E3 2002 Report - PAGE 1

Introduction:

Many people would do anything short of selling off their own family members to attend an event such as this. The biggest exposition of next gen gaming in the 2002/2003 year for North America. This year I was very fortunate to take part in this event and break it down to everyone else in this writeup. The expo this year consisted of games and features to steal just about anyone's eyes if they were in the right direction. Companies like Nintendo, Logitech, Microsoft, Sony and others went all out to showcase their new products and impress the crowds.

3 days of madness into one article lets begin. ^_^

You really can't see and experience all there is in one single day. I happened to find this out the hard way.

Entering the north hall Nintendo, Sony, Sega and many more greeted my eyes. Each company was pushing their newest barrages of games for your eyes to feast on. Unfortunately this only worked somewhat well as the Tecmo booth was right next to the main entrance for the media, the showcase of the newest beach born game Dead or Alive Volleyball pulled just about everyone into a giant mass. They certainly knew how to hit the crowd as the costumed fighters came out in style to hype the crowd up about their newest creation. Even though its still in it's development cycle the game looks have the potential to be another great multiplayer madness game.

After managing to tear myself away I headed straight for Nintendo's enclosed area where they had all of the hidden projects open to viewing and for play. The likes of Zelda and Mario Sunshine grasped everyone's attention with their avalibility for play. Mario Sunshine was actually quite a suprise to see as the game was once again another massive world roaming game. The details brought into the game were quite amazing with all of the lighting effects used for what looked to be a simple adventure game. After climbing the tree's and jumping off into impending doom I decided to move on and let some other's take control so I could observe more. Next up on the list was moving over to Zelda, possibly one of the most debated games due to its dramatic change from last year where it was a insane 3D polygon show. Now Link is officially in his full cell shaded outfit ready to go on his newest adventure. In this newest installment the game has taken a new turn as far as the actual characters are concerned. Link and his enemies show off quite a bit of facial animations and body animations as they're no longer just simple climb or run commands where no actual depth is shown.

Left to Right: DOA returns to gaming in full polygon force, A cave dwelling Link, Mario taking a dip, The fortress of Nintendo

Shortly after I made a quick trip to view the latest offerings by Sega for the 2002/2003 year. No doubts were in anyone's mind though that the power of their focus would be through their ace development team Visual Concepts. VC has a lot to offer the gamers this year with an expanding series of games for the consoles. The new lineup for the year will consist of some interesting new layouts as far as releases go as the team has decided to make some exclusives for this year. The lineup for the year goes as follows: NBA 2K3, NFL 2K3, NHL 2K3, NCAA College Football 2K3, NCAA College Basketball 2K3, Tennis 2K2 and World Series Baseball 2K3.

Each console will get its own specific perks in terms of graphic elements and features and on more specific scale it seems certain consoles will have exclusive releases as well for titles like tennis and baseball. I don't think many were sure of what to make of the decisions but the overall results seemed to show in the floor versions that they had for users to observe. WSB 2K3 was definetly a very great piece of work as it was designated soley to the XBOX console as of the time at the show.