Blather and Nonsense

Moving right along

First and foremost, I would like to say that there was indeed a trailer for SSX 3, as evidenced by this blurry photograph of EA's ginormous LED video wall:

I also took a blurry video of the entire trailer that was unfortunately further marred by the presence of one Bugs Bunny, who, strangely, was loitering about the booth greeting fans. I say strangely because Looney Toons isn't even a EA franchise. Perhaps one day I will make said video available to you, gentle reader, but today is not that day.

Now I must apologize for what will seem an excercise in vanity. For although my protestations may fall upon disbelieving ears, my purpose in posting the next photograph is merely so I might offer a depiction, however oblique, of a crucial aspect of GT4: the wheel.

"The wheel" in this case is in fact newly designed by Logitech expressly for GT4, and will ship concurrently with the game. It is a dream: 900 degrees lock-to-lock, stronger and more accurate force feedback, ball bearings, optical encoding, a pleasing rubberized wheel surface, bump and paddle shifters, adjustable spike strip for the pedals, full duplication of the PS2 Dual Shock buttons for easy menu navigation, and a low, low price (it's supposed to be a secret even if I did overhear it). And yes, that is me, as plainly evidenced by the torn jeans.

Speaking of me and things I like, Sammy was showing a most delightful arcade game. The gameplay may have been derivative (so much so that I feel safe in leaving it to your fertile imagination, dear reader), but the premise is so excellent as to warrant at least a mention, if not an entire photograph:

Which makes for an extremely iffy segue to this photograph involving another sea-dwelling creature of sorts:

Boy, did Photoshop's "Auto Levels" have a difficult time with that image. But seriously, folks, for me the best part of the show floor was Nintendo's booth, and not just because it featured live electronic music produced by gentlemen wearing silly jumpsuits and occasionally even Glasstron headsets and Power Gloves:

I'm in danger of outing myself as a crotchety old guy here, but I remember when video games were fun, dammit, and fortunately so does Nintendo. The good news on the Game Boy Advance front is that the best video game of all time, Super Mario Brothers 3, is coming to the GBA in the guise of Super Mario Advance 4. The only way I could be any more happier about this news is if it had already happened (perhaps if SMA1 had been SMB3 instead of the despicable SMB2). The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords is getting promoted to the GameCube by way of an ingenious GBA link: when a player falls off the main screen, the game continues to the screen of that player's GBA. And I mustn't forget the Mario Kart: Double Dash for the GameCube:

If you squint you may notice that each kart carries not one but two drivers: apparently there is some sort of tag team system whereby there are, well, two drivers. Or something; what's important is that it's Mario Kart.

Sick and tired of this office

First off, let me just say that I am sick of war games. Apparently I'm the only one, because there were war games all over the place at E3. Not just FPS war games, but strategic war games, online war games, crappy Xbox war games, you name it. While I endorse gaming as cathartic release, I don't really care for war gaming. Hence future dispatches will pretty much sidestep the genre altogether, but I would like to fire a parting shot across the bow of the war gaming battleship (talk about kicking a dead horse of a metaphor!) by saying that there were too damn many war games! At E3.

And speaking of crappy Xbox games, there were some real clunkers present. Come to think of it, there were only clunkers to be found in the Xbox area. Take the multiplayer Conker game: to paraphrase Strong Bad, I couldn't play it for more than 3 seconds without thinking that gnawing my own leg off would be a more better way to spend my time. Okay, the Halo 2 demo was impressive, but the most noticeable difference between it an the original Halo was that Halo 2 has a real script this time. Oh yeah, and it seems to be a war game, only set on Mars.

Prologue

I'm back from E3. At the moment I'm going through my photos and movies so that over the next few days I can begin posting some pictures and perhaps even a movie or two (nothing fancy, I promise) of what I considered to be the highlights of the show. Hopefully I will be able to accompany these postings with witticisms and/or trivia, but you know how these things are.

Until then, I think I'm in love:

Radio silence

I'll be in LA for E3 until Friday, so don't expect anything more than you've come to expect (which is admittedly nothing, judging from the past month, but whatever).

And, say, if you've stumbled across this site and have been visiting the fabulous folks over at typographi.ca because of a certain post about Coolvetica, drop me a line, okay? I'm just curious where all y'all are coming from.