E3: South hall walkthrough

We trust that you've been watching our sister site Joystiq for their up to the second E3 coverage, but on the last day of the show we finally got ourselves out of our hovel and onto the show floor to take actually, you know, check out the show. Being that the West hall was essentially dominated by Nintendo and Sony, we figured we'd talk a leisurely stroll through the South hall after checking out Microsoft's hugemongous booth. Everyone from EA to Square Enix were camped out in the South hall, so if you want the E3 feel in 60 seconds or less, click on to check it out.

Amp'd had a tent outside in between the West and South halls; their thing was pumping hip hop with uncensored obscenities and spinning recs. How gen-Y.

People wear weird things at E3. We learned the hard way that when asking who (or what) they're dressed as may result in a plasma cannon shot to the gut.

We didn't see the big deal about this thing -- Aerons got relly passé, so everyone at Engadget sits in a human skull throne now.

We got the "No photo, no photo!" treatment at Squeenix. Not sure why, it's not like their booth is some industry secret. Which is why we took some pictures anyway.

As per usual EA's 360-degree projection booth left us in complete awe. As our man Ben Zackheim said, "They could have that booth 30 years from now and it still wouldn't get old."

The line for...

You know it. The amount of buzz behind this game was unreal. We wish we could have caught the trailer, but were just too busy kicking it at the booths of the big three.

[Revrant @ May 14th 2006 7:49AM]

I'd like to attend an E3 one day, and hands down, the Spore video was the best video of E3, nothing even Compares to the extensive gameplay presentation and well, I mean, it's just Awesome. Finally, Will is going to redeem himself as a GAME designer after all of this Sims crap, I can't wait.

[Steve @ May 14th 2006 12:15PM]

Spore? This is the 1st I heard of it..

[Randall @ May 14th 2006 12:30PM]

Hey,

If you head here:

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/05/11/joystiq-video-wired-spore-event-featuring-will-wright-and-robi/

You can see the demo everyone was waiting in line to see, plus robin williams creating a creature and crashing the game.

Later,

Randall

[Revrant @ May 14th 2006 10:08PM]

Too busy craving some Halo or MGS there Steve?

[Graff Maines @ May 15th 2006 9:52AM]

I'd like to add a correction regarding the photos. It's a small one, but worth noting. The second and third photos (of "Powered by the UK" and Playlogic booths) were actually in the West Hall, not the south hall. I only say this because I was camped out in the Gameloft booth for several days and was just up the aisle from these two booths.

It was a great show. My faves were the EA booth and EVE-Online, which had the best video and soundtrack playing on the LED wall nextdoor to where I was. (Try standing next to one of the bigger booths for three days with the same dramatic music playing repeatedly and you'll understand what I mean.)