This year's E3 was more eagerly anticipated than usual, thanks to two new handheld devices debuting at the show, along with the usual parade of the latest editions in popular franchises. Catching up on all the show coverage can be an exhausting task, however, what with the clicking and the reading and the tempting breakfast grease slabs. So here's a comprehensive list of all you need to know about E3 2004. Or a handful of things I felt like pointing out, which is practically the same thing.

The Press Conferences

Prior to the actual show, the big three companies choose one day each to take the spotlight and do their best dog and pony act for the press. They are both exciting and terrible, introducing never-before-seen products intercut with PowerPoint presentations about units sold versus this time last year.

Proving themselves to be the one stop shop for the mature, adult gaming audience, Microsoft started things off right with a big sissy slapfight. The Xbox conference featured a short parody of the Apprentice, with the real Donald Trump challenging Team Xbox (a group of real Microsoft executives) and Team PS2 (actors pretending to be Sony executives) to create "a compelling online service." The Xbox team quickly hit the streets, surveying gamers to custom tune Xbox Live to fans' desires, working tirelessly to develop a stable online community, saving busloads of orphans trapped on dangerous mountain precipices, and being crucified for fans' sins. Team PS2, confident that they wouldn't have to do any real work and that the system would come together on its own, stayed in their apartment and carved pentagrams into the bellies of kittens while masturbating. In the end, Donald hired Team Xbox, and Team PS2 had to resign to simply having the number one selling console in the world. The video was a fine bit of posturing that would've been made much better if only it had ended with a Warthog driving over Omarosa's head. Then Sam would come in and offer Bill Gates 250 grand to stop buying developers who release one game per millennium.

You fell asleep on the job, you annoyed your teammates, and you were a terrible leader. I'm sorry, Sam, but you're GRABBED BY THE GHOULIES.

By contrast, the Sony show was fairly dull. What could have been an upbeat celebration of their continued success instead featured not one but two boring Asian men in blue button-up shirts reading off teleprompters.

Highlights from Bob Dole Impression Face Off 2004

Sony's first entry into the handheld market, the PSP, was given its first public debut here. It's an amazing little machine, running games that could easily be mistaken for early current generation console games. It also boasts an impressive selection of titles, such as a new Metal Gear, a new Wipeout, and a new.. um.. Frogger. Because when you think next generation, you think of a character that half the audience is too young to remember. The PSP could prove to be serious competition to the Nintendo DS if A) it doesn't sell for $500 and B) it doesn't require a car battery to run more than ten minutes.

Speaking of which, the last conference before E3 was Nintendo's. Like the fat kid on the playground trying to prove he's as hardcore as the popular kids, Nintendo tried to put on the coolest front they could muster. I've always had a soft spot for Nintendo, in there fighting for their old way of life while everyone else runs ahead of them, but being cool has never been their strong suit. Even in the time where they had the capacity to be hip and with it, instead we got this. The best they could do during the conference was bring on the guy with the financial charts and graphs, but do so while playing rap music, presumably so he could tell us how many unizzles sold last quartizzle.

However, there was one thing cool there that night. A powerhouse of a man with a presence so strong he could overshadow even the unveiling of the DS itself.

Ode To Reggie Fils-Aime

olive-complected besuited adonis
master craftsman
weave hype from the air
conjure buzz from the dust
they don't realize kirby is an edgy
proactive paradigm shift
in an emerging market
until you tell them

shoulders back
knit brow
pouty lips
means you're serious
it works for trump

gesture with whole hand
fingers together
proves depth of conviction

what do you sell today?
used '93 supra?
old woman only used it on sundays to go to church
not today
today
n64 in my pocket

If he wasn't head of Nintendo's marketing division, Reggie would be selling timeshares in those seminars where they promise you a free gift if you stay and listen for five hours. The kind of asshole who would be selling snake oil if he hadn't put it all in his hair. He comes on stage and says "We're here to kick ass and take names," and you immediately want to beat the shit out of him. Not even because what he said was really stupid, but for the implied insult that he expects you to believe the words coming out of his mouth. I have to admit, he certainly made the show more memorable. You have a hard time believing what you're seeing, that one of these marketing dicks you always see parodied on TV shows actually exists. It's like they brought out an endangered albino rhinoceros. Then the rhino got up and started talking about thinking outside the box.

