E3 2000 Day 2: General Impressions

We once again have a look at Sony and Nintendo’s booths from Gaming Age:

Yesterday was a great but absolutely tiring day. Of course, what would day 2 be without some sort of technical problems. Apparently, all network lines to the entire LACC complex, were somehow cut. Whether on purpose or by accident, no one knows. But it stopped everyone there from being able to access anything on the net, or update, for most of the day. Argghh!

Anyway, on to the show. Not many new surprises really. We had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with Yu Suzuki for an interview. Quite a memorable experience. Sega’s hourly stage shows drew in tons of people.. The Space Channel 5, Jet Grind shows and Yu Suzuki demoing Shemue went over extremely well. And boy is everyone eating up Samba and Jet Grind Radio. I expect them both to do real well in the US. Oh, and Bleemcast? What a piece of software. PSX games with full screen anti-aliasing, filtering, at 640×480, make many look like halfway decent PS2 games (minus jaggies).

Sony’s booth, as a whole is still BORING. Even the meeting with Sony reps didn’t spice it up. EA’s booth, however, had some fantastic looking PS2 sports games. I would go on record as saying that, out of all the US developers working on PS2 games, EA must be the best. While many of the less experienced US developer’s games look like high resolution PSX games (some actually look worse), EA’s look like a PS2 SHOULD look. Smooth, clean, and lifelike. Those along with MGS2, are among the best PS2 items at the show.

On second inspection, Nintendo’s booth is quite good, and is drawing crowds. While not displaying a whole lot of quantity, the quality was definitely there. Banjo Tooie, Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Dinosaur Planet, and Zelda:MM. Bad Fur Day is absolutely nuts. The game is extremely adult in nature (very South Park like), and should be a big hit, if it doesn’t anger parents, that is.

We’ll have more impressions throughout the day.