…or, the thoughts and ramblings of a hungry, sleep-deprived nerd who spent a day and a half on a New York City sidewalk.

Fans from all over flocked to New York City this weekend for a special event. Some came in groups, others traveled alone. They took buses, cars, trains, or planes, and brought tents and chairs to wait outside on the busy, rain-drenched streets for the chance to spend a few fun hours with people they had never met before. And all for one reason.

Michael Phelps was hosting Saturday Night Live.

But just one block south of the NBC Studios, another line was forming, outside Nintendo World. I got there Friday afternoon and met some folks who had been there since Thursday evening, waiting in line for another, cooler event (at least as far as we gamers are concerned) – the Nintendo Power 20th Anniversary Party.
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You gotta love the magic of TV. As it is well known, the camera can add 20 pounds, but apparently it can also make a crappy-ass E3 look like a pretty decent one. Watching evening re-runs of E3 coverage on G4, you’d never know that this year’s show was somehow, well, a piece of crap. Thankfully, we have our own Brad Hilderbrand to report the real truth back to us. Check out his gritty account of what this year’s E3 was REALLY like here.

In addition to being the unstoppable Jack Bauer on 24, owning a record company, telling David Letterman about getting drunk and tackling a Christmas tree, and being a huge hockey fan, Jack Bauer is now getting more involved in the world of video games. Following the somewhat disappointing (because it was only on Sony consoles, fuckers!) 24: The Game, Kiefer is back lending his voice to the upcoming Call of Duty: World at War. Activision announced the deal during their E3 press conference last night, saying the game is going for a more gritty feel than previous entries. No word yet on whether or not Kiefer’s character breaks out some Bauer-like torture scenes to increase that gritty factor, but I guess we’ll find out.

Oh, and, though it was revealed earlier in the day during Nintendo’s press conference, Activision confirmed that co-op play will be coming to all consoles, and online co-op for up to four will also be available (presumably only on the 360 and PS3).

Thanks to 1up for the info.

With less than 12 hours to go before Bungie was poised to make an announcement at E3 regarding their latest game, a message has shown up on their homepage proclaiming that the announcement has been delayed.

Tough news for the folks at Bungie, and even worse for those fans (myself included) who were very interested in what the company was bringing to the conference. On the bright side, though, I can actually concentrate at work tomorrow and not have to rush out at 10:07 to call someone with internet access.

We’ll keep you posted as more details arrive.

…and there’s not much else to say about that. Tretton revealed that yes, it is a reality, and showed a trailer, but no release date or gameplay footage was shown.

inFamous, on the other hand, was shown, with a release slated for spring 2009, and that looked pretty kick-ass. Looks like a mash-up of Crackdown’s explosions, SW: The Force Unleashed’s lightning and physics effects, and a total free-roaming open world.

Sony then introduced a new MMO action title coming just to the PS3 which will allow for up to 256 players at one time. Players will be broken down into 8-person squads, so the fighting will be a little more familiar, but the grand scale of the battles will still be larger than anything else seen so far. The title is announced as MAG or Massive Action Game. Maybe that’ll change to something a little more war-like and less like a tagline or product description, but we’ll have to wait and see. The trailer showed some heavy fire going on between two rival factions, and when it looked as though the action had slowed, reinforcements came soaring in on parachutes while jets flew by on bombing runs.

Thanks to Wired.com for the Kratos close-up.

Well, $399.99, but you get the idea. Near the close of his E3 keynote, Jack Tretton showed off a new 80 GB “Core Pack” PS3 that will, in Sony’s hope, make it a bit easier for PS2 owners “on the cusp” of making the transition able to upgrade to the next-gen (or now-gen, depending on who you ask) system. What this means for the 40 GB model was not immediately revealed, but from personal experience in retail, that one’s been out of stores for at least a few weeks now, and if the Core 80 GB model comes anytime soon, you can probably say goodbye to the 40 gig.

[Edit] Okay, I previously said something about backwards compatibility, like the current 80 gig model, but now it’s looking like that’s not the case. It’s basically a 40 gig with twice the memory, at the same price. We’ll see as reports filter out before this version is released.

In another announcement that’s a bit of a change from the norm at events like these, Sony’s Jack Tretton has announced that the updated Playstation Store, with the just-announced and demoed movie and tv download services, will be available tonight. While E3 is usually reserved for future announcements, showcasing something that goes live in just a few hours is a big jump for Sony. Another cool feature of this download functionality is the ability to transfer titles from the PS3 or PC directly to the PSP, allowing users to watch anywhere they like. Yes, even while on the toilet.

Following that news, Tretton went on to talk more about the PSP and its new bundles that will be releasing later this year - a blue unit with Madden 09, and a new version of the silver bundle, this time with Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, and a 1GB MSPD. Bigger than that, however, was the announcement of Resistance: Retribution, coming spring 2009 to the handheld. Sony loves transferring their favorite titles to the PSP, and the graphics on this one look to keep the tradition started by R&C, Daxter, and God of War. Loco Roco 2, Patapon 2, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, quiz-game Buzz, and Lego Batman were also shown in a montage video for upcoming PSP titles.

Rather than give the audience some boring old PowerPoint presentation about numbers and sales data, Jack Tretton and Sony created an entire level of LittleBigPlanet that outlined the statistics and several news items. It was a definite shift from the norm, and the game just looks so damn cute! Sony really went above and beyond for that part of the show, and coming from someone who never owned a Sony console, that’s some decent praise :p

p.s. thanks again to 1up

After a slightly off-color comment about the deceased Jack Palance, Sony’s Jack Tretton gave the press at the E3 conference a brief history lesson on Sony’s consoles, partly to showcase their impact on the industry, but also seemingly as an excuse for why there aren’t more “great” PS3 titles available yet. As he said, the PS2 was brought about with a 10-year life cycle in mind, and many of the system’s triple-A quality titles did not release until at least four or five years into that time. He essentially said that the same holds true for the PS3, as it has only been on the market for 2 years now and, with the PS2 still going strong, it may be a little while before we see the deluge of must-have titles that were a hallmark of the PS2.

Sony then went on to showcase gameplay footage of Resistance 2, with some ridiculously huge Chimera beast attacking the player and his NPC counterparts (a “300-foot leviathan” according to the developer). The graphics looked good, if a little faded color-wise, though that seems like the motif they’re going for. 8-player co-op and 60-player multiplayer will be included with the new installment.

Thanks to 1up.com for the pic.

As we previously hinted at a few months ago, a new Zelda game is on the way for the Wii, according to Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata. The teams that make the Zelda and Mario franchises are “hard at work” on new titles, though no other information (including release timeframes) has been provided. We’ll keep you posted if there are any more updates during Nintendo’s press conference.

On the side of previously leaked information, Animal Crossing: City Folk has been reavealed to be coming to the Wii as the first big announcement of the company’s E3 conference. The intro stated that it will be “coming to Wii in 2008,” but no exact date has been given yet. Perhaps the coolest news about this game is that it will have some incredible WiiConnect24 capabilities, including a new WiiSpeak microphone device that allows players to talk online. It’s supposed to be different than a traditional headset device, instead allowing rooms full of people to talk to each other.