With your kind indulgence, we’ll be shifting gears a bit this week, with an on-the-scene report from this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, held as always in sunny Los Angeles, California. There’s enough comic-related games on display to warrant a little discussion here in Comics 101, and hey, what’s the point of having a bully pulpit if I can’t take advantage of it with a little off-topic digression from time to time?

For those of you perhaps not in the know, E3 is the video-game industry’s biggest event of the year, where announcements are made, new games are shown off, console manufacturers live or die and geeks gather like salmon upstream, desperate to get a look at next year’s big thing.

Taking place every year at the Los Angeles Convention Center (right next door to Staples Center, home of our very own nonplayoff-contending Los Angeles Lakers), E3 gives a few thousand industry insiders, reporters and folks like me who have generous friends a sneak peek at what will be showing up.

While all the buzz this year was about the three new systems on tap from the big three video-game manufacturers, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Revolution, the line to see the demo for each of these new systems ranged from 2 to 4 hours the day I was there, and I just don’t have near enough patience for that. Luckily, EA Games were determined to make a big splash with their support of the new XBOX 360, building a CircleVision theatre on the convention hall floor, with a motion picture screen that completely surrounded the audience, who stood on a platform raised 2 feet above the ground, directly above what must have been a truly monstrous sound system. When that bad boy rumbled, you felt it in your back teeth.

Granted, the presentation probably helped, but I was very impressed with what I saw of the XBOX 360. The new Madden football game looked absolutely stunning, while the new racing game “Need for Speed” blew me away.

Even cooler, and more of a surprise, was the upcoming video-game version of THE GODFATHER, what looks like a GRAND THEFT AUTO-type crime simulator that will boast what the GTA games have always lacked: a compelling story. Featuring the voices and likenesses of Marlon Brando, James Caan and Robert Duvall, this looks like a winner. Let’s just hope Sofia Coppola doesn’t show up…

EA Games has a bunch of upcoming titles that will no doubt appeal to comics fans, including BATMAN BEGINS, the companion to this June’s big-screen return for the Caped Crusader. While the graphics looked great and the Batman character moved more satisfactorily “Batman-like” than any previous video-game incarnation, the fact that the BATMAN property has never garnered a halfway-decent video game has me remaining cautious.

Still, the game at least provided an excuse to bring the new Batmobile…

Also coming from EA is MARVEL NEMESIS, what looks like a fairly routine fighting game featuring a bunch of newly created characters and a handful of Marvel superheroes. Seems like nothing special, to be honest, but I’ll probably wind up getting it, if only to have Iron Man lay the smack down on Wolverine…

The big winner from EA for me was their new game translation of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, the classic second James Bond film from 1963. Not only does the game feature the likeness of a young Sean Connery, but Connery himself provides the voice of 007. The demo level I tried featured Bond in an aerial jetpack gunfight with a SPECTRE agent over and around Big Ben. What more do you need? Sold.

Universal was showing off their new HULK game, which looks to be more of a success than last year’s movie-inspired version. Not only does the game feature more comic-based characters like the Abomination, but it offers more of the free-roaming aspect of last year’s big hit SPIDER-MAN 2, including more innovative ways for the Hulk to use the world around him as weapons – specifically, in the demo I saw, ol’ Greenskin tears a squad car in two and wraps the pieces around his fists to use as weapons. This looks pretty sweet.

Activision also had a passel of comics-based games to show off, including the game adaptation of this summer’s FANTASTIC FOUR. Unfortunately, most likely to keep the movie under wraps, there was no playable version of the game to try out, just a trailer of game footage. The good news is, the game looks pretty sharp, with some cool and convincing effects for characters like Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman. The bad news is, the game looks better than the movie, and by a strong margin.

