A guy ahead of me in line began to stare at me while I was waiting to see the new vampire western FPS game by Sammy Studios. Eventually, after getting the attention of the rest of his posse, he spoke.
“Dude. So you’re a journalist?”
“… I guess so.”
“Have you seen Halo 2?”
“No.”
He paused. I could see he was confused. “But you have a press pass. You can get in to see it, right?”
“Theoretically, I suppose.”
“You aren’t going to see it?”
“No.”
A companion with bleary eyes and blond hair looked incredulous. “Why not?!”
“It doesn’t interest me.”
They stared. I ignored them. The first guy spoke up again. “But [whatever the name of Sammy’s game is] interests you?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then why are you here?”
“It’s the first original game by Sammy Studios. That is kind of interesting.”
They found nothing else to say to me.
I didn’t make it to the show flow today. I was just too tired. Several days of barely any food or rest, and too much eventitude, was enough to make me immobile until maybe an hour or two ago. I guess that’s okay. I saw everything I really wanted to see, the first two days. Today would have just consisted of poking around. I heard that Katamari Damacy is playable in an obscure corner of Namco’s booth, for instance. Also, it would have been nice to have talked with Tycho some. I keep missing him, although Gabe seems to be everywhere. Then there is the Pac-Man game for the DS, that two people in a row asked me about. I never got a chance with it, as the booth babes were rather quick to shoo me out of the demo room.
I have things to write.
Most interesting items this year:
There’s the Nintendo DS. It really could be revolutionary. You can’t understand until you hold it. This has the most potential of any current system to do something interesting. The PSP, while attractive, is just more of the same thing that Sony has been doing for nine years. There is no comparison between the two systems. Nintendo wins, somehow. I am shocked and surprised.
Neo Contra is a new Contra game that might as well have been made by Treasure, although Kojima insists that it wasn’t. It is more fun and bizarre than any other game in the series besides perhaps Hard Corps, for the Genesis, and it might be an example for how to do a series like Ikari Warriors in the modern era.
I asked Michael Meyers for a demo of KOF: Maximum Impact. He asked me if I had a dev system. I told him no. He said that it probably wouldn’t do me much good then, at the moment. He will send me a press demo when they have one ready. And. Good, because I want to play more of this game. I think I spent more time here than anywhere else. SNK did it. This game is more than competent. It is darned good — on whatever terms you might want to examine it. Brandon and Vince dismiss it rather quickly. They didn’t look close enough. Seriously, this is the start of something really good for SNK. I’m proud of them.
I hate Biohazard. Resident Evil 4 (version 3) is probably tied for my game of the show, along with the chat program for the Nintendo DS. (Just trust me on that one.) As Tim put it, it is already a great game. While it ain’t perfect, I can’t blame its few downsides in the face of what it has accomplished. There is an energy here.
Then there is Rumble Roses. I…
Jesus.
This is perhaps the most honest thing I have seen in my life.
It is a female wrestling game, designed by Yuke’s and published by Konami. It includes a mud wrestling feature, and a girl with devil horns and a tail who is chained up in a cellar somewhere, being whipped by another woman. They are still deliberating whether to include a nude mode. I think they should. From what they have accomplished so far, I see no reason to hold back. It would… taint the honesty of the rest of the game. And they say it will be an adults-only game anyway (the videogame equivalent of NC-17), so why not.
Tim says that he bets the game was designed by a woman. I think I agree with him on that. It would… take a while to explain.
Perhaps most surprising is that it plays well. It is a real game, with real depth to it. It plays like a 3D fighter, basically. And it’s just plain fun. Although again, it does not pretend. One of the main options on the menu is a computer-versus-computer mode.
Beat that, Itagaki.
EDIT: Wrong subtitle. Guh.