The conference opened with an enchanting demo of a game played by Tetsuya Mizuguchi which I was initially convinced was a new Rez game. The game was actually revealed to be a new Kinect title, Child of Eden which looks like a gorgeous audio-visual experience if nothing else. The conference continued with a demo of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, however I found discussion of the new Assassin’s Creed game post-conference to be more engaging than what was shown at the time. It’s not that it wasn’t a good conference presentation but I don’t think it completely brought across how well they’d actually managed to make a multiplayer Assassin’s Creed game work. Ubisoft seem to have taken what most thought was an inherently flawed concept and made a genuinely unique multiplayer experience.

After the folks behind Brotherhood wandered off and Joel McHale made another perplexingly dark joke, professional snowboarder and skateboarder Shaun White took to the stage. In a world of skateboarding games dominated by Skate and the Tony Hawk franchise I wasn’t expecting all that much from the creatively titled Shaun White Skateboarding but it did do something rather different to stand out from the crowd. There were elements of De Blob about the city-morphing concept the game incorporated and I can’t say it’s a game that I’d buy but it wasn’t all that bad. Unfortunately this is the point in the press conference at which things started going drastically downhill.

A small group of people armed with simple plastic laser guns began scrambling around the conference hall and all of a sudden I didn’t quite like what I was seeing. When it was all over the producer of the laser tag game, entitled Battle Tag, explained how the game registered scores on your home computer and squared off in a match again McHale and I was left feeling very confused. It looked as though Ubisoft was simply releasing some laser tag toys but I wouldn’t believe that in the year 2010 a massive games developer would try to release laser tag. I later learned that was exactly what was happening. Don’t get me wrong, laser tag can be great fun but for a game that existed in the 90s, to be remade and showcased at the E3 2010 Ubisoft press conference seemed a bit ridiculous.

Interestingly although Nintendo seem to have abandoned the idea of the vitality sensor Ubisoft’s next big presentation was Innergy, a relaxation game that used what was essentially a vitality sensor to monitor the user’s physical status. It looked like a perfectly fine game for those looking for this kind of product although presumably buyers’ will also have to fork out for Ubisoft’s high-tech finger puppet. This was followed up by a somewhat obnoxious trailer for another Kinect sports title, Motion Sports and after that we got to see the exact same Your Shape: Fitness Evolved demo from the Microsoft press conference repeated again with all the same dialogue just in case the initial demo didn’t seem fake enough (apparently that lady could still feel her environment).

The conference continued with a mildly amusing trailer for a new Rabbids game before the conference seemed to turn its focus back to the core gamer with a trailer and demo of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I’m not a big fan of stealth games and while I wasn’t that enthralled at the time watching the demo back again it does look like it could be pretty good. The next game to get its big debut was Driver: San Francisco, a new Driver title with no out-of-car action but where players can simply jump from car to car as they drive around the city, much like Future Soldier it seems like there’s a lot of potential for a good game there.

Ubisoft treated us to a rather pretty but ultimately very vague trailer of Project Dust and then showed an unusual trailer which turned out to be for a new 2D Rayman platformer, Rayman: Origins. While I have never played a Rayman game, Rayman: Origins seems to have struck a chord with veterans of the Rayman universe. Ubisoft also showed us ManiaPlanet, their grand scheme to bring together a new TrackMania in a single hub along with a shooter game entitled ShootMania and an RPG game called QuestMania. It sounds like a very ambitious project but I’m very sceptical as to whether you can try and develop three different games at the same time. The conference closed with the new announcement for a new Michael Jackson game (sadly not Moonwalker 2) involving a group of dancers performing Beat It. An unexpected finish to say the least.

