Los Angeles saw a trio of press conferences today as Sony, Nintendo, and Nokia's N-Gage kicked off E3 with all the hype they could muster for their respective platforms. Here's a personal look at the TNL crew's ride through the events today...

First up was Sony's conference where we almost didn't make it until Bahn used his NYC skillz to flag down a cab from three blocks away. We got there in the nick of time but still managed to snag really good fifth or sixth row seats.

Sony's show was slick and held a couple huge surprises, if it was a little underwhelming software content-wise. Almost every big game title was a sequel, and one of the only original games highlighted, Rise to Honor starring Jet Li, was not immediately impressive enough to be a mind-blower (at least from the demo video shown). Let me be the first to point out that Sony said the next installment of the Grand Theft Auto series will exclusively "debut" on the PS2. Just "debut." Not "You will only be able to play it on PS2" as they trumpeted about Konami's Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Sounds like a limited-time window no PS2 only before it will be ported over to Xbox and GameCube. That said, there's no denying that the next installments of huge franchise sequels like Gran Turismo 4 will carry plenty of sales heat for Sony, if they won't necessarily thrill with their innovation. Sony's overall message this year seemed like a modified version of their stance last year: We're #1, we've got the games, and nobody's going to touch us as market share leader.

The biggest announcements from Sony this year were about hardware, not software. And numero uno was of course the new "baby" in the Playstation family: The Playstation Portable or "PSP" for short. The long-rumored Sony portable finally reared its head, and the shock and excitement in the conference hall was palpable. The new PS2 hardware bundle of the broadband adaptor for $199 along with progressive-scan playback was also an unexpected and impressive move, one sure to spike hardware sales and prevent them from hitting a plateau despite the already-massive installed Sony base in all territories. The intriguing "Eye Toy" peripheral was given an amusing display and ought to be a hit for the kids or anyone into arcade-type motion-sensor games. If only they could work it into their online gaming plan so you could really see who you were playing against. And it could make chatting a lot more interesting. Hmmm... The possibilities are endless!

Cedric the Entertainer & Tiger Woods's comedy routine demo for EA's Tiger Woods 2003 golf game was a riot. I'm still not sure if they were really playing or not, but it was a good fake if they weren't. Tiger was on the jumboscreen trading quips with Cedric on stage, and trading strokes with him on the green in the PS2 game. Cedric narrowly won the course by one stroke in the game, but he absolutely murdered Tiger in the one-liners department, much to the amusement of everyone in attendence. Is it too early to predict a competing "Cedric Golf Tour 2K4" game from Sega?

Now it was on to Nintendo's Grand Ballroom press conference near the the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Awesome venue! Nintendo's conference was fun, though it left me wanting a bit more substance and impact announcements. The early leak of the joint Nintendo/Namco Pac-Man collaboration took some heat out of the announcement and demo play, but it looks like fantastic multiplayer fun. Nintendo's attitude was refreshingly different and more casual, setting them apart from the other conferences. "Link will always be about hope, Donkey Kong will always be an ape, and Mario will never shoot hookers!"

On the other hand, the Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes demo video was a very curious thing. Not sure what to make of that game or exactly where it fits into the MGS saga. Dark almost the point of being completely black, almost entirely CG, and depicting a very strange sequence of Ninja gruesomely dispatching soldiers in a hallway before a cliffhanger showdown with Solid Snake at the end. The high point of that game's presentation was Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Dennis Dyack all shaking hands on stage together. Who would've believed a collaboration between these guys was in the works? But they seemed to genuinely have mutual admiration and respect for one another.

We then rode a double-decker Nokia bus to their press conference after that--A nice touch was being able to play N-Gage units on the way to L.A.'s Park Plaza. The Nokia press conference, well it was, ah... Verrry interesting to say the least. Featuring breakdancers, a female publicist tall enough for the WNBA (but not unattractive, mind you), John Romero looking uncomfortable on stage, lots of missed cues, a few angry requests for teleprompter slides, and a video clip that was introduced but never played. The handheld gaming cellphone's hybrid design and possibilities are interesting, but Nokia's rookie status in the game world was apparent at their presentation. It also may have been a grave mistake to announce the $299 price so early in the conference, because a lot of journalists noticeably dropped interest after that. Above all, the hardware has promise though. It's definitely the most powerful handheld to this date, running at near PSX level graphics. Unfortunately, Nokia is now in a whole new ballgame of handheld gaming competition after the Sony bombshell dropped just hours earlier.

As for N-Gage software highlights: Id Software's John Romero was on hand to introduce Red Faction for the N-Gage, and other high-profile games announced included versions of Tomb Raider, Sonic the Hedgehog, Pandemonium, Monkey Ball, and Puyo Puyo. Tony Hawk Pro Skater was introduced by a surfer-girl model who probably ended up the most popular person on stage. She reappeared later and took off her shirt to reveal... A $299 N-Gage price-point and her bikini top. A mix of bad and good news? I'm sure this girl's photo will soon become infamous on the web. What I want to know is, who got the lucky job of writing "$299" across her stomach?

As for hands-on impressions, I just got done playing Tony Hawk, Sonic, and Pandemonium on N-Gage demo units outside the conference hall. It's a poweful little system; I'd put the graphic quality at about PSOne level. Tony Hawk was surprisingly playable on N-Gage, and looked just about as good as the PSOne original. A couple of N-Gage drawbacks due to its cellphone roots--sometimes it's unclear which buttons have game functions, and it will all of a sudden go into email or phone mode if you press the wrong one. Sonic was cool, maybe a touch more solid graphically than Sonic GBA. But it had a weird letterboxed display area within the tall vertically oriented screen. The tall & skinny N-Gage screen may be a drawback in gamers' minds at a time when other portable systems like the GBA and PSP are going foward with a widescreen oriented display.

That's all for now... Stay tuned to TNL for more in-depth updates as they break (and as we have time!)