| E3 2004 Coverage > Retrospective |
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| E3 Retrospective - Page 2 |
The next day began at 6:30am, not only because we had to wake up, but Jason and Neale finally arrived, and we quickly shuffled to Hollywood for the Nintendo Press Conference. If you got last year's DVD, you may remember that Nintendo had the escalator on the way up to media registration blocked off by a lowly and simple rope, which we easily passed and were among the first to be upstairs. This year, however, they had a full fledged 'warning' yellow barrier, and instead we took the elevator up, thinking we were just as clever as before, were greeted with a huge ass line for registration. After what seemed like an eternity, Nintendo finally opened its doors and let us in. Luckily, we were among the first inside and quickly secured ourselves on the beanbag chairs (originally reserved for VIPs, but media took over) near the front of the ballroom, which gave us the best view of the people, and the huge screens.
I'm sure a lot of you already know what happened at the press conference: The almighty Reggie dropped the megaton with the DS and Zelda, Miyamoto made every Zelda fanboy splooge in their pants (including Cory), and the Reggielution was born (interesting side note, during our E3 chats, everyone was joking about it, but those of us who were at E3, and hadn't been checking websites were totally lost as to what the whole Reggielution was all about, until the last day). After the press conference we hung around Hollywood for a bite to eat, but quickly remembered that Mike would be waiting for us at the hotel (Another one of Jason's friends, but flew instead of took the bus). We met up with him and relaxed a little bit before taking a walk to the LACC to pick up our press-badge holders.
On the way back, we stopped at our signature spot in Los Angeles: Chez Denny's. Their prices had been jacked up for E3, something which they must have just started to do as in previous years the food was much, much cheaper. Nevertheless, we continued the tradition and ate there anyways. After lunch we returned to the hotel to watch highlights from the press conference and the Nintendo B-Roll DVD. Another thing I should mention about this day, is before we came back from Hollywood, we participated in a film study / focus group in which we had to watch five clips of different films, projected in standard film, and in the new HD-Digital format that only two theatres have in the world (both in Los Angeles, we were at Grauman's Chinese Theater). After this, we got free DVD's like Braveheart, School of Rock, Rugrats, and many others.
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| THQ's Punisher Booth. |
Carrying on, the rest of the day is somewhat of a blur; we played games, took our first trip to one of the many 99 cent stores and relaxed in preparation for the show.
That night we were supposed to go see Jimmy Kimmel LIVE, but again, opted out because we were tired and didn't want to sit around for hours on end listening to Lionel Ritchie talk about boring music stuff, so instead, more games were played.
Day one began early in the morning, for a few of us anyways. Cory, Aimee, Amanda, and I went to the LACC for the Media Breakfast. The rest of the crew took longer than they should have and almost didn't make it in for it. After sitting through an hour of the 'state of the industry', we went and ate our ham and cheese croissants and quickly made our way down to the line-up waiting to get in to the show. Gone are the days where media get an hour jump on general attendees, I think I'll put in a complaint form.
The show itself was pretty kick ass, the first game I played was Metroid: Echoes (I hate the Prime 2 so out of spite I'm omitting it!), with Jason, Amanda and Cory, we played multiplayer - I kicked everyone's ass, never died once. (Cory's note: Dean is full of it.) We tried out all the modes and they were pretty damned sweet - I could tell Cory was addicted already.
I won't dwell much on the show itself because it's all on our DVD, and it's all over the web so I think the last thing you guys all need to hear about is what games we saw or how we thought they were all our other coverage is about that anyways. I will say however, that Kentia hall was a tad less-ghetto than other years. Mind you it's still the gaming ghetto, but it's as if last summer's drug season was very profitable and they were able to be a bit more self-indulgent this year. I went up against Fatal1ty, you know, the self proclaimed champion of UT2003, and uber nerd - yeah, that Fatal1ty. He was putting on some contest that if you beat him in a match, you got $1000 smackers. I don't think anyone was able to do it, because you know, that'd mean he's not the champion anymore and he'd go home to his mom's basement and kill himself. I lost, big time, it was like 12 kills against, and 0 for; no real biggie, I hadn't played UT2003 before so I did it for fun.
In our travels we ran into a lot of bums, and there was not a single time we left our hotel where we didn't get asked for change, drugs, sex, or alcohol. Not Once! Comes with the territory I suppose.
After the day ended, we all collectively went for dinner at McDonalds. This was very shortly before they removed their super size options from the menu, and I, thinking it'd be the same size as the ones in Canada, super sized for the 69 odd cents it cost to do so.
What some of you might not understand is that the super size in Canada is the same as the medium in the US. This goes for both drinks and fries. I got my stuff, and anyone who's seen "Super Size Me", well, my reaction was identical to Morgan's (the guy in the movie) when he got his first super size. That stuff was big! No wonder Americans are obese. After our entertaining dinner discussion of filming booth babes while doing something 'else' with the other hand, we went back to the hotel and dropped off our swag and relaxed.