E3 Rolls on like an unstoppable tank. Many of the big announcements are made, so today and tomorrow will focus primarily on 3rd parties showing off all the games they’ve been whipping their development teams to get demo ready for the last month and a half. So today is the chance for the press to play the games, try to get a few more questions answered, and meet Adam West.

An amazing thing has happened to Mario. While Galaxy grabbed the glory in the press conference and initial reports, fans are rallying around Super Paper Mario on GameCube. It looks to be as much a classic throwback as New SMB on the DS. One fan I heard even called it the Yoshi’s Island of the Cube: A game on a near defunct system that pushes the limits technically and creatively. Luckily, Cube games will still play on the Wii, so I have no doubt if this turns into a great game it will find its audience.

Since its quiter clear we all love Wii now, WiiGamer has nabbed some screens of the Virtual Console. You get box art and a screen that maps out your controller before getting into your classic game. If you still don’t believe, then theres lots of people who do. The line to play Wii is 3+ Hours. Thats longer than any line as Six Flags, folks.
Most impressive thing I’ve seen today is Sonic for PS3 and 360. I thought the Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure 7 years ago looked
pretty spiffy, but its amazing what a little more horsepower can do. I’m willing to forgive the less pleasurable elements of the last few Sonic games if this one can deliver.

In somewhat disheartening news, Nintendo may be finally laying down the Game Boy. N-boss Iwata says the DS is such a success they’re in no position to develop another portable to succeed the GBA.

Peter Moore rather succinctly summed up my opinion of the PS3 price: “Tell me why you would buy a $600 PS3. People are going to buy two (machines.) They’re going to buy an Xbox and they’re going to buy a Wii… for the price of one PS3.” Kaz Hirai insists gamers are getting a deal, and that fans will stay loyal to the PlayStation. For your sake I hope that works out, Kaz. People ain’t flocking to the PSP.

Optimus Prime also showed up at E3. Why? Heh, no idea. Haven’t heard word one about Activision’s Transformer game.

Scouring the internets, I had a hard time finding anything else that was actually “news.” Its all just impressions and previews now, which is fine and good by them, but I see no reason to link 3rd party conjecture when I can’t offer my own.

The first real day of E3 come to a close with less E3 news than the days that weren’t technically part of E3. Weird.

Here’s are some of the fun things discovered today:

A new Duck Hunt?!

A sequel I honestly never thought I’d see is playable at E3. The Wii will have a new gun peripheral and what is surely gaming history’s most played gun game appears to be having another go at it. Is this going to be a full on Wii game or is this just a demo so that they can showcase the gun at E3? I’m not going to speculate an answer to that! IGN gives us an impression of the game as well as a look at the new “light gun” shell for the Wii controller. It’s unknown how exactly the “light gun” will work or even whether or not it will use light (if it does not it will probably not be refered to as a light gun much longer…”. Since the original Nintendo Zapper is incompatible on some modern televisions (such as my LCD projection TV) this may finally give us unfortunate souls who tragically only have access to high end televisions the oppurtunity to shoot some ducks again.

New Super Smash Bros. Brawl characters announced

New characters for the Wii Super Smash Bros. game have been reported by Kotaku. New characters include Solid Snake, Nintendogs, Metaknight, Pit, Zero Suit Samus and Wario. I don’t even know who two of those are! I certainly hope players can move their Wii-mote in a belly rubbing motion to incapacitate their Nintendog opponents… though apparently we will be using the classic GameCube controllers on this one.

Earthworm Jim Returns!

From the soil did crawl an interesting announcement from Atari today. We’ll be seeing another Earthworm Jim game, this time on the PSP. Check out IGN for more on this.

An innovative X-Box game?

A game more attypical for it’s system than Kameo will be released on the X-Box! You guess it! It’s a… piniata game… WHAT? Yeah so I guess you just whack a piniata with a bat, right? No. It’s a piniata farm simulation game. Wasn’t that a skit on the short lived John Leguizamo vehicle “House of Buggin“? Well I’m pretty sure it was but still this game is coming. Check out this article at Kotaku for more info and a sweet looking screenshot.

The Four Horsemen have revealed the fully painted 2-up of the FANtastic Exclusive for 2006. Over the past several months, they have posted polls allowing the fans to choose many different aspects of the figure from concept designs for the character to be made to the weapons it will be wielding. The last of those polls have closed and they started work on the figure. We know get to see the fruit of their labor and our choice. Without further ado: Xetheus, 7th Kingdom Minotaur.

The first 3 pictures on that page look heavily photoshopped, so I included the non-altered ones below.

  

TNI is reporting that Majestic Studios will be offering an exclusive for the San Diego Comic Con. The exclusive will be a Battle Damaged Cylon from the new incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. The figure will not be just a repaint of upcoming line they will be offering but instead featuring a whole new head sculpt. Includes figure, interchangable arms so regular arms can be switched for the turret gun arms, stand and base featuring head and parts of another fallen Cylon. Articulation includes shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, and knees. These figures will be extremely limited to 400 pieces, 100 of which will be available on preview night with the rest available at the normal start of the convention and none will be held back. Figures are on a first come first serve basis.

TFW2005 is reporting a RUMOR, and I emphasize that this is just a rumor at the moment, that Alternators Nemesis Prime will be a San Diego Comic Con Exclusive. Nemesis Prime is a black repaint of the currently available Alternators Optimus Prime. This might not be that far of a stretch since last year Legends of Cybertron Skywarp was a Hasbro exclusive at the convention.

Remember, this is strictly speculative at the moment and has not been confirmed.

The Nintendo press conference has already gone down, the Microsoft one is still coming. Want some of the important points of an already insanely busy day?

Nintendo Wii still doesn’t have a release date (they say “Q4”) or a price (everyone implies $249), but it does have a launch list including Zelda Twilight Princess, which will be released on both GameCube and Wii on the same day. Other announced Wii titles: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, New Fire Emblem, Rayman, Sonic Wildfire, and Super Mario Galaxy!

And anyone worried that the WiiMote won’t be any good for playing older games on the virtual console need only look at the attahed image.

Lots more info after the jump!
[Read the rest of this entry…]

Lets get the biggest news out of the way: PlayStation 3 launches Nov 17th in the US for $499 with a 20 GB hard drive and for $599 with a 60 GB hard drive. They’ve also ditched the boomerang controller for… a controller identical to the PS2. But wait! Its got motion sensors too! Its an obvious last minute addition, as they’ve got no games to support the feature.
Wow. Just wow. Kotaku and Jostiq have excellent minute by minute coverage of the Sony Event.

Glossed over by Sony is what else will be missing from the $499 PS3 bundle: Wireless, HDMI, and Memory stick support.

The show doesn’t even start until Wednesday officially and theres already so much to talk about!

Other big news announced today: [Read the rest of this entry…]

The show hasn’t started yet, but that doesn’t mean some set up and outdoor advertisements aren’t being seen by wandering eyes!

Xbox Advanced has a few shots online already. Lets take a look here… No. Oh no. Oh Lord, NO! This has to be a joke right? Acclaim went out of business. I thought we were safe! Its…

A NEW TUROK GAME.

This does not bode well for the rest of E3.