Ugh. I am killing myself this week to avoid paying anything for food. I got up at 5:45 just so I could make the media breakfast, and catch the media briefing, all to avoid paying through the nose for a pancake somewhere else. The breakfast was decent, but the media briefing was a joke. First they showed us a video, designed to show us that everyone plays videogames, which was just moronic, although to it’s credit, it did provoke a few genuine laughs from the audience, even the more cynical members of the press, such as myself. After that, we had a long address from the President of the ISDA, which seemed to run a little long, although it was very high quality. It also addressed the prominence of videogames in today’s society, and though I knew most of it, some was brand new to me. I had no idea that videogame consoles were in 70% of American homes.

We then had the keynote address, with high-ranking members from Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony around to debate several points. Peter Main performed the best of any of them, though he did (in my opinion) bomb several questions, answering questions about third parties by reiterating the strength of Nintendo’s first and second parties, and once again blowing off network gaming. Sony’s representative seemed to be less attentive, and spoke less eloquently. I actually felt bad for Microsoft; they were ripped into pretty hard by the other two. Nintendo clearly won the crowd over, though. While Microsoft had a few good comments that elicited some applause, and Sony made a few Microsoft jokes that garnered quite a few laughs, Peter Main made a few statements that got the entire crowd cheering (Although I saw multiple Xbox editors laughing out loud at his network comments).

We had to skip out on the last few minutes of the keynote, as I supposedly had an interview with Britney Spears’ management, who were unveiling her first “game”. I arrived with Cory, and had to sit through ten minutes worth of a minute long audio clip featuring ten seconds from each of her hits. I could’ve stood it, but they had the volume so loud my ears were bleeding by the end of it. We were prepared for Britney to show up, and were ready to con our way into an interview with her, but she never did. Also, the “game” was nothing more than an interactive DVD. Why was it here? Well, DVD’s are playable on PS2, right? Easily the most disappointing thing I saw yet.

We hit the show floor at this point, and the hours flew by. We headed for our next interview (with Mark Turmell), but we were stood up, so we wasted about two hours out of the entire day waiting for interviews that never happened, and spent the whole day lugging around a laptop for that interview. On the bright side, we got to play some games. We played Smuggler’s Run 2 for the PS2, and I was a little impressed with it. I didn’t get long enough to judge completely, but it definitely seems a worthy update to that under appreciated PS2 game. I played NHL Hitz 2001, Midway’s newest “extreme” sport game, and found it to be decent, although the version we played was on PS2.

On the Nintendo side, I got to play F-Zero: Maximum Velocity and Mario Kart Advance, and I was more than pleased with both. MK Advance screams of the SNES influence rather than the N64 version, which I definitely approve of, except in the area of power sliding, where I desperately wanted the N64’s mini-turbos. Mario Kart’s multiplayer mode was great in Vs. Mode, although I only got one shot at it in Battle Mode, but that seemed solid, as well. The only problems were minor control issues. In Mario Kart, the L button is used for items, which seems a bit awkward, but they threw in a horn-honking feature with the Select button. Hooray! In F-Zero, the power sliding with the shoulder buttons is a little less than perfect, because I’ve gotten used to not needing index fingers in a handheld game.

I played Wave Race: Blue Storm for GameCube, and was blown away by just how good the water effects really were. The only three tracks available were remakes from the N64 version, but I have no complaints, they were good to begin with, and made it easier for me to see the incredible water effects. Even in four player split screen, the game looks as good as anything else available.

Well, almost anything. Rogue Leader is most definitely the Game of the Show. We spent 20 minutes videotaping it, and have every stage in the demo on video, from beginning to end. We did everything we could to make the framerate stutter, but it never dropped below 60. I played SSB Melee more than any other single game, and probably more than anything else combined. I wanted to love it more than anything else, but after day one, I have to say that I’m disappointed with the game. I’m going to spend more time with it tomorrow, but at least at this point, the game has a lot of tweaking in the gameplay. Its stages are incredible, but other than that, it was a downer.

Even though I’m writing this at 11 at night, and have been at the hotel for the last five hours, the details of what I’ve done since returning escape me. A lot of it was writing, re-writing, and deleting my SSB Melee Preview, but there’s been some other things I did. We had a little tournament among the staff members in Mario Tennis, with Mike as the victor. We stopped before we could continue the tournament into Perfect Dark, SSB, and Worms, but I will have my revenge soon.

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