E3. An annual trade show where tens of thousands of people involved, or pretending to be involved with the
video game and interactive software industry, spend a few days a year patting themselves on the back, pushing
their yearly batch of crap, and trying to get busy with the hired help at the convention center, but mostly
drinking. It's kind of like having 40,000 of the people who wear lampshades on their heads at parties under one
roof. This was my first trip down to what's commonly known as one of the biggest dorkfests on earth, and at
least according to my preconceptions of it, it didn't disappoint. Here's a rundown of what evils I committed
while in Atlanta, Georgia, home of Ted Turner, Coca-Cola, and a buttload of Waffle Houses.
5/27/98 (day 1): Plane trip was passable, had a scotch, spilled a little of it on myself when I fell asleep. It's
all good, as I didn't bring my 500 gallon bottle of Brut or anything. City was humid as a bastard upon arrival,
and stayed that way most of the trip, between thunderstorms. Arrived at hotel, kind of a seedy joint, but I had a
big bed, so all was ok. Went up to the convention center after my cohorts from work and I were settled, to get
our passes. Immediately upon arriving on the scene, we were visually assaulted with the words "SPACE
BUNNIES MUST DIE!" This was an ad for the game of the same name, the first of many ads strewn through
out the Georgia World Congress Center for the game, which, by a landslide, won "most over-advertised piece
of crap on the show floor" from those in attendance. Spent the rest of the afternoon driving around, attempting
to clean out major retailers of their closeout video games (oooooh), and eventually ended up slumming at a
mini golf joint about 30 miles from the city limits. Later that evening saw some drinking take place, and
eventually, I went to bed, putting a merciful end to an uneventful day.
5/28/98 (day 2): Woke up with a monster. Got to the convention too late to meet any pro wrestlers worth
mentioning, or Sugar Ray Leonard. some life I lead, eh? Began examining "what's new and exciting in
interactive entertainment". Yeah. Woo. There was an inordinate amount of sequels, re-releases of old games,
updates of older games, and sports games with "99" in the title. There was almost nothing that didn't look like
something else I had already seen a million times. It was ludicrous, to say the very least. Even the games with
new characters all either looked like Doom, Tomb Raider, or Mario 64. I guess this is what the public wants, or
something. Whichever. I dunno if they really asked for "Space Bunnies Must Die!", though.
At least some of the rehashes were enjoyable to play, though, most notably the new versions of Asteroids,
Centipede, and Contra for Playstation. Out of the more recent, semi-original stuff that I saw, Devil Dice for
Playstation (a cool puzzle game), NFL Blitz for Nintendo 64 (take NBA Jam, and apply it to football-
fantastic), and Sega's Bass Fishing arcade game (with the cool, force feedback fishing pole controller!) were
probably my favorites.
Enough about video games, though. Let's get to the important stuff, like the free booze. First of this I had was
at Imagine Publishing's cocktail party. Free food, too. Went to these both nights...didn't socialize with the
industry types, didn't even have an invite to be truthful about it, just leeeeeeched.
Decided not to stick with my intrepid (or is it insipid?) group of co-workers this night, went out to the clubs
instead. First club I ended up at, Masquerade, was a great space, looked like something out of the Spanish
Inquisition in parts, but the people were just terrible. It was "80's night", which basically meant that all the
people I hated in high school had relocated to Atlanta, and decided to go to a club. Got there at 11, left at
12:30, for far greener pastures. (this is where the good part begins...)
Arrived at The Chamber. For the uninitiated, The Chamber is a fantastic club in Atlanta. they initially
catered to a pretty serious S&M crowd, but in recent years, have loosened up and evolved into a club that more
or less celebrates sex. Place has got the vibe of a Lords of Acid video. Live beatings on the hour. My kinda
joint. I hung out, drank, and danced there until about 3am on Thursday night...didn't talk to anyone either of
the nights I was there, didn't especially feel the need to. Straight voyeurism for me, chum. Way I figured it, in a
liberal establishment like this, if someone didn't come up to me and outright offer sex, they weren't interested in
any clumsy attempt at conversation I might've made.
Closest I came to this was this one really drunk girl who was there with her boyfriend, and planted a kiss on
me anyway while I was dancing. Luckily (probably for me, because her boyfriend didn't seem to take it well),
the staff noticed how messed up she was, and escorted her out of the club. I mean, I didn't so much mind her
doing it, but I was in the South, and people have been forced to "squeal like a pig" for encouraging situations
like that. Caught a cab home, which I realized was a mistake when I arrived at the hotel 2 minutes later. Whoa,
my hotel's this close to The Chamber? Muhahahahahahaha...well, my Friday night was planned for me already.
