Random sightings from E3 2002.

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The Acclaim stage

We go to E3 for the games. No, really. Just the games.

Game Park

Nice view

Link's watching

Tolkiemingway losing it

The Xbox booth

Yu Suzuki talking to some fans

E3 2002: The Overview

E3 fever was obviously taking up the entire area near the LA Convention Center even though it took place in the center of the Lakers/Sacramento rivalry. All up and down Figueroa Ave. there were Sony Playstation ads proclaiming “Live in Your World…Play in Ours”. The signs were a bit of a disappointment showing only the triangle, circle, square and cross from the PS2 controller and nothing more inspiring. But the atmosphere was apparent all around – early showgoers wore their badges even two days before the doors opened and large ads on the convention building itself told of three great days of gaming to be found within.

Luckily my hotel was only three blocks from the Convention Center and two blocks from Denny’s (my early morning breakfast refuge once I realized that the complimentary breakfast in my Hotel was the cause of the nuclear warfare in my stomach). Once the doors opened on May 22, swarms of gamers descended upon the Center like ants on a fallen popsicle. Once inside I stepped through the late registration line, proudly displaying my media badge, and through the golden doors of gamedom. Into the glitz and glamour, the bleeps and clamor, the rich sweet honey nectar of game heaven that is E3. To my surprise the booths were relatively empty that early in the morning and I was able to run around and sample any game I wanted.

As soon as you enter, Midway, EA and Konami hit you in the face. Everyone wears a name tag, large screens display games you’ve salivated over in magazines for the past two years and seemingly hundreds of games you’ve dreamt of for so long are not only here but playable! To make matters worse, the kiosks displaying games and the booths of each separate developer/publisher are so close together it’s difficult to concentrate on any one game for too long. This is where discipline comes into the

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picture – if not, you can run around the showroom floor totally overwhelmed and miss it all in a whirlwind. At about 12PM I had to regroup my wits and relax with one of the Convention Centers deftly priced $8 cheeseburgers before heading out again.

The audience, as expected, is composed of game-geeks, long haired game warriors from the days of Dungeons and Dragons sprouting gray hairs, industry big wigs, developers, plenty of

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media personnel and a nice big handful of impostors who aren’t supposed to be there at all. Celebrities as always were spotted here and there including Robin Williams and Gary Coleman but others were seen in booths signing autographs for games they were associated with like Mr. T (Rocky), Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead) and some wrestlers that I couldn’t identify in a line up.

The showroom floor looks much like what you’d expect. Game slogans and characters stare at you from every direction, scantily clad women who have nothing to do with the actual games smile at you and the sounds of gaming mix all around like a gigantic arcade. Even with the thousands of people at the show, somehow it never became difficult to get your hands on a joystick of almost any game. If you waited a few minutes you got to test every game around.

I was surprised, though, by….well, a lack of surprises. There didn’t seem to be many jaw-dropping revelations like in previous years. One of my most E3: 2002 defining moments was at the Nintendo press conference before the show when Zelda was first shown on the big screen. Zelda was impressively solid like the games of the past, so sweetly “Nintendo” and so interesting.

It was also nice to see Fear Effect: Inferno running in the Eidos booth, something I didn’t expect. I was hoping so dreadfully that a new Fear Effect would be announced soon and my prayers were answered.

I said “What the Hell!?” for the first time when skimming through the meager Kentia Hall section of the Center and I noticed an enticing little hand held game system called Game Park by a Korean developer of the same name. It was so small and sleek with a bigger and clearer screen than the GBA and a small selection of promising titles exhibiting it’s capacity for great games including a PC-quality version of Wolfenstein 3D. After flipping through the titles I realized that Game Park, with the right marketing and exposure, could one day be a contenda’ in the market on which Nintendo has such a stranglehold.

I was pleasantly surprised by Medal of Honor: Frontline’s opening scene on the Beach in Normandy, the quiet booths running Nintendo’s first party titles in the dark, Dark Cloud 2’s cel shaded goodness, Splinter Cell for Xbox, Hitman 2, Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc and XIII by Ubi Soft plus many other titles. Prisoner of War from Codemasters was running pretty well and looked good minus gritty graphics and Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, in the disappointing absence of Soul Calibur 2, looked really promising.

Star Ocean 3 and Golden Sun 2 injected some extra RPG hope into the show along with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic which I got a private viewing of in the LucasArts booth. The game finally places Star Wars in the format it was meant for – RPG/Action. The visuals ask for more but the concept, control and environment seem to be in place.

As for disappointments, the lack of Soul Calibur and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City demos took the cake alongside crappy showings by Ronin Entertainment with Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon and Malice from Argonauts. Both were entirely unimpressive with glitchy control, flaccid graphics and unpolished physics in their current build but hopefully will dig themselves to higher ground before release. The throng of security around the closed Doom 3 booth and the long line outside of the Nintendo booth (waiting to play multi-player GBA games to win prizes) that never ever seemed to shorten were equally frustrating.

Appropriately enough for a show centered around the media, media people are made to feel at least slightly more accommodated by the frowns that turn upside down when the booth attendee sees your tag. They would invite you into their booth, throw drinks and cookies at you and beg you to sit through 10 minutes of dry mouthed game tours and beta demos before giving you a press kit. The best part of being media at E3 is feeling free to walk almost anywhere – almost. Certain companies like Rockstar, Eidos and Sega had closed booths. Fortunately for me, I got into two of those. Eidos’ happy hour party and Sega’s after the show party.

The Sega bash was a combination party/press conference. Peter Moore appeared and announced the heads of each AM2 department who subsequently came down from the perch above the booth and signed cards that were passed out to everyone. Drinks circulated while Yu Suzuki signed autographs and chatted with his fans. I even spoke for a while with Stephen Kent!…you know, the genius who cared enough to put together “The Ultimate History of Video Games”. I kicked myself for not bringing my copy along for an autograph.

Eidos’ gathering was not much more than a bunch of journalists cooling their heels over glasses of brew and rums with coke but it lead me to the Ziff Davis party at the Figueroa Hotel after the show. Did I have a good time? Let’s just say that two weeks later, I’m still trying to get my jacket sent to me from their lost and found.

Anyway, the show obviously went pretty well. For individual developers, as I mentioned, I liked what Ubi Soft was cooking up this year. With games like Rayman 3, Splinter Cell and XIII they seem to be finding their niche with the public. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to scoff at on the showroom floor but there was obviously a lot of filler.

For sheer quality of content and booth design I’d have to say Gamecube tore the roof of that mutha’ with Xbox in a close second place. Sony, unfortunately, did nothing to cause a revolution but they had the largest booth and a tremendous presence. It seems that by the end of this year, Gamecube should be coming of age. If Nintendo keeps their first party games on schedule we might all be scratching our heads in amazement and the bottoms of our wallets to get the most out of our little purple cubes by Christmas. Zelda, Metroid, Star Fox, Zelda GBA, Super Mario Sunshine – yeah, they’re all updates of old classics but we love ‘em! Now if Nintendo would devote the same energy to making completely new titles they could rule the world. I’m a born again Nintendo fan!

E3 is such a special place. For a game fan, it’s the ultimate experience. It’s like the orgasmic feeling of getting a new console for Christmas spread out over three days. It’s tiring and overwhelming but it’s the concentrated incarnation of our hobby. As long as it stays as competitive as it is, we all win in the end.

- Doug Flowe

(June 13, 2002)


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