E3 Photos

I know, I know... I still haven't posted the pics from my two weeks in Costa Rica, but here are the shots from last week's E3 expo nonetheless. I didn't take many, as each morning I had a choice between taking the camera or my PSP. I only took the camera on the first day, as Sony had downloadable demos available for the PSP. But they unfortunately uninstalled if you turned the machine off, so I had to download Loco Roco each day.

Anyway, without further ado...

The $599 Playstation 3. Am I the only one who thinks it looks
like the Sega Master System?

Sony's area, as viewed from the upper walkway that wrapped around the inside of their booth. Upstairs had "living room" setups with incredible displays.

Gran Turismo HD looked fantastic in 1920x1080p, but it's
still the same old bumper-car, slam-fest with no damage model.

This crowd at Sony's booth was much smaller by week's end.
$599? WTF?

The outside of Nintendo's booth. Sorry, but I have no Wii pics as I brought my PSP to play while waiting on the line to get in.

The Videogame Pianist, Martin Leung, performing at BradyGames' booth
three times a day. He always attracted big crowds.

Martin playing the Super Mario Bros theme while blindfolded.
Always a crowd favorite.

The Madden jinx will be broken this year -- the Seahawks
arer heading back to the Super Bowl baby!

There were a couple of for-show-only cars made up to look
like the characters from Pixar's upcoming "Cars" movie.

The view from my seat at Wednesday night's Dodger game.
Lots of home runs that night... exciting game.

The main entrance to Dodger Stadium. Anybody else thinking of
John Cusack and the end of "Better Off Dead"? I want my two dollars!!!

From left to right: Me, Michael, Brian, Christopher, and, umm,
two of Brian's WOW Guild-Mates. Crap, I forgot their names.
Ken and Stacey perhaps?

Not Pictured: South Hall where most of the game publishers and Microsoft's booth were. Also not pictured were booth babes who were pleasantly absent this year. I also didn't get any shots of me posing with the legendary Bill Harris of DubiousQuality fame who was nice enough to stop by during my Thursday afternoon booth duty session and say hi. Nor did I get a picture of me with Gamecritics.com's DTrain who also stopped by to say hi between his shifts at the GameLoft booth. E3 has improved a lot since my last trip there in 2003. The price of an "Exhibits Only" badge went up significantly, which helped keep the crowds down; they put limits on the volume (punishable by $5000 fines), and they also threatened to fine exhibitors who paraded scantily clad booth babes around. Unfortunately, swag was also significantly reduced and the only noteworth freebie I managed to get was a "Full Auto 2" hat I won for schooling a bunch of other gamers in a multiplayer match.