Off to sleep.
5/29/98 (day 3): No monster this morning, surprisingly. Woke up, and headed down to the convention center,
where I met up with Collector Times' own Ian Johnston. Nice guy. Hung out, and checked out a bunch of the
stuff I had missed the first day with him, including THQ's and 3DO's booths. Great bartender at the 3DO
booth. Guy didn't know how to make a Screwdriver, so I told him how. He kinda took the ball and ran with it,
using 3 shots of vodka, and an eyedropper worth of orange juice. Let's just say he got one helluva tip. THQ had
the updates of their WCW pro wrestling games in their booth, but the U.S. versions weren't ready, so I got to
play with the Japanese versions. Cool. Every wrestling game should have Antonio Inoki as a playable
character. Come to think of it, every game of any type should have him in there. Guy fought Ali, it's not like he
ain't paid his dues or nuttin'.
I was nearly trampled to death at Nintendo's booth in the mad rush to catch the stuffed Pokemon characters that
were being shot from a cannon in during their Pokemon presentation. "What are Pokemon?", you ask? You
guys aren't going to hear the end of them come Christmas time. Pokemon is basically Nintendo's answer to
Tamagotchi, and hugely popular in Japan, even after they had that one episode of the cartoon where all the
little kids had seizures from watching it. (I'm not kidding, it was in the news.) They're bringing them over to the
U.S. this year, and I think it's going to go over well. Why else would grown men and women be just about
killing each other to grab little stuffed characters the size of small bean bags? Oh yeah. forgot about Beanie
Babies. People are really sick.
Other sights and sounds of Friday: SPACE BUNNIES MUST DIE!: the screensaver. Another thing that was
pretty in your face was the fat, sweaty guy mc'ing the Street Fighter Ex 2 tournament at the Capcom booth.
Why do people still think Chris Farley's funny? Also of increasing annoyance was walking past the PowerVR
booth, and having to hear this other squarehead lead the t-shirt hungry crowd in a chant of "POWERVR!!!!"
For those of you who aren't total tech dorks, PowerVR is a graphics card for the PC platform. This is anything
but a cause for loud, macho, testosterone-driven bellowing. At Eidos interactive's booth, there was a "live" Q
and A session with the digitized image of Tomb Raider's Lara Croft, on a 12' high screen. I'm gonna have
nightmares about this for the rest of my life. Finally, met my first Sportscenter anchor on friday, guy by the
name of Rich Eisen. He did a spittake when I asked him what he thought of the Yankees' chances this season.
Good people, that one.
After night two of the Imagine Publishing cocktail leech party, at which an acquaintance asked me if I was
an alcoholic ("not professionally at the moment" was my response), I headed back to the hotel, and prepared for
night two of deviancy at The Chamber. Now, since I knew that Gillian Anderson was doing a signing at the
convention the next morning (promised a friend I'd try for pictures), and there was no way I'd be awake in time
to line up if I was up until 4am under normal circumstances, I decided to enlist the aid of a little something I
had stashed in the case of my "Less Than Zero" soundtrack CD. Nothing too fancy, life-threatening, or
otherwise overtly evil, just enough stimulus to insure that I'd be awake for a longer time than I would normally,
and that things would be slightly more amusing during that time. (Kids, don't try this at home.)
Arrived at The Chamber earlier than the first night, which gave me some time to get my sea legs on, so to
speak. 11pm arrived, and the first "scene" of the night began on the main stage. The submissive in this scene
was one of the most amazingly beautiful women i've ever seen in my life. She looked sort of like a cross
between Phoebe Cates and Martika (remember her?). Youthful, amazing bone structure, thin, but not anorexic,
striking in every way imaginable. Its nearly impossible for me to put her gorgeousity (to borrow a word from
Anthony Burgess) into words.
She was led onto the stage, tied to a chair, and instructed to remain at attention, legs tightly closed. Next, the
master took out a roll of aluminum foil, and began wrapping it around her lap. As I began to wonder what was
about to happen next, he brought a cup or two over to her, and then poured the contents on her chest, which was
bare, save for some black electrical tape covering her nipples. Hot wax. Unbelievable. Her facial expression
was pain and primal, gutteral pleasure combined, and her legs, which were supposed to remain at attention,
parted. "Jesus Christ," was about all i could think at this point.
