Waiting for “IT”

Well, I’m ready. I just got off the phone with Billy again, and we are all set. I can’t believe that after 3 years of wanting to go to E3, I will be finally making it in the doors this time. Lucky for me I live in Los Angeles (if you can call that lucky), so the normal horrendous expenses that everyone else will be incurring for this years festivity, I will be dodging as deftly as Neo dodges bullets in the Matrix.

No matter what goes down at E3 this year, it is going to be a hell of a lot of fun, and a lot of work. I will meet a lot of cool people, like Billy and Ty, in person for the first time. A lot of our friends form the Forums will be there, as will a lot of our friends / competitors / brothers-in-arms from other gaming sites. Not to mention a couple of surprise encounters with some of our heroes of the video game industry that we will tell you about later when it happens.

Time is now going to go by quickly for me until Wednesday, our official first day of work for the show. I am scheduled to work at my new job all this weekend and Monday and Tuesday, as we are busy dropping in a bunch of brand new Compaq servers, fully racked and polished for a new office that my company is building. New job, E3, and new friends … I had better clean my pad now, or it’s not going to get done. Tuesday night when I get home from work, I will have to rush into downtown to see Billy and Ty.

This is going to be an amazing experience. My biggest concern is covering the event the best that we can for our visitors of our site. I know people will be hovering over their keyboards like vultures, waiting for the first morsels of Nintendo goodness to hit the Internet. I was the same way last year.

Will there be Dolphin stuff said at E3? Yes, I think there will be … no matter what has been said previously. E3 is about a few things. Mostly, it is about vendors showcasing their wares in front of retailers to prepare them for the next holiday season. That is why current and near-future product is so important, and the main focus of E3. E3 is also about the gaming media, which is us. We want all the good juicy stuff that is fit to print, the stuff that causes emotional reactions amongst our readers. Besides, if Nintendo talked about Dolphin last year, why the heck wouldn’t they talk about it this year.

I look back at how some of our favorite websites were at the beginning of the N64 launch. Some sites were real strong from the beginning like IGN, N64HQ, and Dojo, but their popularity has increased exponentially over the course of the last 3 years. I see PlanetN2000 in pretty much the same position right now. We started this well over a year ago, before the word “Dolphin” was uttered for the first time on the Internet. As a matter of fact, it was our forums on OPN2000 that uttered the word “Dolphin” for the very first time in the Net. Thanks to Rick Powers, we scooped that before anyone else did. As Dolphin comes closer to launch, and then launches, PlanetN2000 will be there growing with the segment of the industry that we started following from the beginning. E3 is also the perfect and best opportunity to establish and strengthen out relationships in the industry so when Spaceworld comes, and next years E3 comes, we will be in an even better position to bring you the best possible coverage of Nintendo’s next system that we can.

E3 is also about fun. Not only are there tons of games for Nintendo that I look forward to playing, but I am also looking forward to seeing a lot of the stuff that will be coming for Playstation, Playstation 2, X-box, Dreamcast, and PC. I am a gamer, first and foremost, and while Nintendo is my undisputed favorite, it is not the only platform that I play games on.

Nintendo has a very, very stong line up for this year. There are a lot of games that I haven’t been able to buy recently due, to financial constraints, but now that I work for a bank doing a job that pays “bank”, I have a whole lot of catching up to do, and a whole lot of games to buy throughout the remainder of this year. So, here they are, the Top 10 reasons (give or take a few) why E3 is going to rock:

Nintendo:

Perfect Dark

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

Dinosaur Planet

Conker’s Bad Fur Day

The World Is Not Enough

Eternal Darkness

Excitebike

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards

Star Craft 64

Banjo-Tooie

Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion

X-Men

Spiderman

Ogre Battle 64

Star Wars: Episode 1 Battle for Naboo

Hey You, Pikachu!

Resident Evil 0

Super Mario Adventure

Mario Tennis 64

PC:

Icewind Dale

Baldur’s Gate 2

Neverwinter Nights

Star Trek: Conquest Online

KISS: Psycho Circus

HALO

Black & White

Playstation / Playstation 2:

Gran Turismo 2000

Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy IX

A lot of the cool games for PS2 will probably end up being multi-platform games. In which case, I would be interested in that game on either the PC or Dolphin instead. I will probably buy a PS2, but I refuse to do so until Gran Turismo 2000 is released. Perhaps my mind will be changed at E3, but I just don’t really see a lot of system sellers yet.

What I Secretly Wish For:

Well, anything about Dolphin. Perhaps some detailed information on just how cool that Factor 5 sound is going to be. Maybe a little more information about Gekko and Flipper. I’d love to see the controller. Perhaps a snippet of the next Mario game, and of course Thornado.

Then of course I’d like to meet Shigeru Miyamoto, just to say hello and thanks for all the all the joy he has brought to our lives … and I’d like to get him to sign a cartridge or two.

I’d like to meet some of our friends at Factor 5 and Rare. Perhaps some of the execs at Nintendo, like Peter Main.

There are also a lot of other celebs that will be attending this years E3. Brett Farve will be there, as will Mia Hamm, Tony Hawk, and Motley Crue. I have this great photograph that I took of Vince Neil at a Motley Crue concert about 15 years ago that rivals anything any professional photographer has ever done, and I’d like to get it autographed.

I just hope we all make it out alive.