I'm back. And most importantly, I've got fresh notes from having spent a day at one of the most interesting Electronic Entertainment Expos in recent memory.

By now, you've undoubtedly read all the breaking news and watched all the crazy new videos, so there probably won't be any huge megaton explosions up in here. Regardless, I'd love to walk you through my day, show you the stuff we saw, and give you a tiny slice of E3.

So, after a delicious breakfast at the Farmer's Market washed down with some tasty, wholesome, thirst-quenching Mountain Dew (thanks for the Xbox 360!), we were off.

Note: many pictures and some movies inside. Click ahoy!

Nintendo Wii

After the doors burst open on day one, we, and apparently all of humanity, headed directly to the Nintendo booth, to finally try out the seemingly-revolutionary Wii. Get this: a video game system that uses an advanced motion sensing controller instead of two joysticks and fifteen thousand buttons? One that'll be less powerful, but significantly cheaper that the competition? That theoretically anyone can pick up and play? The idea seems so totally foreign and futuristic that you half expect the Nintendo Food-A-Rac-A-Cycle to be announced next.

First, a booth note: while waiting in line, we discovered that Nintendo had set up freakish plasma screens with cameras and microphones, allowing you to interact with a random assortment of people (employees?) while you wait. The idea was strangely both awesome and awful: you're literally talking to a plasma screen and somehow it feels completely natural, then you realize you're talking to a plasma screen. Charles Martinet, Voice Of Mario, was one of the guests, along with some Nintendo Ladies, which led to very uncomfortable conversations with your classic convention goers.

Anyway, plasma screens survived, we headed into the main area.

The system looked unbelievably nice — after the DS Lite, and now the Wii, I'd genuinely like to know who Nintendo hired to flip the "awesome" switch on their Autodesk?


The sensor bar, seen above, is a required plug-in accessory that's used to figure out where the controller is, exactly, in your living room. It was much more mellow in size than I expected, a welcome surprise.

The first game we tried out was, er, a tech demo. And, well, it was pretty awful . You had to move some dude through a maze, using the tilt of the controller to rotate the dude, and moving the controller to move the dude. The controls were super sensitive, and maybe it was just a learning curve, but my dude kept hitting stuff and flailing and being angry and the octopus and oh god there go all the coins. I left the booth concerned: is this how it's going to be?

Thankfully, enter Wario Ware: Smooth Moves. Why didn't I expect this? The classic many-micro-games format is totally perfect for the Wii. Before each game, you're shown how to hold the controller. Then, you do something crazy for about 3 seconds. Repeat. It was amazingly fun: from doing the hula to totally cold-pushin' some girl on a mushroom planet, I became instantly sold on the system, and the game was successful at communicating a simple point: this controller can do anything. And it really can. We played this a lot and laughed a lot. Sold.

I watched a few more games, generally avoiding the long lines: Super Mario Galaxy, which has surprisingly awesome graphics and, undoubtedly, will be great. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is also probably not even worth mentioning since it's a guaranteed first-day purchase. But, I worry about the addition of Wii-specific control to these games: does a Zelda game designed for a traditional controller now need motion sensitive additions? At best, they seem kind-of tacked on, only adding a constantly spazzing cursor to your game screen. I hope Nintendo will know when to say Wii, and design games from the ground up with the remote in mind.

Finally, I stopped to check out the Virtual Console option, something I've very excited about: Nintendo's first foray into legal emulation. I can't express how weird it is to play Bonk's Adventure on a Nintendo system. But it is awesome as well. Many games were demonstrated:


Notice that the Super Mario 64 screenshot features an nicely upgraded polygon resolution (better!), which in turn leads to very obvious low-resolution textures (worse?). Still, it works. Nintendo also showed a conveniently retro-ready controller, that tackled all of the buttons necessary to play all of our favorite systems. Really, it's all down to the price — in a world awash with ROMs, how much is the right-thing retro game worth? — but it's exciting to see Nintendo even slightly go down this road.

