News from “E for All”

The E for All bilboard on top the LA Convention Center could be seen from my hotel. Excitedly I walked to the convention center yesterday, hoping to see mass demos of games and reviews.

My hopes were high as I saw the line for entry stretched out the door, and this was only the guests that preregistered. The event would not be open to late registrants for another four hours. While waiting in line I was able to receive a hand full of free magazines, XBox, PC Gamer and Animation Magazine. Outside the convention hall E for All had hired a chalk artist to paint an exclusive art piece for the event. While in line I watch as she worked on her piece.

Finally the doors opened and we went in…. 

Nintendo, EA and Intel had by far the largest booth.

Intel gave away pillows and a 1 gig jump drive if you danced in front of a green screen, where later they used premier to edit you into an Intel commercial which they down loaded to the jump drive. Of course I couldn’t resist the temptation to be a star, so I jumped in line. Unfortunately I forgot my shirt was part green, and the video looks like I have a giant whole in my shirt. I might do it again today, don’t know.

EA had a large booth where you could play The Simpsons, My Sims and Medal of Honor 2 to name a few. Unfortunately no samples of Spore, which my husband was hoping to get a glimpse of. The Medal of Honor 2 game was wii compatible and a special gun setup for the wii controller was included. It was really fun to play with the gun controller. Defiantly a game I could get into. As for The Simpson, and My Sims, I never got a chance to play, not because the line was long, but there were no real time limits to playing a game. When someone came up to a game system, they might be on there for hours. This was the case for many of the games.

Ninetndo’s booth included Mario Galaxy, which many people didn’t even get to play, since the Wii Girls (the Nintendo booth babes) hogged the controls and played instead of answering peoples questions. The DS’s seemed to be available, but the screens on those are so small, I can see why not many people opt to play it. There was also a Nintendo Brawl Bash, highlighting the new Nintendo Brawl game. The line for that was actually long, so that’s my first stop today.

Namco had a super cool Pac-Man booth. Unfortunately it was more of a shop, selling even the smallest piece of pac-man merchandise no less than 20 dollars. A lovely 6 piece stuffed set of pac-man and the ghosts, was $33, I’ll wait and look at ebay. Namco also had a feature where you could download Mrs. Pac-man to your cellphone, eagerly I asked the booth attendants how to do so… Turns out none of the the booth workers knew anything about it… I finally saw a banner that gave instructions, but come on, if your working a booth know the answer to peoples questions.

The rest of the booth were mainly that of thrid party games sellers, not even second party, but third party. For example there was a booth of an EBay game seller that repairs game consoles. Novit produces a 3D mouse that allows you to feel the resistance on objects, but it’s not compatible with any games except their own, nor does it recognize 3Ds Max. The banner they had read “Could be next Wii” … could be, looks like they don’t even have faith in their product if it says could be.

There was a stage for Rock band and one for Guitar hero but nothing on there nor were there people there, no schedule sign either so I figure that’s something to come later. There was also a Halo 3 tournament, with about hundred of computers but only about 20 were being used. HP’s booth just highlighted their new computer, and they had systems there for you to log into your own WOW account. I can play WOW at home, show me something new…

At 3pm I hoped to see more late registrants show up and perhaps more booth open, but it didn’t happen. Also I saw more badges that said media than anything else. And although the media was everywhere (I even got interviewed for Game Tap) G4 Attack of the Show, which posters were everywhere for, was no where to be found, in-fact their website doesn’t even mention E for All.

I’m hoping more will be there today. I was also hoping to get my hands on some free demos, but no not of yet.

More news to come….

Akram Taghavi-Burris

Akram Taghavi-Burris is an award winning designer, an educator with over 15 years of experience in graphic arts and web design. Akram has an M.Ed. with an emphasis on Design Education and has been awarded several prestigious awards for her work such as the American Advertising Federation (AAF) Award and, the Davinci Fellows Award for innovation in teaching. Currently, Akram teaches Computer Simulation and Gaming (Video Game Design) at the University of Tulsa. to life.

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