PAX report

Most of the time, my saturdays are boring. I might go out with a few friends, and see a movie, or just sit at home and play on eof my game consoles, but never anything too exiting. This last saturday was different though. This time I KNEW it was going to be exiting.

I woke up at about 7, and got ready to go to the Bellvue Expo Center. I thought I would arrive early, and I did, but there were already a lot more people then me there. Me and the friend I went with, were quite confused in which of the FOUR lines to stand in. I seemed to have standed in every other line, before the one I needed to be in. Finally, after entering, I mad my way to the main hall. Nothing really caught my eye at first, until I saw this:

Yes it is true. The game that I, and just about everybody else here has been obsessing about, has finally been played my me. I am so very nice, that I have comprised a description of what happened in each demo.

Demo 1: Link's home town:
In the beggining of this demo, the screen zoomed in on Link out in an open field, with somebody who seemed to be his old man. The dad claimed that "I should brush up on my skills by rounding up 20 goats into the barn". Well, I did just that, and it happened to take me 4 minutes. After that, Link's dad said I should practice jumping gates, and I did, and it worked much like jumping things in OoT. After doing so, I left the barn, and headed out to the village, only to see a girl who looked quite angry at Link. She inspected Epona's leg and said "You were jumping gates again weren't you? I have to take Epona to the springs to heal her". It seemed I had my horse no longer for the time being. As soon as she left though, I saw a charging goat heading right at me. I had to grab the thing, and restle it down with the B button. During the rest of the demo, I saved a cat from a house with my trusty hawk,helped a man get a bee's nest from a tree down (wtf?), and so on and so forth.

Demo 2: Horseback battle:
At the start of this demo, Link approached a wild beast, riding a wild beast (namely a boar), and one of Link's friends from the village was tied up to the baor. I then had to chase the beast on horse-back, and salsh away at him when I got close. After many hits, I finally put defeated him...or so I thought... He led me into a samll canyon, little did I know, he trapped me. I then had to joust him by running back and forth on the bridge on the canyon, and avoid falling off. Finally, I cut him up, and sent him flying into the depths of the canyon...I had won...

Demo 3: Forest Temple:
One of the great things about the Zelda games iare the dungeons, and TP was no excpetion. The battle system is new and improved, and better then ever, as it resembles real sword-play. When you parry an enemy, and knock him down with your shield, you can press the A button to stb him in the chest, which kills it. After going through the dungeion a little bit more, I came across an evil monkey, who cut the bridge in front of me. A good monkey came up to Link, hwoever, and seemed as if I should follow him. I did, and he helped me swing over obstacles wihtout ease. I found more monkeys, and they followed me as well. I made my way through the dungeon, and it was time to face the big boss...

Demo 4: Plant Boss:
Zelda has always had great bosses, and the boss in this demo blew me away. It was a huge plant monster, the had two head, and required me to make it eat bombs. After destroying both heads, I thought it was over, until a HUGE head loomed above Link. After finding no way to kill it, I saw a monkey friend fly above me. I had to target the Monkey who was carrying a bomb, with my Gale Boomerang, and make it fly into the plant's biggest head, until it tumbled dwon on the ground, where I slashed away at it. After repeating this a few times, I finally beat it, thus concluding the demo I played...

The good: Great puzzles, much improved combate, giant bosses, fast gameplay, etc.
The bad: Some of the frustrating moments from the other Zelda games have returned.

Next on my list to check out, was Fire Emblem 9:

Unfortnantely, the demo I played of it, was a little bit short. I just played the intro, but I did see a beautiful anime like cut-scene. All in all, the game looked awesome, and played really great.
The good: Great cut-scenes, very tight Gameplay, nice story
The bad: Still playes a lot like the GBA, and SNES games.

Next I wanted to try Mario Kart DS, however there was a bit of a line. I eneded up chatting to an employee of Nintendo in line, about the Revolution which he says we will know more about "very soon". He also brought this little trinket out of his pocket:

It's actually a pretty neat little system, and I will in fact be buying one. I was playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and before I knew it, I got to play Mario Kart DS:

Overall, the game is awesome. I got to play two cups, the Nitro cup, which featured 4 new tracks, and the Retro cup which featured 4 tracks from all previous Mario Karts. It really played like any other Mario Kart, too bad there was no Wi-Fi multiplayer there.
The good: THE HOP IS BACK! Some new items, original new courses.
The bad: The control is a bit hard to get used to.

Right next to Mario Kart, there was Metroid Prime Hunteres. Believe it or not, this demo was EXCLUSIVE for PAX, and featured the single-player mode. The game was actually quite nice, and did a very good job of bringing Metorid Prime to the DS. The game still had the same control set-up, but played a lot better then the demo (no time limit this time!).
The good: Does a very good job of bringing the Prime series to a hnadheld, a lot more fun then the demo.
The bad: Switching between Samus' scan, and combat visors can be a pain.

Next, I played Super Mario Strikers, the upcoming Mario soccer game. I happened to play this one wiht 3 other people, and it was quite good, but stale at parts. The characters only had one special attack which was usually along the lines of "jump into air hit ball hard". It was really quite dull at times, but it still has awhile to go in development.
The good: Pretty fun with a lot of people
The bad: Not as much depth as other Mario sprots titles.

(mind the creepiness)

Anyway yeah, that was about it. I saw Kevin Perera from G4 as well. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

This post has been edited by Kaepora Revolution on Aug 28 2005, 11:43 PM

I NAME YOU 1st LUCKIEST GUY IN THE HERE!

No Shadow?

Oh wait, was this Nintendo exclusive or something?

Did Anybody From Nintendo Appear there?

This is not a mean-spirited comment, but merely a question from a curious and potential buyer of the Gameboy Micro.

Would you mind outlining why it appealed to you and is now an intended purchase?

Hm, can't really say, sorry. I just like small trinkets I guess. Really, you should try one before deciding to buy it, just in case.

Yeah, there was no Shadow.

A M A Z I N G!
People would kill for being at such a thing.

Wow... you are so unbelievably lucky, Kaepora.

Your saturday > mine.


I would love to be at one of those expo's.

Oh yes, and the man shwoing me the Gameboy Micro said that it WILL NOT play old Gameboy games.