Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Day one of E3 2001 is regretfully over, and
my eyes still hurt from all the lights and video
displays (I think I know why California has a
power problem). Upon first impression, the
booths of all the major companies are most
impressive, but after several hours of walking
the floor, you begin to realize how little there is
that is truly innovative or even entertaining on
the new games front. I will explain more later,
but first lets take a look at some of the major
booths.
Nintendo
These guys went all out. The two major
things being promoted in the Nintendo "booth"
(it took up all most half of the floor space in
one of the large halls) were Game Boy
Advance and GameCube. Game Boy Advance
is in all ways a very cool handheld. A 32-bit
full color unit, it is essentially a Super
Nintendo shrunk down to something that
could literally fit in your shirt pocket. All sorts
of games were being demoed on it, from flight
sims to racers to side-scrollers. Also, they
can be linked up in pairs of four for fun
multiplayer. To put some delicious icing on
this already tasty cupcake, they are porting
Doom to the Game Boy Advance...you
heard right. Nintendo has a history of selling
solid gaming systems, and given the long-
running success of the Game Boy product
line, I have a feeling they will have problems
keeping these bad boys on the shelf.
The GameCube is the second offering this
year from Nintendo, but it seems to be less of
a sure shot than the Game Boy Advance will
be. The President of Nintendo said a few
weeks ago that they will determine whether or
not to produce the GameCube depending on
its success at E3, and I can't help but wonder
what he is thinking tonight. The Nintendo
booth was packed all day and my several
attempts to play one of the GameCube
systems was met with frusteration due to the
massive lines waiting to play. Looks like a
success to me in terms of crowd appeal, but
very few games have been produced or even
announced so far, making its success
uncertain in the light of a very strong showing
from Microsoft and Sony. The Nintendo folks
better hope for great success with the new
Game Boy, because it seems to be quite a
risky proposition to count on GameCube
putting food on the table.
Microsoft
Well, Microsoft was here in a very big way,
and I must say their offering is quite
impressive. Several games were being
demoed on the new XBox, including a new
Unreal title called Unreal Championship. Featuring an engine custom-designed for
PC...err, XBox hardware, it really shows off the
strength of its NVidia graphics engine. For
instance, in one particularly foggy room, when
you fire a missile or some other projectile the
fog actually swirls around the object as it cuts
through the air. As for the controls, I was
pleasantly suprised. I used to be of the
mindset that the only thing suitable for FPS
gaming is a keyboard and a mouse, as
conventional console controllers are just too
awkward and limited (i.e. Goldeneye on
N64...nuff said). However, using the
combination of the left hand D-pad and the
right hand analog pad, moving around as well
as free-looking was quite easy. Also, putting
the gun trigger as one of the LR buttons made
a lot of sense as you could keep your two
hands on the direction pads while shooting. I
have to hand it to Microsoft for actually making
a system that has both the hardware and the
control capabilities to play first person
shooters. While there were quite a few other
games showing on the demo XBoxes, none
particularly caught my attention. Microsoft
clearly has a good thing going, but they are
venturing into unmarked territory. Their
success hinges on whether they can produce
hype for their product like Sony does and
whether they can actually sell their product in
Japan.
Sega
Ummm......WTF? Sega had a few
problems today...primarily, their booth wasn't
ready (uhh ohh). Not to mention, they have
NOTHING coming out beyond Dreamcast. It
is really a shame what happened to Sega,
when you think about it. I mean, the Saturn
was an AWESOME system that just didn't do
too well, and it was followed by the Dreamcast
which was also an AWESOME system which
also didn't do too well. This is no doubt the
reason Sega would cite if you ask them why
they are abandoning console manufacturing
completely and moving to game development.
Okay, so not much to say here other than
RIP.
Thats it for today. I didn't take a lot of notes
today as I was more interested in just
immersing myself in the atmosphere.
Tomorrow look forward to an in-depth review
of Sony's offering, as well as looks at
Warcraft III, Return to Castle
Wolfenstein, and Myst III: Exile, the
three big PC games being pushed at E3 this
year (yea, the new Myst is already out, but
whatever). I need to go soak my feet now...too
much walking.   E3 Expo (official website)