Feature: PAX05 - Day 2

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Welcome to part 2 of my coverage of the Penny Arcade Expo 2005. If you haven’t already read part 1, you can read it here. This article will cover the goings-on of Saturday, August 27th.

As hard as it was for me to believe it, Friday had been more or less uneventful compared to what was to follow. Saturday at 10 AM marked the opening of the exhibition hall, where select sponsors could highlight their upcoming products. Also, because of the nature of the convention, we’re talking not just console games, but also PC games, card games, and tabletop games, as well as the makers of gaming-related merchandise. But we’ll get to that later.

When my friends and I arrived at 8:30 Saturday morning, the line was already hugely longer than it had been on Friday, but fortunately it moved a bit faster and we managed to get it in almost right after the doors opened at 9 AM. At first we were going to try and snag some console freeplay time, but we realized the line for the exhibition room was filling up fast. So we got in line once more. At that time, the line extended from the door of the exhibition room and out through the lobby, though it quickly extended behind us up the stairs to the next floors. It went all the way up through the second and third floors, and it may have even reached the top (fourth) floor and down a hallway somewhere, though I couldn’t tell from my place halfway between the first and second floor. We waited in this line for almost 45 minutes playing DS multiplayer Pictochat, Nintendogs and Meteos before the doors opened.

As soon as you walked through the doors you were bombarded by one thing and one thing only: Nintendo. As the second-largest sponsor of the event, Nintendo must have gotten pretty good choice of where to put their booth, because it was right there at the entrance with two huge screens playing Twilight Princess facing right at the doors. There were also GameCube demo stations playing Super Mario Strikers, Mario Superstar Baseball, Battalion Wars, Geist, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, Incredible Hulk, and even some games I didn’t recognize. All were set up with large screens and Wavebird controllers, and three games had even larger screens than the rest: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Strikers, and Mario Superstar Baseball. Obviously, the runaway hit of the show was Zelda, with throngs of people amassed watching one person playing, even cheering when the person managed to defeat a foe or accomplish a goal, though it would even be fair to say that Super Mario Strikers managed to gather a bit of a crowd at times. In addition to GameCube demos, Nintendo had eight DS stations and three Game Boy Advance stations, with each system also hooked up to a larger screen (or two in the DS’s case) allowing anyone else to watch the action as it was seen on-screen. Allow me to provide videos of some major games. Note that in many of these videos, you can hear noise coming from other, nearby games, as well, not to mention the noise of the crowd. You may want to turn your speakers down...

Battalion Wars
Video 1
Video 2
At the time I was recording the first video, the station was quite crowded. Generally one person could play the game for quite a while with no interruption, but I was unlucky enough to be right in the middle of a crowd, which is why someone’s silhouette covers the right side of the screen. And yes, he picks his ear partway through the video. I claim no responsibility for this. The second video was taken while the station was less crowded. 

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Video
I never got around to actually playing this one, as I’m not a huge fan of the series, but my friend seemed to think it was quite fun.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Video
It’s basically just like any of the GBA games, but with pretty impressive 3D graphics. The cutscenes especially are amazing, though there are none of them on this video.

Mario Superstar Baseball
Video
Nintendo had two or three of these kiosks set up, and it was quite a bit of fun, though I’m not sure if I’ll be picking this one up or not.

Super Mario Strikers
Video
This was probably the second most popular GameCube game. If you can imagine a Mario Kart game on a soccer field, you’ve basically got the idea behind this title.

Metroid Prime: Hunters
Video
As previously reported, Nintendo had a brand spankin’ new demo of Metroid available at PAX, and I managed to play through almost the entire thing. The controls were basically the same, though at the beginning of the demo you were asked to choose left or right-handed controls, unlike the previous demo’s controls where you could use your left or right hand with the same control setup. Also, the graphics were actually quite a bit nicer, at least for Samus’s own model, and the ammo system was totally gone. Now, when you first press and hold down the fire button, approximately 5 shots fire rapidly, then the next few shots fire slower, and the longer you hold the button the slower the firing rate becomes. Even the scan visor was included in this demo. I was among the group that was worried about how the FPS controls would transfer into a Metroid adventure, but now I think they’ll be able to pull it off.

Metroid Pinball
Video
I’m a big Metroid fan myself, if you didn’t already know, and so I was almost a bit disappointed in Nintendo when they announced Metroid Pinball. But after playing it, I am worried no longer. I think the game has the potential to provide a fun adventure not found in many pinball games. Plus, the graphics are quite nice for the DS.

Game Boy Micro
Video
I know it’s not really a game, but they had one demo unit for people to try and it was actually quite comfortable to hold, and the screen is just as nice as everyone says. If it were a bit less expensive I’d be tempted to pick one up myself.

