Its been a week (doesnt it seem longer than that?) since E3 and I asked some of the 4cr staff to give their impressions of the show. Since I already did a post E3 wrapup, I thought Id quickly talk about my thoughts on the Revolution and its future before turning it over to the rest of the staff.

[ Nick ]

In the week since the Revolution was unvieled at E3 (well, sorta) I have run into a suprising number of non-gamers who said they were excited about the Revolution. Not only was I surprised because I doubt most of these people followed E3, but also because about half of them were female.

Of course, the big draw is the backwards compatibility with games from previous generations. From Tecmo Football, Super Mario Bros 3, Contra and Bart Simpson, Ive heard people reminisce about the game they loved back when they actually used to play games. Talk about drawing in the casual gamer.

Another thing Ive been thinking about is where the Revolution will fall with the mainstream (aka Sony) gamer. I believe that Sony will lose a bit of its grip this coming generation, but it will still be the market leader. However, I can see a sort of Nintendo Renaissance. The Revolution, in my vision, will come to be ‘the peoples second console.’ Mainstream gamers and early adopters will have a PS3 or 360, but sitting along side their Sony or Microsoft console of choice will be a Revolution.

With the ability to play old favorites, and the wonderful Nintendo exclusives we can expect, I see the Revolution as bringing nuetrality to Nintendo’s image. Will it become the dominant console next generation? As much as Id like it to, its highly unlikely. Instead, the Revolution will make Nintendo acceptable to mainstream gamers…maybe even cool.

Nintendo almost certainly wont win the hardcore gaming battle with the Revolution. But they will widen gaming and attract more casual players. The console will slip into living rooms thanks to girlfriends and ex-gamers, grandparents and roommates. Nintendo still has a long way to go to win back the mainstream gamer, but from the look of things they will do it by piggybacking on the casual gamer. Quiet and modest comes the revolution.

[ CoffeeMan ]

Here is my take on the E3. I’ll start with Sony’s. Sony’s press conference impressed me in some ways and didn’t in others. The PS3 was superb, the best graphic i’ve seen to date, beats anything out right now on consoles or pc. But at what price? getting those kind of graphics will require more time and people working on it. and time is money. I imagine the price on PS3 game will go up. What didn’t impress me in the conference is the lack of PSP and PS2 software shown or talked about. they never mentionned them at all during the conference. I think Nintendo talked about the PSP more in it’s press conference.

Microsoft’s conference didn’t impress me at all, it focused too much on the multimedia aspect of the console, imo.

Nintendo’s press conference is the one that impressed me the most, it was the most balance of the three. They talked about upcoming software for the DS, GBA, GC. The online plans for the DS, and how it’s gonna be free and easy to setup. I really like their take on the online side, where you’d have two types of play. Playing against a friend that you’d have in a friend list or let them match you against somebody as good as you. After that came the next version of the GBA, The GameBoy Micro. I was amaze at how small it was. I mean the staff had them on lanyard on the showfloor. I can’t wait to see them first hand. i wanna know really how much the display has improve, like they said it’s their best LCD display yet. Next The Revolution, that thing looks sweet, it’s as big as a CD-Drive for a PC, maybe just a little bigger. and that was only a prototype model. They said it would be smaller. That’s pretty much what they did, just show the console and announce some launch software plus talked about their online plans for it. People were disappointed that they didn ‘t show footage or the controller or announce the specs of the console. But it was said before, that they wouldn’t show much at E3, cause other companies tend to steal ideas from Nintendo and the other companies hardware wasn’t finalized yet, so they decided on not taking the risk.

My favorite game of the show and the game that impressed me most is ZELDA for GC. For one, the fishing is back, and not restricted to only one area of the game, second you can fish on a boat . The art direction has been changed again in this one, and it’s probly one of the best looking zelda game ever. It’s like they took the best thing of every Zelda game and did a game with that. They said that this time around, you’d have plenty of side quest and mini game to play with. I can’t wait to try the game to see how it handles in wolf form.

And now we wait for either Spaceworld 2005 or Tokyo Game Show 2005, for the unveiling of the Revolution. Nintendo announced that they would show everything by years end, and those are the two biggest shows to come.

[ Tony Mora ]

E3 was really wierd this year. All the hype surrounding the simultaneous launch of three consoles really got everyone geeked. But when all was said in done, it was meh. I’ve been to every single E3 save except for the second year in Atlanta, never again please, and this was the first show in quite awhile where I was looking forward to seeing some really great stuff. Let me re-state that, some REAL great stuff.