Also on display from Activision was the new ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN game, which takes the engine and free-roaming gameplay from last year’s SPIDER-MAN 2, and grafts onto it the continuity and style of the top-selling and extremely popular comic-book series, with USM writer Brian Michael Bendis writing the game’s script and dialogue. The game has a much more distinctly cartoony look than SPIDER-MAN 2, with heavy “ink” lines around the characters and objects and an exaggerated “manga”-like style to the figures. While I’m not a big fan of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN the comic book, I’m definitely in for the game.

The other big super-license from Activision, X-MEN LEGENDS, proved to be a real disappointment, only because there was no playable version available, with just a trailer on display for the sequel, X-MEN LEGENDS II: RISE OF THE APOCALYPSE. Still, I was so impressed with the first one, I’m in for the follow-up regardless.

Disney’s Buena Vista Games had a few promising things on display, not the least of which was THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, their new game based on the movie to be released this Christmas. While the game was a pretty average-looking hack-and slash adventurer, there were some awesome props on display from the movie, including a full-sized Minotaur suit and several of the White Witch’s petrified victims.

And making its record third engagement at E3 is the oft-delayed THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS: OOGIE’S REVENGE, which was shown at the 2003 and 2004 E3s and yet still hasn’t managed to make it to market. Here’s hoping third time’s the charm, as the game looks quite good. But then, I say that every year…

For me, though, the big Disney news was the playable demo of KINGDOM HEARTS II, the sequel to the amazing RPG from Disney and Square Enix, which mixed characters from the worlds of Disney and Final Fantasy to marvelous effect. I’m usually not one for role-playing games – if I’m not kicking, punching or shooting, I tend to get bored pretty easily. The original KINGDOM HEARTS was one of the few games to so ensnare me that I actually played it all the way through, and the test run I was able to give KH II leads me to believe that this one will follow in its footsteps.

One bit of new technology that really blew me away was the new Game Boy Micro from Nintendo, a new handheld system that’s incomparably small and light. About the length of a credit card and about at thick as a granola bar, the Game Boy Micro will play your existing Game Boy games on an unbelievably tiny screen. I’m not sure how practical it is for long gaming sessions, as just a few seconds of gameplay tended to make my eyes all twitchy, but man is it cool-looking.

Making a surprisingly strong presence this year was Namco, with new entries in their long-running Soul Calibur and Pac-Man series, as well as a sequel to last year’s surprise sleeper hit, Katamari Damacy, the slightly incomprenhesible yet maddeningly addicting Japanese import for the PS2, which challenged gamers to roll their “katamari” over countless objects in snowball-like fashion, making their sphere increasingly larger and difficult to maneuver. I realize it sounds stupid and pointless, but I for one can’t stop playing it, and attendees were lined up to try out the sequel, “We Heart Katamari!”

Finally, no trip to E3 would be complete without a stop downstairs in Kentia Hall, the “minor leagues” of E3, where all the smaller peripheral manufacturers show off their wares in distinctly more modest booths. Also downstairs is the “Video Game Museum” – always a good time for grizzled old gamers like myself – which shows off a wide array of vintage video game systems from the 1970s and ‘80s, including my personal favorites, the Atari 5200 (despite perhaps the most fiendishly pain-inducing controllers ever designed) and the Vectrex, the stand-alone vector-graphics game system that came complete with its own video screen.

This year, I was amazed to see a bit of video-game lore that I’d long thought only a legend: the computer attachment for the Mattel Intellivision game system, an attachment so frickin’ huge you actually had to put your Intellivision inside it.

My favorite thing at this year’s E3, though? Also found downstairs, it was the newest releases from the robotmakers at Wow Wee, creators of last year’s big toy hit Robosapien.

Sure, Robosapien Version 2 is plenty cool, but for my money, there’s not much cooler than this:

Robots? Plenty cool. Dinosaurs? Way cool. But a robot dinosaur? Pure genius.

We’ll be getting right back to our all-comics, all-the-time format next time, with a return look at your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. If you have questions about comics, comic-based video games or robot dinosaurs, send them to stipton99x@moviepoopshoot.com.

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