway party tonight - we're just that damn tuckered out. I'm not here to bitch though, as it's been one of the coolest gaming-related days of my life, and it's only going to get better as the week goes on.
As I said earlier, we were able to go to the Nintendo press conference this morning (we would have attended Microsoft's last night, but we got in much too late). We waited in a massive, disorganized line/crowd for about half an hour to get our little generic blue carnival ticket, but I suppose they had to at least act like they cared who got in. Once inside, Tom and I spend a good several minutes geeking out over out first gaming-celeb sightings on Morgan Webb, Adam Sessler and the rest of the G4 crew sitting in the reserved press seats. I spotted a couple other faces I'd seen before, but nothing worth freaking out over. Kat Hunter, the Frag Doll whose gaming blog I enjoy, was standing in front of us in line, but she didn't stop talking to her friends the entire time so I couldn't really squeeze in a hello. That, and about halfway through she was yanked out of line and handed a blue ticket by an industry buddy. Weak. Anyhow, we had pretty great standing room for the conference, which was lots of fun. Oh, and I'm kind of all over the place here, but right before it started I spotted and talked to CheapyD, founder and operator of Cheapassgamer, my favorite gaming site. We'd played plenty of Halo games together before, so it was pretty cool to put a name and handshake to a voice, especially to someone who's responsible for most of my current gaming collection. Anyhow, to the show. As you know by know, it was a rather typical Nintendo affair, with a little less surprise than usual. The Gamecube still doesn't really have anything noteworthy coming out for it except for Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which looks as amazing and ever and has you playing as a wolf (which was revealed today). The DS on the other hand will instantly become a must-own system by the end of the year. Electroplankton looks brilliant, Nintendogs looks adorable, the new 2D Mario game is a new 2D Mario game (and it has CO-OP), Castlevania will kick ass, as will Kirby, as will Animal Crossing and Mario Kart online over wi-fi. So, in short, I'll soon be doing the unthinkable and purchasing the ridiculous little system.
The first big surprise of the conference was the Gameboy Micro, an insanely small GBA with an even better screen. It was pretty out of nowhere, and while it's not exactly earth-shattering, if it's priced well (let's say...$50?) everyone in the goddamn Northern hemisphere will buy one. Then there was the unveiling of the Revolution, which was completely unnecessary in my mind. Well, the hardware part anyways. The system isn't so much ugly as the most boring one yet (though crazy tiny), and without any games or more specific info on what the hell you can actually do on the system, it seemed kind of pointless. They did announce that the backwards compatibility would extend beyond Gamecube games though - to downloadable N64, SNES and NES games. Whether that's just Nintendo-published games or all of them makes a huge difference to how earth-shattering that is (I imagine it's the former), but either way it's a very cool idea. In retrospect the surprises aren't quite as big as they seemed at the time, but it was still awesome to see it in person; and seeing the man who created Mario and Zelda within one hundred feet of you is humbling like you wouldn't believe. Oh, and we saw Mark McDonald, Shoe and Demian Linn walking down the street after picking up our press kits, which made me swoon a little (I'm such a gaming journalist geek).
As for what else has been going on since I've been here, it's pretty tough to keep up. Microsoft's press conference seems like it was kind of a dud - who doesn't announce a release date or price for a system coming out in six months? Not showing PDZ was kind of shocking too (don't bring it up with Tom, he's not pleased about it). PS3, on the other hand, has blown me the fuck away so far. I could care less how the console looks (though it does look pretty), and I assume that they wouldn't have turned the controller into a boomerang if it didn't feel sexier than ever (which I trust it does), but man, some of the games that they've shown so far have been mind-blowing. At least graphically, anyhow. I-8, Killing Day and MotorStorm all look spectacular, but the crowd jewel of them all (and who would have seen this coming?) is the Killzone 2 video that they showed. There's argument everywhere right now over whether it's real-time or not, or partially so, but if the next-generation looks anything like this whatsoever, I'll live in a shack in the woods and buy every game that comes out. Seriously, it's one mind-blowing taste of what's to come.
Anyhow, awesome stuff so far, and I can't wait for tomorrow morning. I was only going to update at night, but if I can tear myself away from the show I'll certainly do so from their media computer lounge during it. I should probably get to bed, but do yourself a favor and watch what's been shown thus far. Tell me you don't love this industry.