Sony showed all their pre-rendered graphics and everyone was wowed. I stuck to my guns and told all my friends, “NO WAY is that real!” That’s Sony what Sony does best. Wow them with graphics that they will never play and pretend it never happened. At least Microsoft showed some games that were real-time. We got to sit in during the demo of Gears of War and at first I was like, “Whoa, thats looks nice.” But the more they kept playing it the more I wanted to get up and leave. It was “pretty” but wasn’t AMAZING looking. On top of that, the gameplay looked weak, I think KillSwitch pulled it off better with the ducking and hiding-behind-things-gameplay. But, it was an early build so we’ll see how that turns out. I even argued with some other person there asking if I was “high” for not thinking it wasn’t the greatest game at the show. It wasn’t.

That honor would have to go to Criterion’s Black. The screenshots do it no justice. Even though it was a single player game I wanted to punch the person demoing the game and grabbing the controller from him so I could play. It looked like that much fun. It was also refreshing to hear the game’s producer, I think his name was Alex Ward, talk about how focused they were on making the greatest first person shooter and bypassing making it multiplayer. Seriously, it looked awesome to play, and to rub it in, they were running it off a PS2 build which seriously makes you think that have not reached the full potential of current systems.

Onto Nintendo. Even though I nitpick at them every year for questionable outings at E3 I think they made the right decision this year. Only showing the hardware and not showing any type of games for their next system was stroke of genius. Sony and Microsoft are most likely scratching their collective noggins and asking themselves, “What the hell?!?” Nintendo basically pitted Sony and Microsoft against each other in the ring with Nintendo taking score outside of it. Now, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I really wanted to see something from Nintendo because I really did. I mean, who doesn’t. We had all seen Zelda already, we knew about Mario Kart DS, etc…. We played Mario Soccer which was a BLAST to play. Battalion Wars had some of the coolest physics and animation I’ve seen in a game. To me it played like cross between Pikmin and Full Spectrum Warrior, which isn’t a bad thing. Odama was just plain weird. Pinball and feudal war while yelling into a mic attached to your Gamecube controller??? But what I played the most, HONEST, was Metroid Pinball. I’m a sucker for pinball games and Metroid Pinball was just plain cool. We were in this air conditioned room while they demoed some level of Zelda and they were saying, “Check this next thing out,” while I was sitting there intently playing Metroid Pinball yelling at them, “NO, CHECK THIS OUT!” We were booted out afterwhile and I left satisfied knowing I got the highest score on the cart.

It really was a remarkable thing being on the show floor. The emptiness of the Sony booth, the confusion at the Microsoft booth, and the sheer amount of happy gamers entering and exiting the Nintendo booth. No where else would you see gamers stand in line, for up to two hours, to play a few minutes of Zelda. For what everyone says about Nintendo, they seem to be doing something right.

[ 4ndy ]

I am glad that at E3 Nintendo focused on their releases for this year because there are going to be TONS of them. They would only be hurting their own sales if they had revealed more about the Revolution because then it would kill off the Gamecube in one full sweep because the majority of the anticipation for Nintendo products would have prematurely shifted to the next generation. There is still a lot of life yet in the Gamecube. Therefore, the only smart thing to have done was continue to be vague and mysterious while only revealing the not-as-revolutionary but still awesome features such as backward compatibility. This enabled them to emphasize that the Gamecube will continue to offer a strong software library while at the same time teasing gamers with just the right amount of anticipation knowing that there will always be something new and exciting to play.

Nintendo played their strengths by providing the ability to play their classic games from the past 20 years with one console, showing a strong lineup of upcoming DS titles (including the “weird Japanese” ones!), and redefined their image with new designs for the sleek Revolution, the ultra-portable GB Micro, and even their online presence and print publications. They’ve certainly matured, but without the juvenile violence. Acknowledging their successes and failures in the game industry, they have the experience and the drive to deliver what consumers want and what the industry needs.

The industry truly needs a Revolution. With the confidence that Nintendo has in their secret weapon, I believe that they have what it takes to truly bring video games to the next level. The next generation (brought to you by Microsoft and Sony) scares me. With a focus on updated graphics and getting the most out of a system’s processing power, costs are only going to increase to incredible new heights, and the economic risks involved will scare away innovation. With a rush to the market, the designs for the PS3/XB360 do absolutely nothing for me. The PS3 looks like a George Foreman grill that is bigger than the original Xbox and the XB360 will end up being Xbox 1.5. Normally, I’d be totally stoked about new systems and drooling over screenshots but nothing new is brought to the table; just prettied up versions of Madden and Dead or Alive. Do you really want to buy a new system and games at a potentially (hypothetically speaking) increased retail price of $59? Where’s the next generation magic? I only see wallets with holes.

About 95% of the games I was excited about shown at E3 and confirmed for release before the end of the year are headed for Nintendo platforms. Honestly, if it were not for Nintendo I might have given up on gaming forever. I own every system from the current generation, but from now on you can consider me a born-again Nintendork. Believe.

