05/15/2000
Just got back from E3 the other day... And I can say a whole lot more than 'woow' ...
Sadly, I only made it on the last day, but it was fun all the same. Next year I plan going all three days, but that's not for a while, so I'll talk about this year.
So yeah, Saturday was a day not to be forgotten for me.
We (me an' Jess) get up at 5:30am, I'm tired, it's freezing cold and I don't have a jacket. BUT I'm goin' to E3 -- I'd walk there if need be! So we hop in the van and meet Randy at the mall. After this we head on over to McDonalds for breakfast. We're on our way, only a two hour drive.
Nothing significant happened on the way... So we get there, we're still an hour and a half early. Cool. So Jess show's us around, since this is his second day and knows his way around.
an hour and a half later they finally open the doors, we're in... I'm finally here... I've been waiting forever for this day. I'm at E3. If I remember correctly, the first place we wanted to go to was Sega's booth. But obviously, we got side-tracked. Midway's booth is right there, we stop and check out Ready 2 Rumble 2 for the PlayStation 2. Randy and I have a go at it... We're not too impressed. We head on... Stop at the Microsoft booth and check out the PC version of Metal Gear Solid. It looked fairly good and it his some graphical improvements over the PlayStation version (besides being twice the resolution).
After this, we just wandered around aimlessly. I think we stopped at the Ubi Soft booth for a bit and then wandered around some more.
I can't remember half of what happened, but I remember all the good parts. Namely the Space Channel 5 show and the Metal Gear Solid 2 video (which was shown every hour). But we did the things you'd expect... Play a few games, walk, walk, walk and just to make it interesting, walk a bit more, play a game, get lost, walk, ask for free stuff, play a game, walk... It's fun stuff, really.
Sadly, I only got a single shirt. It's a bleem! shirt, the one I really wanted, anyway. I also picked up a few mag's, some stickers... And that's about it. But that's not the reason I went. Anyone who's anyone goes for the booth babes! Maybe a game or two, also.
The thing that bugs me is I wasn't expecting to go. When Jesse and Roxanne went down to it the previous day, I babysat Liam... So yeah, Roxanne didn't really want to go the next day... And you know the result.
So If I knew I was gonna go, I would have packed a camera, some money and a back-pack.
So did I meet anyone?! Not really.... I met Brandon Justice from IGNDC. He seemed cool. I passed by and said hi to Adam Sessler from ZDTV's Gamespot, though I would have talked to him, but he looked like he was in a hurry.. I know that's not too good of an excuse... And then there was David Dienstbier... The creator of the Turok franchise. ...He was stand right next to me during the Metal Gear Solid 2 video... Jesse tried pointing this out, but there was too much damn noise that I couldn't tell what he was saying! Five minutes! That's how long he was next to me! And I didn't even notice! Doh!
I saw Peter Main (Nintendo) in the... Sega booth, he was talking to some chick and I didn't want to interrupt. Then after a while, I saw Mike Salmon from PC Accelerator (and the now defunct Ultra/GamePlayers -- best mag ever). Jesse had met him the previous day. He said Mike was an ass.
I was mainly looking for IGN people, but the only one I found was Brandon. That's it.
Eventually we met up with Dustin and Ken and walked around even more.
After all is said and done, we leave the expo and start our journey home. Oh, and on our way to the car, we run into -- I bet you didn't guess it -- David Dienstbier! Jess is all "Hey, it's David... David... How DO you pronounce your last name?" David says it...REALLY fast, but it's not how we've been saying it all this time. "Aw, I've been pronouncing it wrong all these years! Now I've gotta go and apologize to EVERYONE who's name I can't say right" Jesse says. Then we're all sitting there and none of us could pronounce it. Still can't. Oh well... And with that, the walk signal changes...
My picks for E3 are pretty obvious...
The bestest thing there was definetly Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. That video is the best thing that I have seen in a long time. It crushes any movie or video game trailer you've seen this far. I watched it countless times and could watch it hundred's more... And the whole thing is done in real-time on the PlayStation 2... Un-fricken-believable!
What comes in second place? bleem! for the Dreamcast. It looks amazing.... And this is coming from a guy who's been playing bleem! on his PC for about a year now. If every compatible game runs as well as Gran Turismo 2 and OmegaBoost... Then damn! Every Dreamcast owner is in for a treat! Next month, when the first four bleem! packs are released, you can expect me to have a bunch of stuff on my site about it.
I won't even bring up all the bleem! bashing from a lot of the moron's over at the bleem! message boards.
And my third pick would have to either go to Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast or Half-Life for the Dreamcast.
I prolly would have chose a Nintendo game, but we didn't hang out at their booth for very long. The main reason was, for me at least, because pretty much all the kiosks were taken. I couldn't touch Perfect Dark, Turok 3, Eternal Darkness, Zelda... I couldn't get my hands on anything over there!
If you ask me who had the best showing -- besides Konami with MGS2 -- I'd have to say Sega. Sony's booth didn't really impress me and I didn't spend enough time at Nintendo's... Which isn't totally fair, but ya know. But yeah.
You know what I'm thinkin' about doing? I'm thinking of adding a 'Moronic act of The Day' to the site. If I had that, today's would have been my convo with Brandon Justice... Man, I really wish I could start that over.
First, we're just walking around the SegaNet area of Sega's booth, and Jess start's talking to this guy playing NFL2K1. I'm just standing there...Trying to figure out if it's Brandon... So I ask "You're Brandon!" - "Yeah" he says - "From IGNDC?!" I say - "Yeah, and you are...?" he replies - "Jonathan Ward" I reply - "From??" He asks... And.. Get ready for my reply folks... 'Cos after I figured out what I said (about half an hour later), I wanted to die. Seriously. I was searching for him the rest of the show to "Start over". Okay... My reply??? "Pinon Hills" .... ... .. . So forgive me, I wasn't totally thinking clearly. He was obviously asking what website I worked for... And I reply with the city I live in! Ahhhg! The agony!!! No wonder he gave me a look of horror (I don't think he actually heard me, it was very hard to hear in there)!!!
But I've somewhat recovered from the truama. I won't forget it, and hopefully (surely) he has. I'm thinkin' about e-mailing him, but I haven't decided if I'm going to or not.
There was no spell-check or grammer correcter in the writing of this document.
-Jonathan 'There's always next year' Ward
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