Day 1

[ChrisC3po]

Hey Guys,

Well today was the official start of E3. For the first time since I started going to the show they decided to let the media (thankfully I’m included in that) in two hours early. Not surprisingly everyone made a mad dash to Nintendo’s Booth to check out the Wii. My God was that insane. Even with just the media on the show floor (a surprisingly small percent of the overall crowd), the Nintendo booth was overran. I saw the lines and decided to walk the show floor. It was just incredible to see how empty the rest of the place was. We saw the Playstation 3, which really was kind of disappointing, great graphics, but really nothing else. I couldn’t find a single game that used the new motion sensors.

Eventually I caved in and went back to Nintendo. For some reason the powers that be decided enclose all of the Wiis inside of the main Nintendo Booth. So there Nintendo had a long line running around the length of the booth to get into the Wii area. Once you get in, you can stay in as long as you want. So the people in the morning got in, but by the time they let everyone else into the showfloor there was probably a 3 or 4 hour wait to get in. Anyways, getting to the games.

I got to play most of the Wii games at the show including the biggest names, Metroid, Mario and Zelda. I’ve got to saw the controller takes some getting use to. But in the end I think it will be quite a leap forward if game companies send the time to figure out an innovative way of using it.

The first got to play the Wii sports titles (tennis, golf, shooting, and baseball). All of these games felt like technical demos and not real games, but they really showed off some of the great features of the Wii’s controller. Being a golfer I took to the golf game right away, I finally got to just do a full swing in a golf game to hit the ball (hole in one first try I should add). I can’t wait for a full golf game to come out for this system. One thing I’m sure of though, Nintendo sports games are going to be quite a work out for people!

Moving on to the games people care about though. Metroid was really incredible, although I must saw on occasion the control didn’t work very well. I suspect this was more due to the poor settings than the system itself though. I got to play through the entire level including an incredible boss battle. I’ve got to say, the game was incredible. I have a feeling this control scheme could someday surpass the keyboard and mouse for first person shooters.

Mario was, well kind of odd. You navigate from “planet” to “planet”. I would call them asteroids or something along those lines though. You control Mario with the Nunchuk and control a little star like thing with your remote control. You can interact with the environment with the remote control. In the end it felt like Mario, but I would have to say this game is definitely a bit more complicated with the need to keep track of both Mario and your pointing device.

Finally Zelda played very well on the Wii. I didn’t have any problem picking up the control scheme, probably because it still had some gamecube like features. Overall though I really liked the scheme.

[Aristotle]

Oh... even the "booth babes" made the news this week.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060511/tc_nm/expo_sex_dc

[Kurgan]

Hang in there Chris, don't let those Nintendo overlords enslave you with their hypnotic zombie powers! You've gotta survive long enough to check out those Star Wars games!

 

*beams more power to you for the mission*

[Jeff]

You lucky bastard Chris

[Lynk Former]

Man, you really are a lucky bastard *cries* I wish I got to be one of the first to get to know the Nintendo Wii.

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

Awesome! Didn't know an LF heavy was repping the forum at E3:D

 

Did you playtest any 360 games? *cough* GEARS OF WAR!!!!!! *cough* sorry, choked on a wii bit o' somethin;)