Well, here's how E3 went for me.

Prelude

I left good ol' SARS-infested Toronto on Saturday morning and arrived in L.A. around 9 P.M. Hero and his parents picked me up from the airport and I stayed over at their house for two nights. It was very nice of them, considering I took over one of their beds. I saw Hero's sister again! So cute! We ended up doing nothing on Sunday, just preparing for E3 and watching Hero (the movie, not the man), starring Jet Li.

The briefings

On Monday I left Hero's house around 8 A.M. to make it down to my hotel on North Vermont Ave. I got to the hotel and met Ali and his friends, Antony and David. Bahn was apparently at the cyber cafe doing random stuff. Bahn and I then went down to the LACC for our meeting with IGN. For those who didn't know, I was freelancing for IGN at E3 this year, but more on that later.

After our short meeting with the IGN people on how to use their system, we took a cab to the Microsoft conference and met up with Sleeveboy. It was held in a small theatre, with beautiful girls serving drinks and food. There were even people preparing sushi right at the theatre! The sushi was warm and tasty, not cold and disgusting like most places have it prepared. That was really good stuff. The press briefing itself was great, and in my opinion the best out of all four I went to. Highlight of the night came when we were walking outside after the conference and spotted Yuji Naka and Nagoshi (Super Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX) outside. Bahn got his Sonic Advance cart autographed by Naka. After that we headed back to the hotel to prepare for more press conferences.

The next day everyone woke up extra early to get to the L.A. Convention Center in order to get our badge holders. We left around 7 and got there at 7:30. After picking up our badge holders, we proceeded to walk around for a while. Then we realized we had to book it to the Sony conference. Bahn, Ali, and his friends were all thinking that they could walk there, but I decided to be smart and take a cab with AFX and Sleeveboy. Eventually they wised up and took a cab too, heh. The Sony event was pretty good, if a little boring, but they did give us some nice leather binders. Cedric the Entertainer and Tiger Woods duking it out in Tiger Woods online was too good, though. I still can't believe they actually bothered to render Cedric for the game.

Next up was the Nintendo media briefing at the Grand Ballroom. The entrance of the ballroom was packed with attendees, so you really had to shove people out of the way in order to get anywhere. The Nintendo conference was a big disappointment for me. Nothing exciting was shown at all, which sucked. The Metal Gear: Twin Snakes movie and the little snippet for Metroid Prime 2 were intense, I'd have to say.

After the press conference we hopped on a shuttle bus (actually a double-decker bus) to the Nokia N-Gage conference. Unfortunately for Nokia, there were tons of problems with their presentation, and when they announced that the N-Gage was going to be $300 + $30 - $40 for games, there was complete silence in the room. Not good. We did get a nice bag though!

E3 begins

The rest of the week was all a blur, because I was pulling double duty working on various articles for IGN on top of meeting with other companies to represent TNL. Most of my show highlights actually came from being in the press room for IGN. On one day, the G4 Panda walked in and put a baby doll in its mouth, an inflatable pickle with an empty Chee-tos bag on its head was staring at me for hours, and Jeremy Dunham was fighting Matt Cassamassina on the press room floor while everyone gathered around and someone videotaped it.

Of course, the other highlight was winning that Soul Calibur II tournament and taking home a replica of the Soul Calibur sword that was displayed at the Namco booth. Although I did win the GameCube tournament, I was trying to enter the PS2 one because I checked out the sign-up sheets and I noticed that one of the top players in the nation (Aris) was entered. I wanted to test myself against him, but unfortunately by the time I had gone to sign up for that tournament, it was all full, so I had to enter the GameCube tournament. Not that I'm bitter about it. I had a much easier time with my tournament than Aris did with his, but fighting games are all about competition, and you can't get better competition than one of the top ten players in the U.S.A.

As for the games themselves, my favorite was definitely F-Zero GX. I think I put in a collective two hours on that game alone by the end of the third day, because it was just that damn good. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes was fun, though the playable part was very short. Same with Wallace & Grommit. I also enjoyed Prince of Persia, Star Ocean 3, Drakengard, Seven Samurai 20XX and Rise to Honor. SOCOM 2 was pretty much everything I expected it to be, and Half Life 2 made me wet my pants on several occasions.

Reno tries on footwear

I'm an eternal pessimist, and even though I didn't think my work for IGN was terrific by any stretch of the imagination, Mr. Jeremy Dunham assured me that even though my stuff seemed rough, it was good considering I never had to write that much in that short of a time span. I really feel that this E3 was definitely a learning experience for me. This was the first time I had to really work the show. I realized that the guys at IGN do a ton of work that no one appreciates, and that no one can truly criticize them until he's walked a mile in their shoes. While I left the LACC at 9:00 every night, I know that there were people there until 1 or 2 in the morning working for IGN, and then they had to be back at the press room by 8 the same morning. After this show, my respect for IGN (and every other publication that has to deal with their deadlines) grew immensely.

· · · Reno

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