My Accurate, Unbiased 2006 E3 Overview

Ah, E3! It is the biggest, bestest, most importantest event in the video gaming industry! The sights, the sounds, the slippery grease saturating the floors from hot and sweaty nerds running back and forth, attempting to grab every available piece of swag, hoping to temporarily fill that void of loneliness in their hearts with free crap… yes, there is nothing quite like E3. This is a big year, too, because Nintendo and Sony have decided to show off the goods for their upcoming systems, the Ps3 and the Wii. Meanwhile, Microsoft has decided to make the enemy of their enemy their friend by showing support for Nintendo’s new system. Bill Gates even dropped by to shake hands with the staff, only to have one of his arms ripped off suddenly by an overly excited Reggie (is there any other kind?).

Nintendo’s chief marketing officer apologized several times for the incident, but Gates merely smiled and told him, "No biggie, Reg. I’ll just buy a new one later." He then threw this precious decaying freebie out to the audience to fight over.



Always the giver!
Willing to wait in line for hours, many spectators were very anxious to see and experience the future of Nintendo. No surprise, the most popular area of the expo was the "Punch the man who came up with the name ‘Wii’" booth, which consisted of a line of angry Nintendo fanboys that wrapped around the outside of the building twice.


Luckily, the man at the booth was able to locate most of his teeth before the end of the 3rd day, and is now in the process of winning the remaining molars off of Ebay.
Many great games were revealed at E3, but I'll only talk about a small portion of them, because I'm lazy, and loading video and images of all them takes forever on my dial-up dependant, six-year-old computer.

Microsoft brought joy to many of its fans when it revealed that Halo 3 was now in development. Of course, there were other great titles to look forward to on the XBox 360, such as Too Human, Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 2007, Blue Dragon, and Rainbow Six Vegas:
From Sony, there wasn’t as much excitement, but I can assure you, it does have some big sequels coming up that will justify the $600 price tag on the PS3, such as Final Fantasy 13 and Tekken 6, but I think the most intriguing title will be Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
The game features a much older Solid Snake who decides to go on one last mission before he is forced to retire. As usual, the storyline features plenty of twists and turns. Players soon find out that Snake is already retired, living out his days in some South Florida geezer community where illusions brought on by a late stage of Alzheimer’s disease leads the incontinent hero to lurk around BINGO halls and golf courses. Under the theme "no place to hide", Snake must find new ways to sneak around crafty metal gears (the health care staff), relying upon his Solid Eye technology, the MK. II communicator, and, as usual, a hand gun (usually, it's a banana, but he may grab a tube of toothpaste, instead).
AARP magazine says, "After watching the video, my diaper filled with excitement and anticipation!" Hey, mine too!
Finally, Nintendo fans screamed for joy with the introduction of Solid Snake as a playable 3rd-party character on Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in addition to other new faces – Pit (Kid Icarus), Wario, and Metaknight (Kirby). Suddenly, the floodgates opened wide with possibilities for this game as Nintendo alluded to the idea of bringing in even more 3rd-party characters into the mix. Who knows? We might finally get to see Sonic the Hedgehog face off against Mario. Actually, I'd like to see the Ice Climbers face off against Bubble Bobble or maybe Crono against Link. Many are anticipating up to 50 playable characters. Last I heard, Nintendo was taking suggestions through their Japanese website for additional characters, items, and stages. I'd want to see Goemon (Mystical Ninja) as a playable character, with his giant fighting robot making an appearance in the background of one of the areas, but I won't get my hopes up with him. However, I am also hoping for Little Mac and King DeDeDe to become characters, the addition of a Tetris-themed battleground with falling blocks as obstacles, and for the Adventure mode to feature a special battle against the floating head and hands of Andross. They aren't likely to happen either, but they have a better shot than Goemon.
Other characters I'd like to use include Robo (Chrono Trigger), Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), Django (Boktai), Sami (Advance Wars), Master Higgins (Adv. Island), Karnov (Karnov), and my personal favorite, Mike Haggar (Final Fight).I can hardly wait to find out more about the game. If nothing else, it had better include the series' greatest playable character, Jigglypuff. Until then, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess are more than enough reasons for me to purchase a Nintendo Wii, even if the certainty of their Wiimote's motion sensor technology is still in question... along with the company's sanity.

Yes, you can use the Gamecube controllers with the Wii system. Hooray for Nintendo!