E3 2001 Nintendo Booth
Posted By Rowan on May 21, 2001
I stood there at the entrance with a fake ID and a 100 pounds of confindence, I had just turned 17 the month before and was ready to try new things. And by that I mean break the law (sorta). I took a deep breath, and marched in...
Alright enough with the cheesy crap, Nintendo's GameCube and Gameboy Advance were shown off here along with some awesome new games. The architecture was absolutely stunning to say the least, there were giant GC logos spinning above the kiosks, a huge (perhaps canon sized?) Mario puppet to interact with, and to top it off a massive Nintendo logo taking up most of the room! Talk about a spectacle.
Alright, enough with fanboying over architecture let's talk about the main star, the video games!
So anyway, I made it over to LM and played through most of that demo. I won’t regurgitate my impressions, but it’s very visually striking and definitely off-the-wall. There are some pants-pissing moments for the easily frightened. My overall opinion was that it felt like a next-gen Ghostbusters game. Weird.
My next stop was probably Rogue Leader. The line to play this game was already very long, and it’s not a game that only takes thirty seconds to demo. I ended up standing in line for thirty minutes before getting a controller...my longest wait ever at E3. It really wasn’t worth it either, since I didn’t get to play for very long. I had to pick up where the previous guy left off, plus there was tons of pressure from everyone to hurry up and move along. I could have gone into the surround-sound booth, but people were already stacked in there to overflow proportions.
I wanted to play Eternal Darkness, which was right next to Rogue Leader, but it too was pretty packed. On top of that, I (correctly) guessed that the demo would be basically the same as what I played to death at E3 2000, so I could stand to wait a while. On the other side of RL was Wave Race: Blue Storm, so I wandered over there to check it out. Really cool game...control is upgraded from the N64 version, tracks were mucho improved (even though the E3 tracks were just N64 rehashes), and the water is the single most realistic and gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen in a game.
Eventually I made my rounds and played most of the games, if only for a minute. I even trekked over to the GBA area to play a few things. Diddy Kong Pilot is incredible...I was blown away right from the start. I was less impressed with Mario Kart Advance, mainly because it just feels like a remake or rehash of the previous ones. Where’s the innovation?
My first appointment was at 1:30, with Interactive Imagination. They’re the people behind Magi-Nation. I was 100% ignorant about the company and the game, but I could tell it was a small company due to the fact that we met them in a little cubicle-type office away from the busy main halls. Still, often the small companies make the best appointments... Ed Shih and I were tag-teaming Interactive Imagination, so we met up and stepped into the offices. We introduced ourselves, they introduced themselves, and we basically sat down for a really cool interview with Philip Tavel, one of the company’s founders. I didn’t expect that at all, and it was great. We learned all about Magi-Nation, Philip’s own experience working at Nintendo and then starting his own company, their GBA plans, etc. The meeting was a very pleasant surprise, and I think Ed and I both enjoyed it.
