Microsoft’s E3 press event

Just finished watching the press conference. All of the games that they focused on (except one) will be out this year. Before I go to sleep (it’s after 2 AM here) I’ll run through some bullet points:

-Microsoft made a Wiimote–though more in Design rather than Function (one big ‘win’ button and other smaller buttons, but no motion sensing or pointing was mentioned)
-Resident Evil 5 made an appearance, but it’s not coming out this year. Everything else Microsoft mentioned is coming out this year
-Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey coming out this year. Fable 2 was barely mentioned, if at all, so that isn’t coming in 2007.
-They showed a live-action trailer for Halo 3. A little strange, but interesting.
-Gears of War PC
-Call of Duty 4
-They featured the Naruto 360 game for a while
-Peter Moore played the ‘Rock Band’ guitar and sang a little.
-Microsoft is releasing a Spartan Green (my words, not theirs) 360 to commemorate the launch of Halo 3. Some might call it Diarrhea green.
-Assassin’s Creed continues to look darn cool
-They stressed that GTAIV will have more content on 360 than ‘other platforms’, and VF5 will be online only on their console
-They announced a bunch of XBLA games, one of the notable ones being Marathon. There were lots of other stuff, including original Sonic and Golden Axe which they said were available *now*. Nifty.
-Video Marketplace, announced partnership with Disney (which includes Miramax and some other stuff). They showed a whole bunch of movies from that group, then announced that all of the movies that they just showed were available on Marketplace *now*. Nifty again.
-Played some PGR4, showed off the bikes
-Other stuff. I’m tired, it’ll be all over the net soonish anyway.
-Closed with a Halo 3 gameplay/story trailer. Wasn’t terribly impressed, but it was fine.

I thought it was an ok show. Outside of the Wiimote and RE5 showing up, there wasn’t anything particularly unpredictable or shocking. I was watching it both through Gamespot’s live feed and on G4, but G4 kept going to commercials at the most random and inappropriate times. Mass Effect trailer? Commercial. Call of Duty 4 demo? Commercial. Halo 3 trailer at the end? ‘nother commercial. Good thing the Gamespot channel was about 15 seconds behind the G4 broadcast, so I didn’t miss anything.

Anyway. I sleep.

Animation has changed my life on more than one occasion.

I honestly can’t remember the first time I saw a Disney movie, but whatever it was it was the beginning spark of my creativity. Disney movies back then were so different from the stuff that was on TV it was mindblowing at the time. Ninja Turtles was my first exposure to an action show, and Inspector Gadget is another of my childhood favourites.

After I got a little older and entered high school at 11, this was around the time when the internet was starting to become mainstream. I was exposed to Dragon Ball Z. I had never seen the show before then, but friends of mine would always talk about it. In later years, my friends and I would go on to download every single Dragonball/Z/GT episode onto the school’s computers, and we watched every one of them.

Soon after graduating and starting college, I was exposed to fansubs. And this really expanded my animation horizons to a much wider range of what’s out there. RahXephon was one of the first few anime I was into on fansubs, but up until that point I was just under the impression that anime was ‘cool’. After all, all I had seen up until then was Cartoon Network/kid’s WB stuff. When I got into college, a new friend exposed me to fansubs, and I started out with RahXephon, Zone of the Enders and another show I can’t remember. RahXephon in particular blasted open my view and appreciation of anime, and remains at the top of my all-time favourite list. I have a gorgeous box set that contains all the DVDs and the movie, possibly my most prized DVDs.

So my growing-by-the-gigabyte anime collection, and even some of the non-Japanese animated shows on TV are really fascinating with their quality and the range of emotions/genres they stretch across. If I didn’t have the exposure that I had now, I would probably think that animation could never be as deep or emotionally involving as watching real people or reading something, but I know from experience that is not the case at all.