The Nintendo press conference started off with just what fans had been waiting for, a demo of the new Legend of Zelda game. Shigeru Miyamoto made a delightful entrance and showed off The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a new Zelda game featuring a graphical style that looked like a cross between Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker and focused more on sword combat, using the Wii Motion Plus for greater precision in attacks. Despite Miyamoto’s effort to get a few hundred nerds to turn off their electronic devices his demo was subject to rather a lot of electrical interference with the Wiimote, however those who played it on the show floor can vouch for the accuracy of the Wii Motion Plus and overall it looks like Nintendo have got another great Zelda game on their hands.

As would be expected there wasn’t a full new Mario game to show off but Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime did present Mario Sports Mix which there doesn’t seem to be much to say about except that it’s a Mario sports game, if you’ve seen or played them before you know what you’re in for. The next game in the Wii franchise, Wii Party, was shown which seemed to be pretty much Mario Party set in the world of Miis and this was followed up by a trailer for Just Dance 2, a game that may or may not actually contain the track Just Dance by Lady Gaga this time round.

While the last three games all seemed to have been pretty standard stuff Nintendo jumped back into full-blown nostalgia mode, starting by showing a trailer for a new Golden Sun game, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. I’ve never played the games myself but I understand they have somewhat of a cult following. An Activision-published remake of the Nintendo 64’s famous Goldeneye 007 was announced, accompanied by footage of people flipping out at the news. However the game will feature a different James Bond, be made by different people from the original and imitate a game that was very much a shooter of its time, so I’m a little sceptical about the quality of this upcoming release.

Game designing legend Warren Spector took to the stage and showed off Disney’s Epic Mickey. The 3D section of the demo didn’t come across amazingly but with Warren Spector behind the game it seems destined for great things and he did say some very promising things about the gameplay during the presentation. The retro-styled 2D platforming section also showed off very well. Nintendo then announced the first Kirby game in a very long while, Kirby’s Epic Yarn. The game has a unique and fantastic art style and from what those who have demoed the game said it provides laid back but well-designed gameplay and levels. Dragon Quest IX was announced for release outside of Japan and as with Golden Sun I’m not really into the Dragon Quest games but I know they have a following.

Last year I was very excited when Metroid: Other M was announced and while it sounds like the game could do with some tightening up in places it could be a great new venture for the Metroid franchise. Nintendo gave us a release date of August 31st for the game and a shiny new trailer.

Nintendo continued with a trailer for Donkey Kong Country Returns from Retro Studios, another game that was playable on the show floor. It looks very close to the original Donkey Kong Country but that isn’t a bad thing, I’m sure fans of the original game will be very pleased and even for the many who haven’t played a Donkey Kong game before this looks like it could be a highly enjoyable experience.

It was then the turn of Satoru Iwata to appear before the audience, presenting the Nintendo 3DS and all of its features. As promised the essential switch for how 3D you want your games is on there and it also includes what is fundamentally an analog stick, although with the d-pad now placed below this stick (which has been dubbed the “slide pad”) I am wondering if the button placement is ideal. The biggest news about the hardware of the system for me was that not only will the 3DS include a basic 2D camera as the DSi did but it also has two cameras mounted on the rear of the top screen allowing you to use the 3DS as a 3D camera. The handheld wonder will also be able to play back 3D movies. Gaming critics have been absolutely raving about the 3DS after seeing it at E3, reporting back that this really is a working 3D console without the need for glasses or straining your eyes to properly focus on images. For me the 3DS was one of the most exciting parts of the show.

Nintendo’s next debut trailer was of a game many have speculated over for a long game, a new Kid Icarus game, Kid Icarus: Uprising. While the voice of Pit himself sounded a bit silly apart from that it looked like another promising revival of a classis Nintendo franchise. A Nintendogs & Cats was announced for the 3DS although nothing was shown of it and Nintendo finished up the conference by announcing the selection of partners they have working with them on 3DS, as well as franchises and some of the games that will be coming to the console. The list of developers and games was extremely impressive and it looks like with games like Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, Kingdom Hearts, Saints Row and Metal Gear Solid, Nintendo are really in a position to back up their hardware with quality software.