It should come as no surprise to you that I am very excited by the Nintendo Wii. Surprisingly, so seem to be a lot of other people, a new twist for the beleaguered Nintendo fan. My dumb stock even went up! (Full disclosure: I own about six shares of stock in exactly three companies: Apple, Nintendo, and Chipotle Mexican Grill. Never, ever ask me for investment advice.)

Nintendo DS

Yoshi's Island 2. Slather me in honey mustard and call me a smoked ham sandwich: Yoshi's Island 2! I can't express how excited I was to hear this news, and I was even more excited to play it . (Let the gaming-history record show, I finished Yoshi's Island GBA after months of effort, 100% complete, including the megabitch levels, in the doctor's waiting room right before getting a final "all-healed" for to my then-broken kneecap. That was a good day.)

Developed by Artoon (unfortunately and awkwardly famous for the Blinx series but also the nice Pinobee games), it looks like more of the same — which means more of spending time in heaven with all the heavenly trimmings like the awesome harps.

Anyway, the unstoppable train of Nintendo DS titles isn't slowing down anytime soon. The amazing Ouendan music game from Japan — tap circles in rhythm, enjoy the hilarious story and great music! — has been renamed Elite Beat Agents, and features a totally redesigned game, from songs to levels to characters, that is very nicely tailored to the American market. This USA release is a minor gaming miracle, right up there with Katamari.


Also, the team that created Trace Memory (the only game Nicole has ever played from start to finish) announced Hotel Dusk: Room 215, an amazing looking adventure game with an interesting 3D/black-and-white art style. There's also a new Chibi Robo, a sequel to the GameCube game that totally took me by surprise this year and sucked in about 20 hours of my gaming time (while reminding me of the core vibe and happiness of playing a LucasArts graphic adventure). It looks good. And you can even make Chibi dance . Also: Star Fox DS? When does the retro joy stop?

Honestly, this is a powerhouse system, with a seemingly never-ending supply of good games. I hope it keeps going!

Hey, did I ever mention the DS Lite was awesome?

Sony Playstation 3

Finally, it was off to check out the PS3. After a much shorter wait, we headed upstairs to check out the next generation of gaming in the flesh. First, let me say it: six hundred sony dollars. That was the topic of a lot of discussion on the trip: will people buy a $600 gaming system? Do most people even care about Blu-Ray? Will the Xbox 360 seem like a bargain by comparison and sell tons? Is Metal Gear enough to sell a system? (It is for me!) It's going to be a very, very interesting thing to watch — a bold, if potentially-hubris-packed move on Sony's part.

Besides the hot-glued controller on the display, the PS3 is undoubtedly huge — bigger than any gaming system in recent memory, although, to its credit, the power supply is built-in — no more Microsoft Portable Stoves® tucked behind your TV.

Much has been said about the PS3 controller already. For those of you who don't know, it's exactly like the old PS2 controller, except with a new button, wireless, and some WiiLite tilt functionality. I know Sony feels it's a "standard" controller now, but is it really? Does anyone love the Dual Shock, like, want-to-marry style? I was going to say that I hope they do better and push themselves for a more original design this time, I guess that's what got us the dongarang last year...

I spent a fair bit of time looking at Heavy Rain: The Casting, a tech demo from Quantic Dream, creators of Indigo Prophecy. It was clever: set up like a video-game casting session, complete with camcorder status overlay, it was a good demonstration of the kind of raw detail this new machine could pump out. And for the most part, it was indeed impressive, although it suffered from the uncanny valley frequently, a concern for gaming as polygons get fat. Still, it was fascinating to watch, and brought me back to a time when I was still literally amazed by CG in movies, god bless those halcyon days.

Gran Turismo HD looked quite detailed if not revolutionary. Heavenly Sword genuinely felt "next-gen", and of course the trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4, which I tried to only half-watch through my hand because I still haven't finished MGS3.

(As a side note, it was exciting to see SingStar, arguably the best karaoke music game in the world, would be finally coming over here.)