As I said earlier, we were able to go to the Nintendo press conference this morning (we would have attended Microsoft's last night, but we got in much too late). We waited in a massive, disorganized line/crowd for about half an hour to get our little generic blue carnival ticket, but I suppose they had to at least act like they cared who got in. Once inside, Tom and I spend a good several minutes geeking out over out first gaming-celeb sightings on Morgan Webb, Adam Sessler and the rest of the G4 crew sitting in the reserved press seats. I spotted a couple other faces I'd seen before, but nothing worth freaking out over. Kat Hunter, the Frag Doll whose gaming blog I enjoy, was standing in front of us in line, but she didn't stop talking to her friends the entire time so I couldn't really squeeze in a hello. That, and about halfway through she was yanked out of line and handed a blue ticket by an industry buddy. Weak. Anyhow, we had pretty great standing room for the conference, which was lots of fun. Oh, and I'm kind of all over the place here, but right before it started I spotted and talked to CheapyD, founder and operator of Cheapassgamer, my favorite gaming site. We'd played plenty of Halo games together before, so it was pretty cool to put a name and handshake to a voice, especially to someone who's responsible for most of my current gaming collection. Anyhow, to the show. As you know by know, it was a rather typical Nintendo affair, with a little less surprise than usual. The Gamecube still doesn't really have anything noteworthy coming out for it except for Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which looks as amazing and ever and has you playing as a wolf (which was revealed today). The DS on the other hand will instantly become a must-own system by the end of the year. Electroplankton looks brilliant, Nintendogs looks adorable, the new 2D Mario game is a new 2D Mario game (and it has CO-OP), Castlevania will kick ass, as will Kirby, as will Animal Crossing and Mario Kart online over wi-fi. So, in short, I'll soon be doing the unthinkable and purchasing the ridiculous little system.
The first big surprise of the conference was the Gameboy Micro, an insanely small GBA with an even better screen. It was pretty out of nowhere, and while it's not exactly earth-shattering, if it's priced well (let's say...$50?) everyone in the goddamn Northern hemisphere will buy one. Then there was the unveiling of the Revolution, which was completely unnecessary in my mind. Well, the hardware part anyways. The system isn't so much ugly as the most boring one yet (though crazy tiny), and without any games or more specific info on what the hell you can actually do on the system, it seemed kind of pointless. They did announce that the backwards compatibility would extend beyond Gamecube games though - to downloadable N64, SNES and NES games. Whether that's just Nintendo-published games or all of them makes a huge difference to how earth-shattering that is (I imagine it's the former), but either way it's a very cool idea. In retrospect the surprises aren't quite as big as they seemed at the time, but it was still awesome to see it in person; and seeing the man who created Mario and Zelda within one hundred feet of you is humbling like you wouldn't believe. Oh, and we saw Mark McDonald, Shoe and Demian Linn walking down the street after picking up our press kits, which made me swoon a little (I'm such a gaming journalist geek).
As for what else has been going on since I've been here, it's pretty tough to keep up. Microsoft's press conference seems like it was kind of a dud - who doesn't announce a release date or price for a system coming out in six months? Not showing PDZ was kind of shocking too (don't bring it up with Tom, he's not pleased about it). PS3, on the other hand, has blown me the fuck away so far. I could care less how the console looks (though it does look pretty), and I assume that they wouldn't have turned the controller into a boomerang if it didn't feel sexier than ever (which I trust it does), but man, some of the games that they've shown so far have been mind-blowing. At least graphically, anyhow. I-8, Killing Day and MotorStorm all look spectacular, but the crowd jewel of them all (and who would have seen this coming?) is the Killzone 2 video that they showed. There's argument everywhere right now over whether it's real-time or not, or partially so, but if the next-generation looks anything like this whatsoever, I'll live in a shack in the woods and buy every game that comes out. Seriously, it's one mind-blowing taste of what's to come.
Anyhow, awesome stuff so far, and I can't wait for tomorrow morning. I was only going to update at night, but if I can tear myself away from the show I'll certainly do so from their media computer lounge during it. I should probably get to bed, but do yourself a favor and watch what's been shown thus far. Tell me you don't love this industry.
// posted by Nick @ 9:46 PM 
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