So the past week has been crazy, so I wanted to let you guys know what was going on in case you thought I fell off the face of the earth. Far warning, this post has little to nothing to do with SF4 aside from the fact that if I were not a SF4 player doing what I do (hustlin’, community building, playing), there is no way in hell I would have gotten to experience everything this week. I am truly grateful for the entire experience because I know that there are not a lot of people who get to experience some of the things that I’ve gotten to do this week. Anyways,WHERE TO BEGIN?!
Day 0: Activision Party @ the Staples Center
E3 started without warning on Monday (6/14) evening, as I got a call from Kent from Daft Bot that he had an extra floor pass for me. Eminem, Usher, NERD, deadmau5 and more were playing! Holy smokes! So it was a pretty awesome way to kick off the E3 experience. So thanks Kent for callin me up!
E3 2010
This was my second time at E3, but my first time with some actual business to do and a real agenda to accomplish. Last year it was just trying to meet whoever I could meet and sneak into whatever afterparties I could go undetected at. This year, however, I rolled with the Machinima Respawn crew: Mr. Sark, Hutch and Seananners, who host various shows on Respawn. It kicked off with a skit that Sark came up with to introduce the audience to the coverage we were going to be doing all week which was mainly focused on Xbox multiplayer games.
During day 1, I got to check out a bunch of the Xbox multiplayer games, which was fun, but as you may know, I’m not hugely into other games that aren’t Street Fighter or Starcraft lol, so most of it was cool, but ultimately not very meaningful in the longrun. But I’ll tell you what is meaningful is this Red Faction Exosuit I took a picture in lol:
How could I resist? Speaking of meaningful, I also got to check out Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Unfortunately for me, I never really learned how to play MvC2, so I’m not exactly qualified to say anything other than it looks cool, I’m sure it’d be fun to play and I hope everybody else likes it lol. I got to play it over at the Microsoft Xbox 360 booth (which had demos by appointment for Kinect games), since the Capcom booth looked like it was super packed. It was actually the first thing I saw when I walked into the show floor.
So lucky me, I didn’t have to wait to play it.
As day one was coming to an end, I got word of the SFX-360 party which was up the street. I had met them last year and so was happy to come down and made some good connects. 
Here’s a picture with my buddy Slasher, camiwins, Jacob Patterson and Naomi. Good times had by all!
Days 2 and 3 we did a lot more videos including one on MvC3:
I also did an interview with Seth Killian from Capcom, but that one isn’t up yet.
Anyways, the highlight of E3 was definitely Mortal Kombat 9. I was one of the few that got to play it (lucky me, name droppin’ Machinima everywhere lol).
I got a demo with one of the developers who showed me the engine. There are EX Meters as well as Super combos (those are the X-ray moves from the trailer). There are also Tekken-style juggle combos. I was so excited about it, it was my pick for Best in Show.
Sark (who is mainly an FPS player) also thought it was the best game he saw at E3. After his review there is a short scene of me and him playing Zumba Fitness (I think that’s what it was called).
Speaking of the Microsoft Kinect, I got to play Ubisoft’s YourShape which you can see below from the Microsoft press conference. The other Kinect games that I saw looked kinda silly to me at this point (Forza 3 with your hands on an invisible steering wheel?), but YourShape was interesting because it’s a fitness game. I wouldn’t even really call it a game, it’s more of an application. I think that’s where a lot of this motion sensor/detection/controller-free stuff will really catch on with mainstream non-gamers. The tai chi stuff was really interesting and this is actually something I’d use on a day to day basis.
On Wednesday, Miles Mosley, Mike Ross and I hosted our own afterparty at the Piano Bar in Hollywood. Lots of familiar faces came down to play casuals with us and watch Miles and his band rock the house. Since we had some success with it, it looks like we’ll be doing them on the regular, so keep an eye out for more upcoming events like that.
Here's the guys from Original Gamer, whose podcast I was on not too long ago. Thanks for coming out guys!
Jace Hall’s Street Fighter Music Video Shoot
After E3 was all said and done, I had a few days off to chill, decided not to go to Devastation in Phoenix and lucky for me, I got contacted by none other then Jace Hall, who asked me to be in his new Street Fighter music video. He did a video for World of Warcraft called “I Play Wow” and is going to give Street Fighter the same treatment. He asked me to round up a few players to come down, so I called up Justin Wong and Ed Ma to come down and be in the video as well. Daigo is also making an appearance in the video (he and Justin are name-dropped in the song), so Top 3 of Evo 2009 (and little ol’ me) are in it.
Needless to say, it was easily one of the craziest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It was shot in a wrestling/boxing ring so I got to climb on the turnbuckles and run around in the ring, as well as dance with some music video girls. :) Fun times! Once the video is done I’ll be sure to post it up here, it was really fun. More pix on my Facebook!
Tay Zonday, me and Jace Hall
Justin Wong with Alicia Marie
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