Still, to be honest, I was hoping for more uniqueness from Sony: I'll never forget the E3 that first introduced me to Katamari. I realize I'm probably a niche gamer, but while everything was certainly new at Sony's booth, I'm not sure anything was new.

It's all down to the launch titles!

Sony PSP

I've talked about Loco Roco before. So, I'm going to talk about a single PSP game at E3, the only one that really caught my eye:

WTF. The game.

From D3 Publisher Of America (!), WTF (or "Work Time Fun", making it easily the name of the show) is a collection of mini-game (not micro-game) "jobs" so weird they literally exploded my brain. Literally, as in I had to have surgery immediately afterwards, and it wasn't covered by insurance. WTF is like a strange video-game soup of Mad Magazine, WarioWare, and every issue of GamePro (not including the horrible drawings) mixed together, and it was very entertaining.

I'd best just show you some movies.

Here's one of the crazy games in action . (It obviously involves judicious chopping.)

And here is another clip , demonstrating some truly insane character designs, with the bonus inclusion of "Doom Guy" at the bottom.

WTF was a shining beacon of creativity in the depths of brownguntown. (Here's hoping it's actually fun.)

Microsoft Xbox 360

I'll be honest here: I'm pretty burnt out on Brown Guns, and all their permutations. I'm sure I'll come back to the genre at some point in my gaming time, but for now, I'm all shootered out. The Xbox 360 has many shooters, and many of them look very impressive. Gears Of War, for one, looks fantastic. And I love the boys at Free Radical, so I'm excited about Haze, whatever it may be (we missed the presentation. Great reporting).

Crackdown, best described as Grand Theft Superhero, really caught my attention and could turn out to be a fantastic title — the first supernatural sandbox game. It's on my list.

But what of Rare? A deep, long-dormant part of me was secretly hoping Rare would have some kind of magical new treat to display, but I guess after amazingly shipping two games last year, I should set my clock accordingly. And while Viva Pinata looks like it could be fun, and is super beautiful, it also looks to be skewed at an increidbly young age: one early challenge had you navigating a character through what was basically a diagonal line to another character.

Unfortunately, that's about all I had time to see. I apologize for not having more time to check out the Xbox 360 games, particularly as I'm always on the look out for new Xbox 360 games to buy! If you spotted something cool at E3 for the Xbox 360, drop me a comment...

N-Gage

They totally had a booth. It brought a small tear to my eye. And they seem to want to make N-Gage more of a platform, and less of a system. I genuinely hope it works well for them.

Remind me to tell you the story of sidetalkin.com sometime!

Leftovers: Kentia Hall and More

It basically goes something like this. Enjoy.

One Final Los Angeles Story

So much else happened on the trip — visiting the American Apparel factory, eating so much so much good food, seeing an art show in a building made of shipping containers, visiting my favorite time-warp shop in Little Tokyo, meeting the grumpy crepe man, falling in love with Famima!!, and much more — but for now, one LA story will have to do.

We're sitting at Hollywood + Highland, eating our Beard Papa Cream Puffs, when John Afryl, fellow gamer, suddenly looked very very serious — like he had just been told the approximate date the earth will cease to be. He slapped me on the shoulder and uttered a simple "Cabel!", causing me to look over, realize what he realized, and quickly get up from my seat. Mike, confused, asked what was up, but we couldn't really bear to reply: this was perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime chance, I figured, to not even pretend for a second to be cool, and just make it happen — meet someone who has indirectly had tremendous influence on my life, creatively, inspirationally, and leisurely.

We walked up, I uttered an embarrassed and poor "sumimasen", we sheepishly asked for a photo, and there it was, in the blink of an eye:

Me and Shigeru Miyamoto. Great moment. Yes, I was obviously (freakishly) happy, and yes, I'm a super nerdosaurus. And if you don't know who this guy is, let's just pretend he's an awesome famous action movie star.

(Finally, confidential for Max and Jack: new Super Smash Brothers! New Yoshi's game with just Yoshi! New Madagascar! New Pokemon! I wish you could have been there!)