[ hokku ]

Nintendo Conference: first impression = disappointment. I liked how Satoru made fun of Reggie at the beginning and the announcement about Retro compatability for the Rev was really intriguing, but it was no E3 2004. Nintendo showed the Micro and buttered us up a little bit. Nothing special. after a little bit of thinking: It was a smart move only giving us a small peak of things. Sony and Microsoft tried to build hype(which I think wasn’t too successful), but Nintendo just gave us a little update and chose not to disclose the rest. Everyone else already played their cards and I for one wasn’t really impressed, but Nintendo still basically has everything to show and that gives them the edge. Smart move guys, you’re just biding your time.

Revolution: See you soon(I hope)

Game Boy Micro: Very cool. Sleek. Pretty. I don’t have a GBA yet, but even with my DS I want a Micro. If it’s bundled with the play-yan(which GeorgeHarrison hinted as a possibility), then I’m getting it hands down.

DS Games & Wifi: I’ve waited so many years for this Nintendo. Hopefully some more games will pick up on the online thing. I can imagine just sitting in my room and playing Animal Crossing DS with my four brothers who I see in person every few years. I have high hopes for this.

Zelda: What can be said about this? You guys all know the praise that this game deserves.

Competitors Conference/Showing: They did reveal a bit more than Ninty, but all in all, they didn’t get me too excited. I’m still wary about the next gen and they did not calm my fears and doubts. Overall, I don’t think any single publisher/developer beat Nintendo’s showing of upcoming handheld games and in house games.

Nintendogate: What’s that?

Reggie: He’s the man and the fact that he was the only guy to show up at Gamespot’s “roundtable” says how awesome he is.

Fave Game of the Show: Can’t decide. Zelda was the usual spectacular. Battalion Wars looks really promising after seeing gameplay. Sonic DS looks FANTASTIC. Animal Crossing DS is still twisting my heart in knots.

Biggest Disappointment: The unveiling of the next gen systems. They were either ugly or boring(The Revolution is by far the best looking in my opinion, but it was kind of a yawner when I first saw it) and the developement I’ve seen for them so far is pretty weak. I swear that I’m pissed at people for pushing them out so soon. Nobody has any idea what they’re doing with this new technology and here we are expecting to have it out in the next few months. It’s all a year or two too soon. Really, I only have faith in Nintendo this upcoming generation because even though they’ve tended to be conservative, they actually take making games seriously and not just as a product to be out in the market as soon as possible. The corporate jerks at the other companies pushed the date forwards to get into the market as soon as possible. I swear, they’re suffocating the industry.

*if you can’t tell, people f***ing around with the set up of the gaming industry for sake of their own profit really makes me angry*

Looking Towards the Future: I only have faith in Nintendo for turning out something noncraptastic. Everyone else seems like they’re kids who just found their dad’s gun. I think things will work out eventually, but I think the other big players in the industry need to start acting like professionals. Nintendo’s a little wierd, but they’re definitely the most professional of the bunch.

All in All: E3 2005 = Letdown

[ Thores ]

DS games and Wifi- I really wish they’d have shown more this year. What happened to Super Princess Peach? Where was Pokemon Diamond and Pearl? Why did Super Smash Brothers not make an appearance? However, it was good to hear that we’d be getting Animal Crossing this Fall. I actually expected a 2006 release for us in the West. New Super Mario Bros and Sonic Rush look spectacular, and I can’t wait to play them. And I’ve already been planning to buy Nintendogs and Lost In Blue for quite some time, and E3 made me want them even more.

Competitors conference/showings- XBox 360 short of showed everything off prematurely this year, and I wasn’t too interested in it in the first place anyways. PS3, however, looks nice. The FF7 tech demo they showed was awesome, although I hope they don’t make a remake of it just yet. The lack of KH2 awesomeness was absurd. It was what I was looking forward to most this year, and all they announced is that the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Carribean would be in it, along with Jack Sparrow. And that’s nice, but I wanted to find out a little more than that.

Reggie- After seeing him hold the Game Boy Micro, I realized that Reggie had very big hands.

Fav game of the show- New Super Mario Bros, or the revamp of Metroid Prime Hunters.

Biggest dissapointment- The amount of internet hype over “The Nintendo Game” during E3, and then… nothing. A big letdown after such an elaborate theory. Also, did they really need to pimp out Mario THAT much this year? I mean, seriously. We could have at least done without a Mario Party 7. There are already too many Mario Parties.

Looking towards the future- The DS certainly has an awesome year ahead of it, filled with some very promising games. I also expect us all to be very, VERY pleased by the final outcome of the Revoluton, despite the lack of coverage it got at E3.

Revolution- I guess it looks cool. There’s not much to say since they hardly showed anything.

Game Boy Micro- Very nice, very tiny, and way cute looking. However I am not buying it. Where’s the protective cover that I’ve learned to love from the SP and DS?

Zelda- This game could convince me to finally buy a Gamecube. I loved Wind Waker, and this looks even better.