As it was the second day of E3 and the brunt of the Nintendo work was over, the work was less intensive as it had been previously. After Jonny and I headed over following the rest of the group, I spent my morning wandering aimlessly in Nintendo’s booth looking to play things that didn’t have lines. The new Mario & Sonic game plays like a Mario & Sonic game (not functionally sound as a video game but strangely compelling), Bayonetta 2 is just as extreme and fun as the original, New Super Luigi U is a game I could care less about, Wii Party U looks way more competent than I thought it would be , and I stopped by the nearby Sony booth to play Gran Turismo 6 (which looks quite a bit like Gran Turismo 5).

By the time the afternoon came along, Justin and I had an appointment with European eShop developer Joindots to check out a game that prides itself on being controlled entirely by the 3DS gyroscope (you can read our impressions about that here). Because we had free time and my inability to say no, we ended up at that single appointment playing through the entire title and chatting to them about developing on the eShop for an hour. Apparently, getting Miis and online play into your game is not challenging at all, and Nintendo provides tremendous support to eShop developers who need it. Furthermore, we also learned that E3 can also be an extremely valuable time for smaller developers because it allows them to meet with potential business partners.

After this appointment was when I started to feel the “marathon” of E3 everyone warned me about. I had walked several miles, stood much more than sat, and played so many games by this point that I was fatigued and frustrated nearly to the point of tears. Thankfully, staying hydrated and playing a bit of Animal Crossing once again came to my rescue for the next half hour or so.

This took me to about 3:00, where I met with Neal, Jared, and others to have an appointment in Nintendo’s upper area of their booth, where we could play games free from most lines. Here, I played Mario Kart 8 again (which is 7 and Wii essentially combined, as some of you know), Cloudberry Kingdom (an extremely cool game that isn’t for me), Super Mario 3D World, and Disney Infinity (I’m interested if not insanely skeptical).

After this at 4:00, it was time to go to Nintendo’s secondary, private booth upstairs where I had the opportunity to sit in a room where Neal got to interview Hideki Kamiya of The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta fame. The interview took place in a cozy room with rugs and leather couches. Kamiya himself was garbed in an entirely casual outfit but phenomenally fancy boots. The entire set-up was pretty cool for a booth that was set up an a short amount of time, but the room was shaking so constantly that it was hard to feel entirely safe for the 40-or-so minutes the interview took. Following the interview’s conclusion, I got my first opportunity to try the Zelda 3DS game at the stations they had set-up (the aforementioned prize wheel made actually playing a 3DS game an impossibility). I sure like 2D Zelda, and that game plays a lot like a 2D Zelda.

5:00 meant one more hour of the show, and it was spent briefly hanging out with Kim and Aaron in the Nintendo booth (some dude from craft services snuck me an amazing brownie) before Kim and I headed to Sony’s booth to finally play a PS4 game (Warframe, in this case. It’s a bit like Metal Gear Rising but free-to-play and with more of a focus on gunplay). The controller is a huge step up from the Dualshock 3, which you can especially feel in the concave analog sticks and general ergonomics. The last game I played that day was Killzone on PlayStation Vita, which is not anything special except for the fact that it looks markedly close to a lower-end PS3 game.

The day concluded with a fantastic group photo, Andrew and Kim going to the Zelda orchestra, the rest of the group going to eat, most of us hashing out the “Best of E3” awards, and a session of Brawl involving Neal, Justin, and I as I would proceed to call Justin a filthy casual as he consistently pulled first place and put me in last place. That said, I did pull a Hail Mary and won the last match as Donkey Kong (which is, of course, all that matters).