The conference opened with an enchanting demo of a game played by Tetsuya Mizuguchi which I was initially convinced was a new Rez game. The game was actually revealed to be a new Kinect title, Child of Eden which looks like a gorgeous audio-visual experience if nothing else. The conference continued with a demo of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, however I found discussion of the new Assassin’s Creed game post-conference to be more engaging than what was shown at the time. It’s not that it wasn’t a good conference presentation but I don’t think it completely brought across how well they’d actually managed to make a multiplayer Assassin’s Creed game work. Ubisoft seem to have taken what most thought was an inherently flawed concept and made a genuinely unique multiplayer experience.

After the folks behind Brotherhood wandered off and Joel McHale made another perplexingly dark joke, professional snowboarder and skateboarder Shaun White took to the stage. In a world of skateboarding games dominated by Skate and the Tony Hawk franchise I wasn’t expecting all that much from the creatively titled Shaun White Skateboarding but it did do something rather different to stand out from the crowd. There were elements of De Blob about the city-morphing concept the game incorporated and I can’t say it’s a game that I’d buy but it wasn’t all that bad. Unfortunately this is the point in the press conference at which things started going drastically downhill.

A small group of people armed with simple plastic laser guns began scrambling around the conference hall and all of a sudden I didn’t quite like what I was seeing. When it was all over the producer of the laser tag game, entitled Battle Tag, explained how the game registered scores on your home computer and squared off in a match again McHale and I was left feeling very confused. It looked as though Ubisoft was simply releasing some laser tag toys but I wouldn’t believe that in the year 2010 a massive games developer would try to release laser tag. I later learned that was exactly what was happening. Don’t get me wrong, laser tag can be great fun but for a game that existed in the 90s, to be remade and showcased at the E3 2010 Ubisoft press conference seemed a bit ridiculous.

Interestingly although Nintendo seem to have abandoned the idea of the vitality sensor Ubisoft’s next big presentation was Innergy, a relaxation game that used what was essentially a vitality sensor to monitor the user’s physical status. It looked like a perfectly fine game for those looking for this kind of product although presumably buyers’ will also have to fork out for Ubisoft’s high-tech finger puppet. This was followed up by a somewhat obnoxious trailer for another Kinect sports title, Motion Sports and after that we got to see the exact same Your Shape: Fitness Evolved demo from the Microsoft press conference repeated again with all the same dialogue just in case the initial demo didn’t seem fake enough (apparently that lady could still feel her environment).

The conference continued with a mildly amusing trailer for a new Rabbids game before the conference seemed to turn its focus back to the core gamer with a trailer and demo of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I’m not a big fan of stealth games and while I wasn’t that enthralled at the time watching the demo back again it does look like it could be pretty good. The next game to get its big debut was Driver: San Francisco, a new Driver title with no out-of-car action but where players can simply jump from car to car as they drive around the city, much like Future Soldier it seems like there’s a lot of potential for a good game there.

Ubisoft treated us to a rather pretty but ultimately very vague trailer of Project Dust and then showed an unusual trailer which turned out to be for a new 2D Rayman platformer, Rayman: Origins. While I have never played a Rayman game, Rayman: Origins seems to have struck a chord with veterans of the Rayman universe. Ubisoft also showed us ManiaPlanet, their grand scheme to bring together a new TrackMania in a single hub along with a shooter game entitled ShootMania and an RPG game called QuestMania. It sounds like a very ambitious project but I’m very sceptical as to whether you can try and develop three different games at the same time. The conference closed with the new announcement for a new Michael Jackson game (sadly not Moonwalker 2) involving a group of dancers performing Beat It. An unexpected finish to say the least.

