anywhere else.
That T-shirt you hear referenced in the video? It happens to be the word "Nintendo" written in kanji. It's also black, and ribbed. The bottom flares out, like it's made for people with triangular bodies. The neck is nice and high. Other than that, I don't know. I don't think I'm going to like it. I wish I had gone to the Nokia conference, too -- they gave out more-than-reasonably-nice laptop-backpacks.
Even so, the T-shirt got people jealous. Chris Kohler almost hanged himself in Torrance, California's Hyper Game Action tonight when I told him about the T-shirt -- he'd missed the press conference on account of his being on-board a plane headed to LAX from Kyoto. Well, the bastard's already interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto. Twice. He had not, however, ever set foot in Hyper Game Action until last night. So I still have a one-up on him for something.
Eric-Jon and myself met some guys from GameBunker while on the Nintendo-provided bus back from Hollywood to Downtown. One guy was Scottish, the other guy wasn't. The guy who wasn't Scottish said he wanted to show the guy who was Scottish what game stores look like in America. We told him about Hyper Game Action. They seemed interested.
However, those guys had no means of transportation outside of buses. They were set up at a hotel outside the convention center, with no means to get around. Telling them about Hyper Game Action is, well, like letting me and Eric-Jon into the LA Convention Center the day before E3 opens.
What we did was the equivalent of window-shopping in a closed shopping mall. Even if you don't plan to go inside a store, you can't. We were staring in the windows of every hall, remarking on things to put into this article. Using Prima's Official E3 Strategy Guide (of which I now have seven, and might just take them all to eBay when this whole disaster is over), we plotted our route for tomorrow: past the ZD booth, grab the free magazines, head to the Nintendo booth, and get drunk on some F-Zero and/or Sonic Heroes. It was then that we saw something disturbing. It was the Tecmo Box. It was labeled "Tecmo 5."
Standing outside the Tecmo booth was a tall crate, like one you'd use to contain a live beast or a sarcophagus containing a mummy that's totally going to pop out and eat you.
We concluded it was Team Ninja's Tomonobu Itagaki.
We headed down toward the lobby, hungry. A Dr. Pepper was three dollars, a pizza eight. We decided to walk down Figueroa and eat at my personal Del Taco of choice. Before leaving, Eric-Jon, myself, and Tetsuya Mizuguchi stood between a tank and a fighting vehicle of some sort, and watched US Military soldier-people slide down ropes hanging from a hovering helicopter into a parking lot across the street. Smiling at us while we headed down Figueroa, painted on the side of a great large building, was the camouflaged face of a soldier advertising Gotham's Conflict: Desert Storm 2: Back to Baghdad.
What was with the militarism of E3? We wondered. What with Metal Gear Solid 3 being so anticipated and so, to put it in the blunt words of insert credit's Brandon Sheffield "Rambo: War is Fun"-ish -- and the advertisements surrounding the pillars in the atrium being all for Tom-Clancy-related games, are we to deduce that someone is making some kind of statement somewhere?
Out of refusal to turn this into something provably intelligent, I will make note of this: Eric-Jon and I concluded that it is indeed some devoted person's job to decide how much money a rectangular box-shaped advertisement-surrounding-a-round-pillar should cost. We discussed this on the way down Figueroa. At some point, I started hating somewhat viciously yet tactfully on Splinter Cell.
The night would soar to new heights, and conclude with a trip to Hyper Game Action and a sad encounter with Megatokyo's Dom in the porn section of a Torrance Japanese video store. Before that, however, I took Eric-Jon to his first Del Taco. It was hotter inside the Del Taco than it was out in warm spring Los Angeles. I wasn't wearing shorts. A previous engagement of some kind had required me to borrow both khakis and a belt from Vincent Diamante. I was sweating, much like the Japanese tourists in the "EXHIBITS ONLY" badges. They fly from halfway around the world to sweat, and only because they love games. I sweat for sweat's sake. And I'm honestly trying to be proud of myself, like my little brother when he walks over to his Tae Kwon Do lessons with his black belt on display.
Eric-Jon and I were still wearing our badges when we ordered. A kid who was just learning the ways of the register stepped aside when our orders were taken, our drinks were dispensed, and we were waiting and sipping.
"So, uh, how's E3?"
"It's going alright."
"You guys play any games yet?"
"Nah."
"Get any free stuff yet?"
I showed him the T-shirt.
"Kick-ass."
"Yep."
The kid had mistaken me for a guy with some kind of l33t skills. So sad. He has as much right to be at E3 as I do, I was thinking, as I ate burritos with Eric-Jon and talked about videogame theoretical-like-stuff the likes of which you can read plenty of on this fine site.
After all, this kid can operate a cash register. Or, well, at least he's learning. I have trouble with the smart quotes on Microsoft Word, sometimes. Asking me to do HTML is like shooting yourself in the foot with a staple gun. And here was this kid, genuinely intrigued by E3, and not allowed in. Why not? He could probably write up some good impressions as a member of the media.
So it was that window-shopping in the empty store that is day-negative-one of E3 had left me thinking I'm not really a gamer anymore. I'm just a guy who talks about what he loves when he's not around what he loves, and even when he is. It might not be a very efficient practice.
I shouldn't think these things, sometimes. Because, in so doing, I forget all about how excited I get when I see a copy of a random Goemon PlayStation game at Torrance's GameLand, of how many times I'm going to play F-Zero tomorrow.
Sometimes, cool things on the horizon strike me like that. I get excited, and I realize I really do love videogames. Nintendo's press conference was my first look at the "business" side of videogames, and it kind of hurt me. When a slide didn't turn correctly, and when a "150" was suddenly changed to a more correct "170," the look on George Harrison's face was the look on the face of a man whose proverbial guitar was gently weeping angry tears. The first time, he hid the anger well. In the second instance, he tried too hard to hide it. There was a glint of frustration in his eye, the glint of a man who's about to go backstage and pound his fist into his palm as he recites numbers and figures to himself, whipping and twirling his Action Item Lists and Primary Proactive Proactivities.
Day-negative-one of E3 was quietly sad, even if I got to see video footage of Super Mario Bros. 3 on GameBoy Advance.
The low point: Nintendo's bag. Hell, man. Spend an extra five dollars here and there. Eric-Jon didn't even get a CD in his media kit!
The high point: A tie between watching old Nintendo PR videos of Star Fox 64 at Vincent Diamante's place and hearing Megatokyo's Dom scream when we showed him the introduction to the Saturn puzzle/shooter/vs classic Twinkle Star Sprites. It's a wonder he hadn't seen it already. In the animated introduction of said game, a young girl, in transforming into a superhero, grows . . . a large pair of breasts.
Like Vince when he takes his first sip of a new Del Taco Raspberry Cheesecake Shake, like the guy at that Del Taco when we tell him we saw a three-second clip of the sequel to Metroid Prime, when that animated girl grows boobs, all the members of Team Insert Credit just have to send you all out a hearty
"ROCK!"