Mario Kart DS
Video 1
Video 2
The demo version had two cups: the Nitro cup and the Retro cup. The Retro cup had one course from each previous Mario Kart game (Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart Super Circuit, and Mario Kart Double Dash!!), while the Nitro cup had four totally original courses. The game itself was quite fun albeit a bit unpolished, which is to be expected from a title that’s still two and a half months from release. Just to confirm, the ‘sparks’ mechanic from Double Dash does return, but instead of moving through three colors of sparks to get a boost, there’s only one color of spark and if you manage to get it you get a boost when you finish turning.

Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness
Video
I didn’t spend much time playing this one, but based on my observation of what little the demo had to offer, it seems just like a 3D version of the old Game Boy RPGs.

Sonic Rush
Video
Again, it’s basically just like any old side-scrolling Sonic game, but the environment spans across both screens and includes 3D boss fights.

Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble
Video
I was never a fan of the original games, so I really didn’t take much time with this title, though it looked just like what I had seen of the previous versions. I’ll let the video speak for itself.

And finally, the one game you’ve all been waiting for…

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
If you read everything about the E3 demo, then you know exactly what was there, because that’s all this was. In fact, at the end of the demo it even said “Thank you for playing the E3 demo.” You had three choices of demos to play, and each one had a 15 minute time limit. The first allowed you to spend time in Toaru Village, Link’s home town, helping villagers with chores and such. In the second demo, you were pitted against an evil village chieftain, who had kidnapped one of the children from Toaru. You have to attack the chieftain multiple times from horseback, while simultaneously fighting off his minions, and then the demo moves into a one-on-one fight on a bridge. The third demo puts you into a standard Zelda dungeon. Video 1 linked above is of the horse-fight demo, video 2 is of the dungeon demo, and video 3 is of a short, humorous clip of Link talking to one of the villagers. Please be aware that I had to fight through quite a crowd to get this footage, and most of the time during the first video I was holding the camera up above other people’s heads, so it might be somewhat shaky.

The exhibition hall also had booths from many other companies, including: a Prima games table where they were giving one free recent strategy guide to each person; a number of PC developers giving out free game demos; some tabletop or card game booths; one practically non-existent Sony booth. The entire area consisted of four PS2 consoles and a large table with stacks of Jak X and Sly 3 demos. My friend even says he overheard one of the Sony reps complaining something like, “Man, Zelda stole the show…” Even the Xbox was hardly represented. Microsoft had one single Xbox hooked up to a projection screen in the back of the room, and some developer had one of their games running on an Xbox, but other than that, nothing.

So we spent most of the day in and out of the exhibition hall, with breaks for lunch and random wandering. My friends even won free copies of City of Heroes, Lineage II, and a beta test of City of Villains, as well as other swag from the NCSoft booth for answering comic-book trivia. The next really interesting event was a Mario Kart Double Dash!! team tournament, which unfortunately, we had not registered for in time, so we waited around to see if we could make it for the standby list (we didn’t). Almost immediately after was a Mario Power Tennis team tournament, which we had registered for in time. Lucky for us, our first opponents didn’t show, and there wasn’t enough of a standby list to accommodate everybody, so we advanced by default. But then we got our asses handed to us on a silver platter in the second round, which wasn’t too surprising as neither of us had played the game very much in the past and we were tired from getting almost no sleep the night before. After that it was time for the Saturday night concert, which had an even longer line than on Friday due to more crowds that day, and more exciting performances.

First up was a woman named Connie Lin who played beautiful piano arrangements of music from Final Fantasy. Then was MC Frontalot, who is described in the PAX guidebook as “one of the biggest names in Nerdcore Rap.” To be honest, I’ve never liked rap, and as usual, I couldn’t understand a word that was being said, so I spent most of that time in Pictochat, with other people who didn’t like him. “MC Suxalot” was a common joke. Next up was MC Chris. Another rapper. Though I didn’t expect much, and I still couldn’t understand his music, the breaks between his songs were like stand-up comedy directed at nerds, which managed to be pretty hilarious. Following him was the real main event of the night, one of the most popular videogame cover bands ever…

The Minibosses. We’re talking three guitarists and one drummer playing only covers of NES music. They started off with a song from Goonies 2 and then moved on to requests. Contra was asked for first, though I have a feeling they may have been misunderstanding the many cheers for “Zelda.” Megaman, Castlevania, and Mario Bros. 2 followed. At this point they declared that their next song was their last, and everyone assumed they had heard the cheers for Zelda and were going to play that, but no. The next one was a total surprise. Remember what I said earlier, about being a big Metroid fan? Boy, was I happy.

Now I’m not much of a concert-goer, but being in a mosh pit, surrounded by other gamers, and throwing up the horns to my favorite video game music? This was… unbelievable. Absolutely stunning. I swear to god, thinking about this is practically bringing tears to my eyes. It was an amazing way to end the night. Well, not quite end. I still had to fight my way through the crowd of people to pay $10 for a copy of the Minibosses CD, and then get out the door. Unfortunately, the CD didn’t include the Metroid song they had just played, but I managed to download it later, and I’m eagerly awaiting the PAX 2005 DVD.

Stay tuned to Nintendo Now for the last part of my PAX05 coverage.