If you missed Day One, you'll find it right here!

Day 2
After running around the West Hall for a day we decide that on Day Two we were going to have a little bit more of a schedule. We heard rumors of a Square Enix show that not only requires tickets, but also has a sneak peak of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. So our first stop is to wait in the line so we can get tickets. One hour later we score tickets (buttons actually) to see the 10:30 show.

We only had about an hour to kill, so we just hung around Square Enix and its neighboring booths.

Sora, from Kingdom Hearts, apparently hides melons in his pants.

Gets customs ever time!

10:30am rolls around and we "Enter the Red" and prepare for the wonders of Square Enix and Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children...

Enter the Purple

... and see neither. Basically, we they just showed extended movies of what was out on the expo floor. And the Advent Children stuff?? Less footage than what we've seen on the Internet. Bah Humbug. No more stepping into any more colors!

Next up on the Day Two 'sched' is the South Hall, home of booths like Sony and Nintendo. On the way out of West Hall I see that the Punisher is still giving that criminal trouble. Man, that Punisher, he's crazy!

Crime doesn't pay folks.

As a bonus, on the way to the South Hall there are a few rooms on the Concourse that we hit up. Concourse is a fancy way to say "hallway". One of the rooms is Sega.

Holy crap! It's Sega's big news! It's Matrix Online!! What?! I don't believe it. You're lying, it's not really Matrix Online. Wait, you're not kidding? Stop pulling my leg. Really, what's the big news? You can tell me, I'm cool.

I'm still in disbelief

I somehow missed Outrun 2 when I went through here, so for me (sadly) the coolest thing I saw in Sega's room was a display of Sonic toys and shirts.

Okay - I just told a lie. The coolest thing I saw at the Sega booth was the mob of G4 people interviewing a ESPN Sports Rep. Q: How many people does it take to interview this guy?

A: Two more. Really - they came in after I took this picture.

This being the tenth E3, they had a lot of displays showcasing classic gaming. Activision sure has a colorful past. Just look at that shirt!

South Hall, here we are! I spent a lot of time in the Sony area. God of War and Monster Hunter are two games that came out of nowhere that I will be watching in the months to come. I also tried out a variety of new Eye Toy games include Sega Superstars.

Painkiller had a some interesting (read: damn ugly) statues at their booth. One wonders why they didn't have someone dressed up like these guys. They couldn't look any worse.

Okay, so maybe having a guy in a bad costume can get worse. Much, much worse. I have no idea what this guy represents, well, besides a reminder to stay in school.

Lucasarts was also setup in the South Hall. And even though this years line up didn't impress me at all, you still gotta love the Stormtroppers!

These aren't the games you want.

The rest of Day Two passed like Day One... by playing a lot of games. By the end of the day we decided that we would get food on the way home. We began by looking for a place I saw last year: Mo Better Meatty Meat Burgers on Pico Blvd!

(Picture taken during E3 2003)

Sadly, we got lost instead.

But, because of our detour we came across a different meat place, not as "meatty" as Mo Better, but still unique. Finally, we can eat!

McSpeedy saves the day!

You can see us wearing some of our free nVidia shirts. I use the word some because we each ended up with 3-4 nVidia shirts each.

The prices seem to be quite old, to match the style of the place, let's hope that the burgers are new.

While we waited, some sort of Beetle Lover's Club started to gather. I've never seen so many tough attitudes come out of such tiny vehicles.

Well, we can have attitude as well. Well, kinda.

Day 3 Well, having an agenda for Day Two did nothing, so Day Three we decided that we'd just run around E3 again. The only planned event for the day was getting into line to see the Nintendo DS. We got there pretty early on Friday so we only had an hour wait. I got to try DK Jungle Beat and some "Pokemon Girls" annoyed the crowd at one section so the time flew by.

15 minutes later we were inside! And guess what - it was a sham! It was just another line. While we stood and waited the guy that is the voice of Mario & Co. explain how great the DS was. After some video that told me that the DS was the best thing EVER, we were let loose into a room to actually play it!

Oooo shiny!

Turns out that the wait was totally worth it. The DS was not only innovative and intuitive, it was a lot of fun. The design was a little clunky, but everyone told us 3 or 4 times that it wasn't actually the final design.

Well, with the only responsibility of Day Three marked off, the day fell to chaos. First up, the America's Army booth.

That us in more nVidia t-shirts

Okay, what the hell. Punisher, dude, kill the guy or don't kill the guy, just make a decision!

He just doesn't have it in him

At the Buena Vista booth we saw what the cool new Sora looks like in the GBA Kingdom Hearts game. Sadly, the melons have made the transition.

At this point, Billy, Deon and I realize that we have forgotten one of the best aspects of E3: Kentia Hall, and we split from the group. Kentia Hall happens to be the E3 version of the bargain rack. It's full of terrible booths, but there is the occasion gaming gem. Or so I hear.

A few companies decided to build controllers into exercise devices. I'm pretty sure I saw these last year too, but they were so terrible that I somehow forgot them. Let this be a permanent mark that these things exist, and yes, they really, really suck.

The Classic Gaming Expo has a museum of systems set up in Kentia Hall, it was easily one of the highlights of the show. Not only did they have some systems I've only read about until now, they also have a copy of each system out to play! Like this guy from Sony Online Entertainment playing... the Atari 2600. Oh my, he's playing E.T.! I hope he's not doing research for SOE's next game.

Why ET!?

Fatal1ty, the "world's most successful professional gamer", has teamed up with ABIT Technologies to release a line of PC hardware. Ugh. ABIT ran an E3-long event where players could challenge Fatal1ty to a game; winner received prizes upwards of $1000.

I read that you could challenge him to "any" game in the E3 newspaper they distributed at the show. But when I attempted to challenge him to a riveting game of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' they denied me. Man, I bet I could have won the "grand" prize.

Once we had finished with Kentia Hall, we headed back up to the West Hall for some last gaming. You should recall that all weekend we had been wearing nVidia shirts, and this isn't because we like getting free shirts. We also like getting free video cards, which is what can happen if you are wearing one of the nVidia shirts. While hanging out in the West Hall, nVidia noticed Billy.

But there's a catch! In order for Billy to win the card, they ask him to take an nVidia bag, hold it above his head, and run down the West Hall aisle screaming as loud as he could "I LOVE NVIDIA". Well, without hesitation, he ran off like he was on fire.

During his trip about ten people yelled back, calling him a "dumbass", and one fellow screamed "What?! Where?!?". Upon his return he was not only awarded a new 5900 FX but a copy of the DVD edtion of Unreal Tournament 2004.

And so ends my second trip to the Electronic Entertainment Expo. They have some fast working sign gnomes because when we left they had changed the welcome message:

See you next year? You bet your ass you will!