e3 98' began on Thursday, May 28th and ended on Saturday May
30th. Having attended e3 in 97, I knew what to expect, but
unfortunately, this years show paled in comparison to last years.
Not only was the selection of games this year lackluster, with
the exception of a handful of titles, but the show didn't seem
to have the same "oomph" that it had last year. Perhaps it was
because this was my second time attending e3, but similar
feelings were echoed by a colleague of mine attending the show,
so I tend to think that this years show really was a bit dull.
Instead of bothering with the lowlights, I'll simply give you
a rundown of the highlights. I'll start first with the Squaresoft
press conference. Squaresoft, as some of you may know, specializes
in role playing games for videogame systems and is responsible for
the wildly popular Final Fantasy series. The whole reason for the
press conference was for Square and Electronic Arts, makers of the
Road Rash and John Madden football sports series, to officially
announce their newly forged partnership and for Square to showcase
some of it's upcoming titles for this year and next. In short,
Squaresoft will use it's marketing muscle and name recognition to
help give EA more of a presence in Japan, while EA does the exact
same thing for Square here in the US. Although in my opinion,
Square was doing just fine here in the states all on it's own.
After opening speeches from the head of Square Japan and EA, a
big screen TV stood ready for a video presentation. However,
about 20 to 30 minutes was spent trying to sort out problems with
the TV and VCR, so the whole room waited and talked while the
problems got ironed out. After everything was fixed, we were
treated to a brief presentation of Square's upcoming lineup of
titles. Among them were Parasite Eve, a cinematic adventure/Rpg,
Bushido Blade 2, a sequel to Square's Martial Arts/Swordfighting
game which got a lukewarm reception here in the states last year,
Xenogears, another Rpg, and the big one, Final Fantasy 8. All of
the titles looked exceptional, but as was to be expected, Final
Fantasy was the showstopper. Not only were the graphics even
better than the first, but the soundtrack was stunning. I was
thoroughly impressed. The changes Square has implemented with
Final Fantasy 8 include having the characters look more like
real people, having no difference in the size of the characters
between the cinematic sequences and the actual game. Square
announced that Final Fantasy 8 would be released in Japan at
the end of this year, and that a stateside release wouldn't
happen until Autumn or Winter of 99. Someone asked if Final
Fantasy 8 would use the Sony PDA, and Square announced that no
decision had been made as to whether it would or it wouldn't.
For those of you who don't know, the PDA stands for "Personal
Digital Assistant" and will be a little memory card type
apparatus that plugs into the memory card port on the Playstation.
It comes with a little LCD screen built in, and functions much
like a mini dayrunner. Parasite Eve was Square's other major
title, and looks quite promising. Parasite Eve is set in present
day New York City, and is very cinematically focused much like
Warp's game "D" which came out for the ill fated 3DO and later,
the Playstation. It's already sold well over a million units
in Japan, and could do just as well here in the states. Look
for it in September.
Another major press conference happened the day before the
show officially began in a suburb of Atlanta. This time,
Nintendo was the one hosting the conference, and a few interesting
tidbits of information came out. As I entered the hotel with my
colleagues, and made my way down to the conference room, I found
a large mass of people waiting to get in. While everyone waited
for the doors to open, Nintendo had a nice spread of soda, coffee,
and cookies for everyone to nibble on. After walking for quite
a ways in the nasty Atlanta heat and humidity, an icy cold Coke
was more than welcome. Nintendo also used this time as an
opportunity to introduce everyone to the Gameboy Camera,
which is in stores now. A short while later, the doors opened,
and everyone ran in and grabbed a seat. The conference opened
with a demo video, which wasn't anything really special, and then
the President of Nintendo of America, Howard Lincoln, stepped up
to the podium and began his speech. He announced that Nintendo
now has a stake in developer Left Field Productions, and that
the stake was a move that was intended to help Nintendo solidify
it's lineup of sports titles, a niche that is currently thriving
in the videogame industry. Following that announcement, Mr.
Lincoln spoke about Nintendo's pseudo sequel to their mega hit
Goldeneye, which was developed by UK Nintendo partner Rareware.
Goldeneye was a game much akin to Doom and Quake, which many of
you might be more familiar with. That is, it's a 3-D corridor
shooter starring James Bond and a bevy of Bond characters.
Perfect Dark will star heroine Johanna Dark, and will sport
graphics that are ten times better than Goldeneye's, as well as
AI which is two hundred times better. I personally think Mr.
Lincoln might've been exaggerating a bit, but we'll see. Mr.
Lincoln then went on to discuss the rest of Nintendo's lineup
including F-Zero 64, which is a sequel to the SNES racer of the
same name, Conker's Quest, another Mario 64 type game, and their
premier title, Zelda 64. Although none of Nintendo's other games
really wowed me, I was mightily impressed by Zelda. This game is
going to be something special, and I, for one, can't wait. As
many of you know, the Gameboy, Nintendo's black and white
portable game system, has been massively successful for almost
a decade, defying logic. Capitalizing on the Gameboy name and
success, Nintendo has decided to release a color Gameboy. A
slew of games is on the way for the new portable, and it's set
to be released on November 23rd here in the US. It'll be
backwards compatible with the old Gameboy, so if you've got
a large collection of Gameboy games, don't worry, you can play
them on the Color Gameboy. Finally, Mr. Lincoln talked about
the Poke'mon phenomenon which is sweeping Japan. Some of you
might've heard of the Japanese cartoon that was giving Japanese
children seizures. If so, the cartoon you heard about is Poke'mon.
Well, get prepared parents, because the Poke'mon onslaught is
headed for the US. The Poke'mon cartoon will be launched here
in the US on September 5th, with the game following close behind
and coming out on September 29th. Expect toys, comics, and
everything else imaginable. too. Finally, Mr. Lincoln announced
that by years end, the Nintendo 64 will have a library totaling
one hundred titles. He then allowed a brief Q&A session and
then thanked us all for coming.
Sega also held a press conference to unveil it's new 128-bit
monster Dreamcast, but the conference was invite only, and I
didn't remember to request an invitation in time. A friend of
mine was able to get in and he told me that the demo shown was
absolutely stunning. Here's hoping Sega markets the Dreamcast
properly so it doesn't get doomed to the same fate that befell
the Saturn.
Now, on to the actual show. As I said before, this year's
show was lackluster for the most part, but there were some stand
out games, many of which were sequels to old hits. Among the
handful of standout titles was Konami's Metal Gear Solid, which
is a Playstation sequel to the wildly popular Metal Gear, which
appeared on the NES in the mid 80's. Metal Gear is an
action/adventure title much along the lines of Capcom's Resident
Evil. Also from Konami, was a new Contra game for the Playstation,
which is a sequel to the wildly popular Contra series and, you
guessed it, appeared on the NES in the 80's. Other titles that
looked promising include the fighting games Rival Schools and
Pocket Fighter, both coming from Capcom, as well as Vigilante 8,
a Twisted Metal clone (and a damn fine one at that!), NFL Blitz
from Midway, and of course, Zelda 64 from Nintendo. The
aforementioned games only comprise a minuscule fraction of the
total games at the show, making this years offerings look less
than promising. I undoubtedly missed some games, many of which
might've been good, but in talking to my colleagues, they told me
that they basically felt the same way I did. Ah well, there's
always next year in LA, and here's hoping it's a lot better than
this year's dullfest.