Reggie had the task of presenting the majority of the show, including the introduction of the Nintendo DS. This is what everyone was there to see. There were many unanswered questions about the new system prior to the conference, so the audience was hanging on Reggie's every buzzword as he laid out the information. He had them right where he wanted them. It was time to pull out one of the two big surprises Nintendo had in store.

Reggie Fils-Aime's stream of consciousness.
With apologies to Jon

it's game time

"Isn't that exciting?"

hold for applause

good reaction
on track
time to really build it up

that is so fucking brilliant
i'm in the zone

they're mine

hold for apeshit

i've got such a fucking hard on right now

they love me
they want the reg
time to nail this badboy

hold for apeshit

I AM SO FUCKED

 

no
you can do this
you can come back
find your power animal

BUY THE DS
I'M A TIGER
RAWR

Yes, in their most brilliant decision since the plan to burn out gamers' retinas, leaving a new market ready and waiting for the debut of the Braille Boy, Nintendo decided what would really propel their new system into the next generation is state-of-the-art information kiosk technology. In the desperate rush to prove the various features of the DS actually have a legitimate function, they took a control scheme that has worked since Mario was humping flagpoles and thrown it out in favor of an unnecessary, obtrusive complication. There are several uses for the touchpad that an enterprising game developer could take advantage of. The number of tools in Do Not Fuck This Person t-shirts who will buy the system solely to tap away at a menu while pretending to be Data sending the ship into warp drive is immeasurable by modern computers. But controls that require a large chunk of the small screen to be covered by a stylus, or worse, your fat Cheeto-encrusted fingers are not the way to start the system off right.

The other big surprise of the show was the revelation that Shigeru Miyamoto is a closet cosplayer. Worse yet, he shops at Hot Topic.

Oh, and something about a new Gamecube Zelda. Speaking of which, I hear there were some games at the show too.

The Legend of Zelda

Some would say this newest iteration of Zelda has a long history. The first mention of Link on the Cube was actually not much more than a tech demo during the debut of the Gamecube hardware at Spaceworld 2000. In the footage, what looked to be a Link in his late teens fought a (comparatively) realistic, non-pork Ganondorf in a detailed, shadowy castle. This got everyone excited for a darker, more serious, more grown-up Zelda title, with a mature hero with adult problems. A hero who has traded in the bright and cheery world of his youth for ponderous musings on the nature of evil, on the unfairness of the world and how his parents are assholes for giving him a curfew.

From left to right: Zelda, Link, Ganon, Jeff

Imagine, then, the wailing and gnashing of teeth when a redesigned Zelda game appeared the next year, featuring a very young Link in a cel-shaded cartoon world, fighting pratfall majors from Acme Looniversity. Simultaneously sideswiped by the radical new look and feeling cheated out of the version of Zelda they had been promised in the demo the year before, many gamers were outraged. Based solely on the minute or two of footage at the show, many people began to decry, mock, and threaten to boycott what they had cleverly termed "Celda."

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

You can certainly understand their frustrations. To them, their beloved franchise featuring a young elf boy in tight stockings who sprinkles magic powder on things and plays the ocarina and hangs out with fairies and a mincing, effeminate elf named Tingle was starting to look sorta gay! Where was all the depth and pathos of the earlier games?

While there are always certain dickheads who believe a game can't be good if it looks a certain way, it seems that many of the detractors (especially those old enough to have played Zelda on the NES and SNES) just didn't like the idea of playing a cute little kid anymore. They wanted Link to grow up with them. Wind Waker turned out to be a gorgeous game that was fun to play no matter what it looked like, but that early demo still remained in gamers' minds. So, to cap off their conference, Nintendo treated the audience to a preview of their upcoming Zelda title, featuring the Link everyone had been waiting to see for years.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

I give up on trying to follow the Metal Gear Solid universe. I had a reasonable grasp on MGS, but by the time I faced prolonged exposure to Raiden's scrawny, pale ass in MGS2, I was beginning to zone out. Now we have MGS3, which not only attempts to further the strange plot laid out in the last two, but to do so 30 years in the past, with ancestors and relatives and clones and tree frogs and God knows what else. All the while making some deep commentary on.. Shit, I don't know. Hideo Kojima is a crazy motherfucker, so the whole trilogy could wind up being a metaphor for how he likes fried chicken.

