E3: Kentia hall walkthrough

Kind of like the International Gateway at CES, we save this one for dessert. Kentia hall is basically the basement of the South hall, where all the smaller hardware and accessory manufacturers are relegated to since having a floor show presence in one of the main halls costs something roughly equivalent to the GDP of a small nation (and are sometimes similar in size). Kentia is also where all the dope old school arcade games get brought out of retirement, too. Click on to check out all the oddities E3's got to offer.

Dudes were playing FPS titles on Sandio's Game O' 3D mouse totally sans keyboard. We tried it, but it was quickly decided that we had not nearly enough hand eye coordination to work it like the guy who demoed it for us.

See, Nintendo's not the only game in town with motion-based input.

BenQ actually had a presence here, but it certainly wasn't anything like Nokia's N-Gage booth.

Still, gotta love that chest o' phones.

EL71 looking not so bad.

The Red Octane booth was by far the largest and best produced in Kentia.

Even WowWee was there.

Honda Asimo knock?

Ah, the i-Cybie's back -- this time as the X-Cybie, with a kinda flocked , furry exterior.

Way, way too much Crazy Frog crap. Thankfully he wasn't, um, "anatomically correct."

Gotta love those iDog rips -- and iPig, iOwl, and iFrogs too? Score.

Ah Guitar Mania -- even Guitar Hero has a knock here in Kentia.

These are some of the dopest home Bemani decks money can buy. But for what these cost you're probably best off laying down for a couple 1200s, a mixer and a sampler, and going at it the more traditional way.

Straight up Onimusha controller.

It was so great to finally play with a Dragon Quest slime controller from Hori. Man, did that take us back to the deezy.

We're still trying to figure this one out: Video Game Tycoon, "What do you burn?"

These guys apparently had a 360 demo kiosk, and weren't afraid to not set it up and / or sell it.

And then there was this odd little number, designed apparently for racing games.

[cian @ May 14th 2006 2:43PM]

first! (methinks) hurrah!
shure the xbox 360 demo's are always broken!

[tomokun @ May 14th 2006 2:45PM]

Just an FYI, that MyMyBox ASC (arcade style controler) for beatmaniaIIDX IS AN ARCADE REPLICA. It is exactly the same as the IIDX arcade deck. Its pretty pimp.

[MaNhO1E @ May 14th 2006 3:10PM]

where do i buy the 360 kiosk from?

[Deluxe @ May 14th 2006 9:48PM]

Tomokun, Any idea who the manufacturer of the IIDX controller is - and/or if there's a website for purchace / pre-order?

[Damo @ May 15th 2006 5:29AM]

That phone is the BenQ Siemens EF81 http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=129660

[kevin @ Aug 20th 2006 1:03AM]

Tomokun, Any idea who the manufacturer of the IIDX controller is - and/or if there's a website for purchace / pre-order? manufacturere is mymybox and thier website is http://www.mymybox.com