E3 2004 Coverage photos by Gary Fixler   PAGE 6

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Kentia Hall

Ah, sweet Kentia, forgotten child of the E3 event, nestled in the basement, with your wall-to-wall bright yellow carpeting, and sub-standard display facilities... Well, a lot of folks skip Kentia, because it isn't all the glitz and glamour of West and South Halls, but not me, and because of that, not Marcus! We took a trip on this 4-wheelers-piloted-by-exercise-bikes game, and we learned a little something about how Marc's in fine shape, and I probably should be in a hospital somewhere. I was so sweaty and winded after one race, we had to take a break and sit down somewhere. I have to get back in shape. I'm going to join the gym across the street from my apartments. I seriously have no excuse. I mean, it's directly across the street!

My friend sent me a link to these Robosapiens a few weeks back. It was neat to see them in real life. Marc took video of one on the ground, and it attacked him! He walked away before it got ugly.

Retro Gaming Museum

Kentia held an extra special surprise for me. I won't say much in this last section, because a lot of this is before my time. The center of Kentia had a retro game museum display. Not only did they have pretty much every early console, including prototypes, but they had a great number of them set up with a few games laying nearby, so you could PLAY the old systems! Many of the things in these cases are the old Mr. Game And Watch LCD games. I don't know if it's a complete set, but it's more than I've ever seen.

Patches! I forgot how popular these things were when I was a little kid.

A tray of miscellaneous things. Some of the cases on the right are prototype Atari games. The one with the green stickers on it says "LOANER CARTRIDGE" at the top, and mentions it's needing to be returned to the prototype lab. Cool. There's a cottage industry of people still making Atari games and burning them off to actual cartridges. You can buy all the components necessary at Atari Age. Just click on the store. You can even buy empty cartridge casings, or games other homebrew hobbyists have made, put in casings, and labeled!

I know seeing an Apple II in the list of ancient systems will make some people feel pretty old. Deal with it.

Intellivision Lives! Seriously, it won't die. Check it out.

Don't turn around, uh oh... The Commodore's in town, uh oh!

WOW! This one was just amazing. I've heard of it, but have never seen one, let alone been able to play it! This is the Brown Box, a completely hardwired prototype of what would become the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home console EVER! The whole idea sprang from Ralph Baer, and he actually has a site. Check out his brief Video game history for a quick but exciting read. Mr. Baer can probably be credited as the father of video games. His history timeline starts: "Summer 1966 - I came up with and worked on ideas on using a TV set for playing games." There's a photo of him at his site. Go see the face of the man that got the whole video game ball rolling. E3 owes him a debt of gratitude.

Here's the Magnavox Odyssey, which sprung from all the Brown Box prototypes. This is it - the first home video game console. Let us bow our heads...

Arcadia 2001 - never heard of it.

I was really glad to be able to try out a Vectrex. This doesn't use a raster screen. TVs, computer monitors, Game Boys, LCD and LED panels are all rasters - there are pixels waiting to be lit up in order, left to right, top to bottom. By lighting up the right pixels, you get a mosaic image. Vector screens, as the Vectrex used, actually just move around and draw what they need to draw. If there needs to be a vertical line, the beam draws vertically. If you need a diagonal, it sweeps diagonally. It just goes very fast, line by line, tracing each one in the actual direction of that line, and the beam turns off between lines, so they don't have to all be connected. Obviously you have a hard time painting the details of a face this way, so all the games look like they're made out of lines drawn with a ruler. Still, it's an interesting technology, and it was awesome to play this Berserk style game on such a famous old system.

Bill Cosby, everyone.

The TI-99/4A and a Commodore 64 compete to see who can be more bulky and obsolete.

It amazes me that I've never before seen an Atari 5200. I guess it just wasn't all that popular with my friends. I know the 2600 like an old friend, and even the 7200 is familiar. I was shocked to see how enormous and red-tinted the 5200 was. I didn't think Pac-Man could get any more low-rez and blocky, but I was wrong.

This case had 2 cool things in it: An acrylic trophy with an embedded golden Pong arcade machine, and a product placement - "Yar's Revenge" fly spray. If you know what Yar's Revenge is, it's kinda funny. Alright, not really.

I was very happy to finally see a Fairchild Channel F system. I've actually been wanting to see one of these for awhile. Whereas the Odyssey was the first home console, you chose games by flipping switches - it was all built in. The Channel F was the first programmable system, meaning it was the first that could be something else when you pushed a different cartridge in it. In other words, it was the first console that had game cartridges.

The Odyssey 2, crankin' up the power of the original.

The Professional Arcade. Another one I've never heard of.

I had a little pre-taste of the retro action awaiting me in Kentia when I was passing through a hallway and saw this case of vintage games. There were some guys from Intellivision Lives asking people retro gaming questions from what looked like retro gaming Trivial Pursuit cards. I took a shot at it. My question was: "The Atari 2600 is to the "Stella" what the Atari 5200 is to the _____" I said "I think it's another woman's name." He nodded and said "Yeeaah?" Then I couldn't get it. If you think you know, take a guess, and/or click here to find out!

And that's about all I got this time through. I leave you with a parting thought: "Let us never return to jackets that look like this."

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