On the other hand, maybe I'm being too quick to brush it all off. Maybe there really is something meaningful hidden in there, and you just have to work for it. There are plot summaries on GameFAQs, I could read up and really do my best to unravel the mysteries of the MGS series, and be fully prepared for what MGS3 has in store.

No, I give up.

Donkey Konga & Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

There's only one thing better than a game based around a special bongo drum controller, and that's two games based around a special bongo drum controller. Using Dance Dance Revolution as their evidence that people will buy all sorts of extra crap for rhythm games, Nintendo is releasing Donkey Konga stateside, a game in which you must drum to the beat of 30 different tunes of varying difficulty with bongos. And just to make people feel they're getting more bongo for their buck (hyuck!), they'll be releasing a second game, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, which uses the controller for, of all things, a side-scrolling platformer.

Clearly, Nintendo has once again proven themselves to be on the cutting edge. Some of the menacers out there may see this as just another ploy for Nintendo to ROB the consumer of his or her hard earned dollar, but they're just shortsighted. Nintendo is actually laying the ground work for a whole new method of gaming. These two titles will be the activators of a new genre, one of wide breadth and super scope. No more lifeless parties u force yourself to go to; The bongo controllers will help bring people together, acting as aura interactors to connect people spiritually. Soon every hip, happening single will have a set of DK bongos in their apartments, transforming their dull abodes into power pads. Not to mention the obvious fitness benefits; the more serious competitors will undoubtedly develop a booster grip, and may need to wear power gloves during long sessions to prevent injury. I toy with the idea of pre-ordering one or two sets right now, so to be sure not to be caught unprepared when the revolution comes. Then when Dreamcast fishing controllershit wait

Kingdom Hearts II

Not much more is known about KH2 than was already available before the show, I just wanted to mention it here because Goth Matrix Ninja Asskicker Mickey is one of the most bizarre and amusing concepts I've run across in some time.

I know kung fu? Aw, shucks, fellas.

Grand Theft Auto: Black People

Technically, the new GTA wasn't at E3, but was announced at the same time. Close enough. Having already tapped the more obvious sources for their previous two creative and original smash hits, the guys at Rockstar needed a new criminal element to focus on. As the only big crime movie left to rip off pay homage to was High School Big Shot, the team began to look elsewhere for inspiration. It seems the Colombian drug ring and Japanese Mafia scenes are both under consideration (Take-Two has registered both GTA: Bogota and GTA: Tokyo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office), but the current project is a look at the southern California gang wars of the early 90s for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The game will center around Carl Johnson, who left his ghetto neighborhood after the death of his brother, Brian. Five years later, his mother dies, and he returns for the funeral only to find his family and his former gang in disarray. For starters, it's nice to see the promise of drama in a GTA game beyond "Gee Lance sure is a cock who pops in and out of my life at odd moments perhaps he is not all that he appears to be!" There are also several new additions to the gameplay for San Andreas, including: gang members who you can take with you on missions (who will hopefully not dart out in front of your speeding vehicle like a frightened squirrel like certain people whose names begin with the letter L and end with "ance is a fucking jackass"), the ability to rob homes (the fact that this was not implemented until a game where the main characters were black will undoubtedly make Jesse Jackson's head explode), and the need to eat to maintain stamina. If you eat a bunch of junk and never get any exercise, your character will visibly gain weight, to the point where certain missions will be impossible to complete because you're too much of a fat fuck to run from the cops. None of the sources I've consulted mentioned whether you could get to the top of a big hill and roll to safety.

The release is still a while off yet, so there are certainly still things left to be revealed. Details are scant at the moment, but rumor has it the big plot twist of the game will reveal that Tupac was not actually shot, but rather died after running off a curb too fast.

That's all you'll get out of me. There are numerous games, including several big titles that were at the show that I haven't mentioned here for various reasons. Just so no one will ask "why didn't you mention Bill Laimbeer's Combat Foosball it was obviously game of show":