E3 ’09 Live Running Coverage: Day 1!
Hello, Geekscapists! I am at E3 with our good friend Nar Williams checking out all of the action live for you!
Yesterday had some huge announcements of its own (MONKEY ISLAND IS BACK, BABY!) and today promises to bring you some additional surprises. Nar and I will be blogging all day so be sure to check out his site as well for his thoughts on what’s going on (Nar’s show on the Science Channel “The Science of the Movies” has its second episode tonight at 9pm Eastern!): www.narwilliams.com
– It’s 11:30, the floor is about to open, and we just stepped out of the Nintendo press conference.
Some of the ridiculous things included Women’s Murder Club DS: Games of Passion… a playable James Patterson book. The people around me could definitely here me faking a snoring sound. Not for me. At all. Also, Nintendo was pretty proud of themselves for expanding the market share to include non-traditional gamers. Some of the photos they had in their presentation really emphasized this point. You know, like:
“Guy Playing Videogame at Work During the Recession”
“A Police Officer with a Dog Playing the DS while On The Job”
Oh, and Iwata took some time out of his busy scheduling of finding ways to kill Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker to show us this:
Whatever the $#% this is…
Highlights for me definitely included 2 new Wii Mario games:
New Super Mario Bros Wii is a 2D platformer similar to what we got a few years ago on the DS except now you can play live with (or against!) 3 of your friends as all 4 players work their way across a level. It looks like basic 2D Mario Bros stuff except they’ve added a new powerup… The Propellar Suit. It’s a little helmet with a beanie propellor on the top. Waggle the Wiimote and you’ll spin up in the air (similar to hitting a spring block in the DS version).
At the end of the presentation, we got a big trailer for the other big Mario release: Mario Galaxy 2. They used my favorite music track from the first game (the sky garden level!) and it’s basically a crazier version of the game we all loved. Lots of spinning planets, some new designs, bigger boss battles and what we’ve been waiting for: YOSHI! That’s right. You get to ride different Yoshi’s around and cling to them as they star-shoot from planet to planet. MG1 was easily my favorite game of 07 so I’m beyond stoked for this game to be in front of me. It looks gorgeous. Who will beat it first? Me or Ralph Apel?
The other huge trailer that Nintendo closed with was Metroid: The Other M. The cut scenes in this clip did not look Wii level. They looked like something better suited for the PS3 or 360. It started in an asteroid belt and you see some anime characters on a space ship. There’s a hot blonde character… who then zips up her BLUE SUIT. “Oh shit!” I yelled out as I realized I was watching Samus Aran gear up. This one comes out in 2010 and looks to reveal a lot more about Samus’ origins. The game play we saw looks like the Wii Metroid game but there was also some third person pieces we saw that reminded me of the 2D Metroid mixed with some Ratchet and Clank action. We’ll see what this ends up playing like but it was REALLY smooth regardless. This looks to be the best looking Wii game so far once it comes out.
Some talk about Zelda: Spirit Tracks (but not much):
A new Golden Sun game after 6 years (this time for the DS):
Reggie came out and showed us some Wii Moition Plus, which I wasn’t that excited for… until they started playing Wii Sports Resort. I’ll admit, I loved opening my Wii and playing Wii Sports. Yes, it got old, but it was a good packaged game and this new version looks like it’s going to be a hell of a lot bigger and more fun. I know Laura and I are going to have some serious competitions with this one seeing as it includes archery, a 3-point shooting contest (Reggie won with the money ball!) and wave racing. Make fun as much as you want, but I’m sold. And you know what? I’ll take some Wii Fit Plus while you’re at it! I’m not so psyched for the new Yoga and Strength exercises… but the new Balance Games! Nar is writing them up over on his site right now but I saw glimpses of something that looked like an American Gladiators-style test and I almost lost my shit. It looked like the end of American Gladiators with your Mii hopping over obstacles as things flew at his head and pushed him around. Hopefully now we can compete against other people’s times and scores online instead of just having Laura make fun of me for destroying my time in EVERYTHING.
Okay. The floor is opening and we just ate our free press lunch! I’ll be back with pictures this time!
Free Lunch
1:45 PM – Okay, I walked the floor and got a chance to play the New Super Mario Bros. Wii with Nar. As expected, it IS a lot like the 2 player aspect to New Super Mario Bros. DS. It gets competitive quickly and on top of the Propellar Suit there is also a Penguin Suit for the ice levels. You KNOW our boy Atomusk is going to wear one of those and take some pics for the forums!
We did some Ghostbusting outside:
Nar saved me…
More blogging for you…
I got to also play some Rabbids Go Home, which is kind of like Rabbids insanity meeting Katamari but not as successful in my opinion. I got a bit bored with it pretty quickly.
Nar got to play some Arkham Asylum so check his site for that and I saw the new trailer for The Last Guardian (formerly Trico… but in my household “The Game Where Rufus Has Feathers”) on a huge screen and Nar and I spied HUGE LINES for hands on time with Zelda: Spirit Tracks and God of War 3 (which looks as sick as you’d expect it to). I also got a picture with my good buddy Ratchet:
“Who needs Booth Babes!?!”
This one’s for Graham… our Guardian of the Universe. Maybe you’ll get the joke…
On the way to post this for you I saw two amazing things. One, I was accosted by pirates and handed some pins. One of them looks like this:
There are 7 of these babies. I have 4… I WILL complete my collection!
And I also saw this… one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life on earth. I now present to you… without further ado…
MAN ON A SKATEBOARD WITH A SHOTGUN!!!!
3:40pm – I’m back after checking out the South Hall. Microsoft, Sega and Konami are set up there and I’ll definitely check it out tomorrow. MTV Games and Beatles Rock Band have a huge set up dressed as the front of Abbey Road and Sega have a huge Alien VS Predator/Conduit rig that we’re starting tomorrow with. They’re our first appointment for Wednesday for be looking for that GeekscapePod soon. I oversaw someone playing Conduit for a bit and it looked like fun. I’m excited to play some more FPS games on my Wii only because I’m actually pointing at something and shooting at it. I told Aktrez this when I saw her on the floor and she looked at me like I was nuts. End the Nintendo hate, now!
Speak of hate, check this out… a familiar Geekscapist was wondering the press room and I angled him for a photo:
It’s Klitzy! No… really! He’s here! And soon he’ll be gone… again!
I need to spend a little more time tomorrow playing some games rather than just “taking it all in”. E3 is pretty expansive, but at least I only have ONE MORE Monkey Island pin to collect… I ran into these two Rabbids and I should have just turned around. I don’t think they were happy that I didn’t like their game so much…
“You didn’t like our game…? ATTTTAAAAAACK!!!”
And I spied someone playing some Mini Ninjas Adventure. I have zero interest in this game, but you know what? Their booth was pretty cool… if only because I imagined this giant Samurai warrior animating and stomping everyone…
“Let’s go clubbing!!!”
I have about 10 minutes before I have to run outside and shoot a segment for the June episode of Heads Up! but I’ll be back tonight to add some more thoughts and tomorrow the appointments with publishers begin and I’ll get some REAL hands on time, baby!
