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09-22-2003, 11:54 AM
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#1 (permalink) |
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Upright
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Gamestop manager's Conference 2003
I'll give you guys an overview of the conference as a whole first.
On arrival day MS, Vivendi, and Nokia had hospitality suites. They were all showing off their games, and had free lunch. MS had the best sandwhichs so I ate there. I got there around 3 so I didn't play any of the stuff in MS's room then, I just watched. Nokia had some local models in mini skirts attracting the nerds in to their room, and so I went in an played some Tony Hawk and some Super Monkeyball. Not that impressed by it, but I do like Monkeyball. Dinner was nothing special, then everyone started getting drunk on the free booze. Next morning Nintendo did breakfast. Out of nowhere they announced that they were going to give away a $15k F-Zero arcade. Some bastadge won it. Then they gave us all GBA SPs and a copy of FF Tactics Advance. Thanks Nintendo. Then we go into the training rooms, 30 minutes in each one. Each company showed off some stuff, then head to the next. MS did lunch, and they are always good. They had a bunch of videos they showed us, with shorts from Red Vs. Blue in between them! They were great, they had them in the PC version talking about how does my butt look. They showed a making of Halo 2 video, that really didn't show very much new stuff just a new alien. I think it's one of the magic/elder type guys. Then they announced they were giving us a $400 gift bag containing a Xbox backpack, GR Island thunder, Fever 04, an xbox live starter kit, a green or blue controller, some shirts, a watch, a couple pens. Awesome. AND!!! Every manager who wasn't there last year, would get an Xbox since we got them last year. Very cool MS. Sony was supposed to do an outdoor BBQ for dinner, but it rained. They gave us 3 shiatty games and an inflatable chair! What a bunch of crap! This was followed by more free booze and general drunkeness. Nokia sponsored breakfast the next day, and gave us all N-Gages and Tomb Raider. After actually having one I can say that even though the design is very poor, it's actually really cool. You can do some really cool stuff with it, and the graphics are good to boot. Tomb Raider sucks though. The Nokia rep sent me a pic of Britney Spears kissing Madonna via bluetooth. Thanks! If you have $300 for a phone get one, you'll like it. Valve did lunch and they showed us the Half Life 2 E3 video. Which of course got oohs and ahhh's. Then they announced that they wouldn't make the 09/30 date. No poop! Ok, time for the trade show. To get to the trade show you go across a courtyard to a building the size of a wharehouse. When you enter the first thing you see is a HUGE Sony display, then you notice the 3 hot chicks at MS's booth. They had 2 Dallas Maverics cheerleaders and some actress named Camille Anderson snapping pics with the nerds, er I mean managers. So I got 2 pics Now here's where I started playing stuff. In Ms's area they had CS, PGR 2, Halo PC, Xbox Music Mixer, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Crimson Skies, and Top Spin. Halo PC was awesome. They speeded it up just a very little bit. Not as much as I expected though. The controls were not quite what I expected. Left mouse fire, right mouse grenade, wheel button zoom, F is melee, tab switches weapons, E is switch weapons. Overall the control and feel were dead on. CS had a line so I watched a friend play it, it looks really good. I'm the only one ever who never played the PC version, so I can't compare it. My friend said he liked what they did with the levels though. Graphics weren't that bad either. Not even close to PS2. Crimson Skies I think will be a breakout hit, the multiplayer is really fast and fun. I will buy this one. I didn't play it very much though, as I spent most of my time on Ninja Gaiden, but more on that later. Top Spin, I just walked by it. Never got back around to it. PGR 2, first off they never had a sys link game with 16 people. I don't play racing games, except Mario Kart, so I never played it. Just wanted to let you know this guys full of it. Grabbed by the Ghoulies is fun and looks cool, but needs work. The controls are awkward at best. Xbox Music Mixer, It looks good. You can do more with it than I thought. If you put a CD in, it will strip the vocals for karaoke, you won't get the words on screen though. Do you hate naming all the songs on your HD? Well this has a database that will automatically add the song title when burning to the HD. I don't know if it will update your current library though. Plus you can show off slides and other crap. Pretty cool. Ninja Gaiden. This was the game I wanted to play the most, next to Halo 2, so I waited in line for this one. The game is amazing. The fighting system is dependent on how enemies are surrounding you or the environment. So almost every fight is different. Here's the set up for it. A is jump, X is small attack, Y strong attack, B is sub weapon, B and Y will do the Ninja magic. The menu allows you to set different sub weapons, the 3 I could pick from were ninja stars, incendiary daggers, and the bow. The stars were fast, not very strong though. Although it looked badass to be swinging then jump and lay stars into someone. The daggers were cool, you throw one in someone and a few seconds later there would be a small explosion hurting them. The bow looked great, although it was a little slow. Understandably though. It didn't seem strong enough though. There are also other main weapons as well, but I didn't mess with them. The level I played was a ninja dojo type area. Ninja's would jump out of hidden panels and attack, there was a trap door than dropped you into a cave, there were only bats it the cave. The level wouldn't finish or save without locking up so I couldn't do much but run around and kill stuff. The wall running is cool. How you do it depends on how you face the wall. You can run along the sides, run straight up and backflip down (or backflip up a ledge), or you can jump on the wall and hang a second then jump, this is for the old school wall jumping. I asked the Team Ninja rep if the game would make 11/19 and he said no. They are aiming for 12/15, they have a deal with MS that will get them more money if it releases by Christmas. Although he said they will release it when it's done. Mario Kart had the biggest line, I wanted to play it but never wanted to wait. Collin Quinn was at the Eye Toy playing around. I then went around the room collecting 6 bags of swag! That's really all I checked out, besides watching some stuff. On the last night Collin Quinn did stand up for us and it was hilarious. He ragged on all the corporate people, and Sony for being greedy bastards. If anyone has any questions, I'll answer 'em if I can. |
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10-07-2003, 01:30 PM
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#8 (permalink) |
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Upright
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Sorry for the absence. Here's some answers to some questions.
I am so envious! What kind of free swag did you take home? Tons of shirts, games, a GBA SP, a Nokia N-Gage, and a 2nd free Xbox due to a shipping mistake! did Halo2 have a cooperative in it? Just wondered, wish more companies would put that in! We didn't get to play it, only saw a making of vid for it. I would imagine it would. Anymore info on the N-gage? I can answer any question about it practically. Please ask something more specific. |
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10-07-2003, 11:51 PM
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#9 (permalink) |
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lost and found
Location: Berkeley
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That's a royal shitload of schwag and catered food. I shudder to think of how much these conferences cost them. Thanks for sharing that, though, very informative stuff, especially the part where Valve announced the delay to you before they announced it to the public. Kind of odd because, as game retailers, you had probably put two and two together weeks beforehand.
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"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine |
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| 2003, conference, gamestop, manager |
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