So to save myself from typing in the same messages to all the IMs that are lighting up my screen with the same question: "How was E-3???", here's the blogged report. :)

E-3 2006 ended on Friday. It's Sunday as I write this, but my ears are still ringing. ;) Yesterday I had a booksigning at an art gallery in Santa Monica, and I could always tell the people who walked in who had just been at E-3, because we all share this kind of glassy-eyed shell-shocked look. ;) There is just *so* much going on, so much sensory overload, so many different things to see, but no matter how much I see, I'm also still aware of all the things I'm *not* seeing, and when the show ends, I have this mixture of emotions of relief that it's over, and yet disappointment at everything I may have missed.

There was the usual amount of hype and promotion and "spin-meisters", mixed in with flashing lights and 5-story tall posters and the booms of videogame explosions all around, but mixed in with all the chaos, a few things stand out in my memory.

The #1 thing I remember, is the beautiful 3-D sidewalk art that was being created by artist Kurt Wenner, in the middle of the floor at South Hall. Look at it from one angle and you see strange elongated shapes. But look at it from the correct angle, and it looks 3-D, like there's a huge hole in the floor and monsters are crawling out of it. Wenner sat on the floor actually creating the drawing during much of E-3, and there was also a camera taking time-lapse pictures of the process. It was fun to watch it play back in high-speed mode, both to watch the art take shape, and to see the crowds of E-3 flow around it, as well as watching the shadows move past the drawing, since sunlight was streaming in through the skylight above, so there was a sundial effect as the shadows of the girders moved past -- really beautiful, on a lot of different levels.

In terms of actual electronic game stuff, the top buzz was definitely about the new Nintendo console, with the unfortunate name "Wii". I hate the name, but the two-handed controller looks really interesting. I didn't get a chance to play with it myself (the Nintendo booth again had lines that were four hours long), but the demos that I saw from a distance looked intriguing.

I also enjoyed seeing the "retro" games making a comeback. For example, this year is evidently the 25-year anniversary of the game "Frogger". And another of the handhelds was showing off an updated version of "Lemmings". Plus there was another retro-looking game that got a lot of attention, called "Geometry Wars". It had a multi-story screen, and at one point as I passed by there was actually a big crowd of E-3ers who had gathered around to watch someone playing, and rooting for them to beat the high score (they didn't make it, but the entire crowd applauded them for t... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]