John's E3 Report #2: No hookers for Mario

It’s E3 news time again with John Gillooly. Fresh stuff for LA, and the entertainment convention to end all entertainment conventions. Not that we’d want to end any sort of convention. Especially if it involves fun.

The E3 buildup continued today with announcements from Nintendo, Nokia and Sony. Unfortunately the Aussie attendance at the Sony launch was non-existent, and the first time most of us journos found out about the very exciting PlayStation Portable, or PSP, was when a question was asked about it during Nintendo's press conference. So we will have more info once E3 proper kicks off tomorrow.

Nintendo's press conference was a strangely honest affair. It's Japanese CEO began with the unprecedented move of explaining the problems with Nintendo's marketing strategies over the past few years and went on to announce the strongest lineup of games yet seen on the Gamecube. He stressed the importance of Nintendo's characters and reinforced that it would stay true to the essence of such, adding the very quotable line 'and Mario will never start shooting hookers', in reference to the awesome impact made by the Grand Theft Auto series, not only for sales of the PS2 but for the impact it has and will continue to make on the console market as a whole.

The rest of the conference focused on the games, with less glitz than Xbox, but with an honesty and openness rarely seen from console makers, stressing the connectivity between the Cube and the Game Boy Advance.

Of all the games, the best example of this connectivity was a new Pacman title. Rather than the stupid spin-offs of the past god knows how many years, this was good ole' Pacman, with a slight 3D look. It's a multiplayer title in which Pacman is played on the screen of a connected Game Boy Advance, while the ghosts are controlled by the GameCube controllers. This eliminates the main barrier of this kind of competitive multiplayer gaming, namely the ability to glance across the screen and see just where your target is on the map. And the coolest thing -- it was demoed by Nintendo gaming guru Shigeru Myamoto, playing against Tooru Iwatani (who works for Namco and created said little game), Nintendo of America CEO George Harrison, and Will Wright, who had just been onstage showing off a new GameCube / Game Boy Advance interconnected version of The Sims.

There are other good games coming, and the showings were fairly brief. I will get more info from the show floor, but not only is Mario Kart coming back, but also new Starfox, Zelda, Pokemon, F-Zero, Rogue Squadron and Wario titles for the 'Cube. Plus, Nintendo also has games targeted at a more mature audience, from familiar titles such as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes and Resident Evil 4 to new names such as N-Space, a new FPS that looks damn sexy.

A short bus ride and a scammed registration had Atomic sneaking in to Nokia's N-Gage launch, a tough follow-on from a press conference showing off the Game Boy Advance.

N-Gage is a funny beast, I still have major worries about the low frame rate of the system, which we were assured was fine, but still looked weird and jerky. The big game announcement was that Activision are releasing the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater for the system, and the demo had all those memories of Tony's first digital skating flooding back.
But the very predictable big name dragged out by Nokia was John Romero, developer of the N-Gage version of Red Faction. It started badly with him appearing on video talking about the game in front of the world's largest pile of Doom paraphernalia and got worse when Nokia introduced him as the father of the first person shooter (I'm sure John Carmack and the rest of id would argue that one).

The big announcement for N-Gage was the launch date and pricing. It will hit globally on October 7th with a cost of US$299, which is an awesome price for a cutting-edge mobile phone, but daunting for a mobile gaming platform. It will come with around 20 game titles by Christmas.

All in all it has been a huge day for mobile gaming, and one that will have long term ramifications. But the hype will subside as E3 opens tomorrow morning, and I trek off in search of the killer titles of the show. My pre-show tip is the new Firaxis-developed title that Atari is due to announce tomorrow, but it is certain that most of the online coverage will centre on the first person shooter explosion.

I'll certainly have more on-the-spot information tomorrow. Stay tuned, same Bat time, same Bat channel.

John Gillooly