The Nintendo press conference started off with just what fans had been waiting for, a demo of the new Legend of Zelda game. Shigeru Miyamoto made a delightful entrance and showed off The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a new Zelda game featuring a graphical style that looked like a cross between Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker and focused more on sword combat, using the Wii Motion Plus for greater precision in attacks. Despite Miyamoto’s effort to get a few hundred nerds to turn off their electronic devices his demo was subject to rather a lot of electrical interference with the Wiimote, however those who played it on the show floor can vouch for the accuracy of the Wii Motion Plus and overall it looks like Nintendo have got another great Zelda game on their hands.

As would be expected there wasn’t a full new Mario game to show off but Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime did present Mario Sports Mix which there doesn’t seem to be much to say about except that it’s a Mario sports game, if you’ve seen or played them before you know what you’re in for. The next game in the Wii franchise, Wii Party, was shown which seemed to be pretty much Mario Party set in the world of Miis and this was followed up by a trailer for Just Dance 2, a game that may or may not actually contain the track Just Dance by Lady Gaga this time round.

While the last three games all seemed to have been pretty standard stuff Nintendo jumped back into full-blown nostalgia mode, starting by showing a trailer for a new Golden Sun game, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. I’ve never played the games myself but I understand they have somewhat of a cult following. An Activision-published remake of the Nintendo 64’s famous Goldeneye 007 was announced, accompanied by footage of people flipping out at the news. However the game will feature a different James Bond, be made by different people from the original and imitate a game that was very much a shooter of its time, so I’m a little sceptical about the quality of this upcoming release.

Game designing legend Warren Spector took to the stage and showed off Disney’s Epic Mickey. The 3D section of the demo didn’t come across amazingly but with Warren Spector behind the game it seems destined for great things and he did say some very promising things about the gameplay during the presentation. The retro-styled 2D platforming section also showed off very well. Nintendo then announced the first Kirby game in a very long while, Kirby’s Epic Yarn. The game has a unique and fantastic art style and from what those who have demoed the game said it provides laid back but well-designed gameplay and levels. Dragon Quest IX was announced for release outside of Japan and as with Golden Sun I’m not really into the Dragon Quest games but I know they have a following.

Last year I was very excited when Metroid: Other M was announced and while it sounds like the game could do with some tightening up in places it could be a great new venture for the Metroid franchise. Nintendo gave us a release date of August 31st for the game and a shiny new trailer.

Nintendo continued with a trailer for Donkey Kong Country Returns from Retro Studios, another game that was playable on the show floor. It looks very close to the original Donkey Kong Country but that isn’t a bad thing, I’m sure fans of the original game will be very pleased and even for the many who haven’t played a Donkey Kong game before this looks like it could be a highly enjoyable experience.

It was then the turn of Satoru Iwata to appear before the audience, presenting the Nintendo 3DS and all of its features. As promised the essential switch for how 3D you want your games is on there and it also includes what is fundamentally an analog stick, although with the d-pad now placed below this stick (which has been dubbed the “slide pad”) I am wondering if the button placement is ideal. The biggest news about the hardware of the system for me was that not only will the 3DS include a basic 2D camera as the DSi did but it also has two cameras mounted on the rear of the top screen allowing you to use the 3DS as a 3D camera. The handheld wonder will also be able to play back 3D movies. Gaming critics have been absolutely raving about the 3DS after seeing it at E3, reporting back that this really is a working 3D console without the need for glasses or straining your eyes to properly focus on images. For me the 3DS was one of the most exciting parts of the show.

Nintendo’s next debut trailer was of a game many have speculated over for a long game, a new Kid Icarus game, Kid Icarus: Uprising. While the voice of Pit himself sounded a bit silly apart from that it looked like another promising revival of a classis Nintendo franchise. A Nintendogs & Cats was announced for the 3DS although nothing was shown of it and Nintendo finished up the conference by announcing the selection of partners they have working with them on 3DS, as well as franchises and some of the games that will be coming to the console. The list of developers and games was extremely impressive and it looks like with games like Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, Kingdom Hearts, Saints Row and Metal Gear Solid, Nintendo are really in a position to back up their hardware with quality software.