I'm posting from my partner's laptop at the Crowne Plaza hotel near LAX. Unfortunately, I don't have a digital camera along, so I won't be able to upload pics on-the-fly. /wwwthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif
Yesterday, we all arrived safely in Los Angeles via Delta, watched Bruce Almighty, and called it a night. Today, we woke up at a very tiring 7:00 AM (irregular time for us bunch) and went down to register at E3. The floorshow doesn't begin until the day after tomorrow, so everything was still very much unprepared. However, there were some telling signs of things to come. Here's what I noticed:
Venue -
Los Angeles Convention Center. PLENTY of space. I was pretty awestruck by the sheer magnitude of this place. It makes our Salt Palace Center in SLC look like podunkville.
Banners Outside -
ATARI BANNER -
Adorning the front of the LA convention center, this is a very large, red sign flaunting a gigundous Atari logo. Interestingly, its lower half features dozens of street-style graffiti tags. They look fresh-sprayed and similar to what's around town, so I wouldn't be surprised if the company employed some local talent.
TECHTV BANNER -
Somewhat annoying attempt at hip/coolitude. Two newsanchors, a man and a woman, speech bubble the following dialogue:
"This banner is pretty lame." - Man
"I'd give it a 2 out of 5." - Woman
MOUNTAIN DEW SPONSORSHIP BANNER -
"Protecting the village from the dragon is WAY more important than my job. Do the Dew" etc. etc.
SONY BANNERS -
Sony seems to really have this place staked out. Their new adverts are placed not only on the center's exterior, but along the surrounding streets as well. These are pretty interesting: at first glance, they're nothing more than a series of monochromatic, pastel facial shots of people in various states of emotion. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that every 'pixel' is either a Square, X, O, or Triangle. Each montage also puts forth Sony's current shibboleth: "Live in your world. Play in ours."
There were various game banners outside as well, including ones for Mortal Kombat Deception and EverQuest 2, I believe. These were fairly devoid of information.
INSIDE / Lobby -
Pretty standard convention stuff was deployed inside the main doors. Steel-bordered lines led up to "REGISTRATION" and "PRE-REGISTRATION" desks. We got our Super Passes without incident, save for some big confusion about whether we had to preregister for any panels / conferences we want to visit. Turns out they're strictly on a first come, first serve basis, but it took us about 30 minutes of being redirected around the facility to figure this out. Oh, BTW, the nametag neckchains featured Nintendo branding, and our admission cards came with a pamphlet promoting Sammy's Darkwatch booth. Sammy is a popular Japanese company that's yet to really break into the US, and I think they're making a big move this year.
INDOOR ADVERTISEMENTS -
The banners and kiosks were laced with ESA (IDSA's new name) symbols and listings. "The ESA and its members would like to welcome you to E3: (list of ESA members follows)"
N-Gage QD -- this is Nokia's redesigned console, the original taco system in a new shell. Personally, I don't think this will win many more supporters. Nokia showed gamers a lot of disrespect with their first callow cash in attempt.
NEW GAMING NEWS SERVICES --- Odd ad. Something along the lines of "The two most famous gaming news services merge to bring you the best" or something. Naturally, I expected IGN and GameSpy, but it was two different corps I'd never heard of. Gigex Media and some other one.
GAME ADS IN LOBBY: Crash Bandicoot: Twinsanity, Spyro: A Hero's Tail, Dukes of Hazzard, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (features a big breasted babe with CENSORED symbols and the quote "Want to see more? Visit our booth!" Doesn't look very promising, IMHO.), Matrix Online ("You're more powerful than you ever imagined.")
STAIR DECORATIONS
The vertical surfaces of the large stairwells were decorated with several industry advertisements: a big NVIDIA logo, a Chronicles of Riddick Logo, and... another one I can't remember.
SIMS 2 DISPLAY -
Very little hardware or booths were up; only advertisements, really. A large plasma monitor displaying a very amusing Sims 2 ad was one of the only exceptions. It was quite inline with the Sims TV ads, but consisted only of ingame footage. I'm looking forward to seeing it in its entirety.
We were all done with the prereg at about 8:00 AM, so the rest of the day was recreational. Fortunately, we'd prebought tickets to Universal Studios! It was, of course, a blast. I'll sign off with short ratings of some rides.
Subway / Bus to Universal - A - The mass transit system here in LA rocks! Of course, this is a preliminary opinion, but I'm overall very impressed with the efficiency and pricing of the stuff down here. We were able to get all over the place in an easy, relaxed manner.
Back to the Future - B - Very fun and nostalgic. I'm glad they haven't redone it; I really dig the 80s retro-future look of the building and videoscreens, though I wish the additional content stayed more faithful to the series. In-ride displays showed Doc Brown skipping around time and space meeting and conversing with various famous people, which, as any BTTF fan can tell you, is a big temporal nono.
Jurassic Park - B+ - A cool, refreshing river ride. The detail in the set designs brought a tear to my one good eye and the dinosaur puppematronics were quite well done. Needed a few more steep drops, though.
Shrek 4D - B - A tricked-out 3D theatre showing a 30 minute direct sequel to the first Shrek -- you could really call it Shrek 1.5. I'm not a big fan of the series, but I'm very pleased with how faithful to the show this ride was. You could tell from the quality of the screenwriting, animation, and exterior that the creators had a hand in every step of the process.
Screen Effects Live Show - A - Loads of fun! Top notch, wisecracking live performers combined with neat audience participation events.
Studio Tour - A - Awesome! We actually got to see where a part of Bruce Almighty was filmed, which was quite surreal.
We had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe which was quite nice, although the servers were pretty terse and hurried --- as usual.
Anyway, I'll hopefully be back tomorrow with some more relevant info. The floor won't be truly open yet, but I imagine some of the booths will be up for an initial look.
<P ID="signature">The more often you fail, the sweeter the taste of success!</P>