One interesting experiment attempted during E3 paid off: I used the iPad as my chief work device. I made a deal with myself that I would do brief write-ups on each booth I had booked with appointments, for my office, plus I did a couple articles for Aeropause. And I made it happen even though the entire experience of getting up early and riding in to LACC and stalking the convention floors was all fairly exhausting.
The only tech error was when I tried to use public Dropbox to stash an image for an Aeropause article. Even though WordPress has a non-Flash uploader, it would not run, so I went for Dropbox. The Dropbox link actually worked, except when the article bumped down to summary mode, then the IMG tag broke.
Since I had hundreds of photos to get back to my office, I used Haygood's PC (and Dropbox) to shift those files around. But the writing was all iPad.
I only booked two appointments for Day 3: Capcom and Nintendo. I really really like what's going on with Resident Evil: Revelations for 3DS. It looks great, and it brings the series back to actual survival horror. Not that Resident Evils 4 and 5 were not great, but they sure were not survival horror games. Revelations puts Jill on a cruise liner (holy crap! Gun Survivor!) that somebody has made resemble the famous Raccoon City mansion just to mess with her. Although this Jill still is not the old-school anime cutie in a blue beret from Resident Evil 1, it looks like Capcom prettied her up after her ugly-stick turn in RE5.
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record looks like the Dead Rising 2 I wanted in the firs place. Frank is back, running around the same environment that had us play as Chuck in last year's Dead Rising 2: No Subtitle. I spent the entire demo take photographs and ignoring zombie combat. $40, which is actually Capcom being cool and not raking us for the usual $60.
Street Fighter X Tekken has a hook I like: the combos are easier to pull off. I have argued for years that the Street Fighter franchise needs to stop catering to the hardcore half-circle back punch right right kick crowd. It will be seen as a concession to the relatively younger Tekken controls, but this game is much more approachable. Particularly when it comes to switching characters, but again, that's Tekken at work.
I spent an hour with Capcom and then walked across the aisle to Nintendo. Nintendo had plenty of games to sample, covering four different systems. It was unplanned, but incredibly smart that I made Nintendo my last booking of the show, because I spent three hours there, mostly in the cordoned-off 3DS deck.
I got to check out the Wii U for around 45 minutes. The Wii U is too far out for Nintendo to have retail-bound games ready for prime time, so all of the Wii U stations were tech demos and gaming concepts. They did a Mario+Miis version of Pac-Man Vs, which is great. I did the pirate ship rhythm game... which is noteworthy for showing off the idea that the New Controller screen can be used to display a 360 degree virtual world.
It is going to be great. "Regular" games will be controlled just as we expect, but with the obvious benefits of a touchscreen. The Wii generation of silly motion control games will carry on untouched since the U will still use all your Wii controllers. And we'll get a new set of Wii U-specific games - like the pirate world thing - that will use the touchscreen in ways we haven't imagined yet. OH... and we'll get games that run entirely on the touchscreen, just like an iPad. This is very exciting stuff.
So this will be the Wii's last holiday. It had a great fall last year, but the spring seasons have been abandoned for years. Kirby Wii should be cool, Skyward Sword will be the usual brand of amazing, If the hip Rhythm Heaven makes it stateside this fall, that won't be bad at all. Toss in Fortune Street, a board game with Mario characters and Dragon Quest characters, as a bonus grab... I don't think anybody expects that one to excel at retail, but it will be a nice addition to the holiday lineup.
I think the last few years of Wii releases might have outlined to Nintendo how nice it would be to have competitor-comparable third party support. Nintendo does great stuff time and time again, but they can only field one AAA first-party game each quarter. They need third parties to fill in the rest of the year. The reel of "hardcore" franchises headed to Wii U had the press conference audience continually gasping in shock. Of course, I think every Nintendo product launch has claimed massive third party support, but for one reason or another it flops.
Although just having big third party multi-platform titles is great, Nintendo needs the support system that surrounds them. Those of us already invested in PSN Trophies and Xbox Gamerscore are going to be difficult to get to actively choose the Wii U version of a particular title. People who don't have a PS3 or 360 should have plenty to look forward to. If Nintendo can leverage the games they excel at with the social systems and digital storefronts that the other guys have had for years, it will be incredible. Nintendo made a lot of promises (and gamers made a lot of assumptions) in the transition from GameCube to Wii, but I can't help but hope the Wii U hardware strategy will help Nintendo play in two worlds: their own, plus everybody else's.
Day 3 stats: 5,527 steps. An hour in StreetPass Mii Plaza.
I was a little worried that I was not going to complete the required two passes through the Find Mii game. At the end of Day 3, I was right at the last boss fight on the second round! Would have sucked if I was stalled out at that point, since I never get any StreetPasses at home, ever.
I finished the Puzzle Swap stuff by Day 2. I was worried about that one too.
Luckily, my Disneyland trip squeaked in just enough additional StreetPasses for me to defeat Find Mii! My current Mii Plaza totals are 389 Miis and 428 StreetPass tags (which includes people I StreetPassed twice or even three times over the course of E3.)
Everybody, EVERYBODY, uses their StreetPass info to pimp their websites and Twitter accounts. I want to roll through my Mii population and come up with a list of all the sites and people I encountered.
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