I saw her frequently throughout the rest of the evening, and couldn't help flat-out staring at her, like some
puppy dog-eyed high school freshman. I'll admit it when I'm weak. I followed her movements with my eyes, her
every facial expression, and hoped against hope that she'd walk up to me, open her mouth, and make everything
better in 10 words or less. "I know I've never met you, but I love you." Of course, she could've also said "Let's
go screw, and we'll talk about the recording contract later", and I probably would've settled for that happily.
At one point, she was on the dancefloor (I danced my ass off all night, for those wondering), dancing right
next to me, and I briefly considered talking to her, but thought better of it (see "clumsy attempt at conversation"
in last night's report). I guess I'll just have to wait until she realizes she's deeply, pathologically infatuated with
me, finds out everything about me, comes to my home in New Jersey, shows up on my doorstep, and boils a
bunny rabbit on my stove or something.
5/30/98 (day 4): Still awake from Friday night, so today, I was the monster. I was in the home stretch now, and
feeling every minute of it. Ouch. I decided early on to skip my co-workers' trip to the flea market, and head
straight to the con to see if I could score those Gillian Anderson pics. God then decided, "Wow, Scott's got to
walk about a mile to the train station, let's bring back the great flood", and I got DRENCHED on the way
there. My notebook, a lot of my press kits from the previous two days, even my Gund stuffed Classic Pooh bear
was not spared from the deluge. Luckily, I was going to someplace where free t-shirts were abundant.
Arrived on the scene, grabbed my free NFL Blitz shirt from Midway's booth as soon as I was in the door, got
changed, and headed to Sony's booth for free breakfast. on the way there, checked the Fox Interactive booth. No
line for Gillian yet. Walked around for a bit after leeching food from Sony, and then at 10:30, 2 hours before
her scheduled appearance, I noticed a line starting to form at the Fox booth. Perfect timing, as the previous
night's activity was just starting to do me in. Plopped down in my spot on line, threw a CD on (the new Nivek
Ogre/Martin Atkins CD, if you're curious...), and began taking notes for this article.
12:30 came and went, and still no Gillian. Finally, at 1pm, word came that she'd decided to grace us with her
presence, and the line began moving after all the vultures from the press had been serviced. As I got near the
front of the line, I was thoroughly searched by security (do they really think some Trekkie's gonna pull a knife
at a trade show? Jee-zus!), and told that no pictures were permitted. Damn. I continued up, arrived at her table,
said "hello", and didn't even get eye contact from her, as I was handed my autograph and rushed away. What an
awful, pedestrian, assembly-line procedure this was. Not even eye contact.
Now, let's not mince words here. I know that some people who watch X-Files aren't the prettiest, most socially well-adjusted folk I've ever met, but the lack of respect showed by Ms. Anderson by not even saying a simple "hi" to
people as they walked up, or even LOOKING AT THEM was pretty disgusting. Open letter to Gillian Anderson, not that she's gonna read this: lady, I know you were doing a lame promo appearance that you think you're above now that you're a big star, but these
people put you there. Show a little respect. Sure glad I've never watched a single episode of your crummy show. =)
After I ate at the Sony booth again (which elicited a comment of "how many times have YOU been here
today?" from the wench at the entrance...heh-heh-heh-heh, wearing out my welcome's why I was put on this
Earth, baby...), it was close to quittin' time, so I made my final lap of all the games I enjoyed playing, and met
up with my cohorts, more than ready to go home and sleep for about a month. I didn't make it as far as home,
as I slept through my entire flight back.
To sum up my first trip to E3:
1998 looks like the most derivative year in the history of video games, with more rehashing than ever before. is the whole world really that out of ideas?
If you're in Atlanta, and enjoy stimulating nightlife, go to The Chamber. They're open from Thursday to
Sunday. Call (404)248-1612 for more info. Thank me later. Oh, and if you guys see a girl that fits the
description above, tell her I want to marry her.
The city of Atlanta is horrible about posting street signs. This was a thorn in my side throughout the trip. Got
semi-lost a few times. Had to get that off my chest.
Panasonic's gonna have to sell a lot of copies of "Space Bunnies Must Die!" to cover all that
advertising dough.
The free booze was cool, as was the free food.
You're all going to be really, really sick of hearing about Pokemon by Christmastime.
Best games of the show: Devil Dice, Asteroids, Centipede, NFL Blitz, Sega Bass Fishing, Lunar: The Silver
Star Story, Legacy of Kain 2, and Nintendo's new golf number for the 64.
Worst game of the show: Spiceworld (i kid you not...)
Most overhyped-but-not-bad games: Metal Gear Solid, Zelda, Rival Schools United by Fate.