Written by Jody Robinson

I knew if I went back to sleep only a half an hour I would end up with one of those sleepy headaches so I was up to start packing. My plane left that evening at 5:30PM to fly back to San Jose so I had to check out of the hotel due to E3 closing at 4pm.  

L.A. Convention Center
Once we arrived at the L.A. Convention Center, we all headed to Mplayer's booth. I was so tired, I couldn't believe how much I couldn't even think straight. hehe :)   I ended up sitting on the comfy black couches before the E3 event opened. Mplayer's Marcus Hopkins took a picture of me looking like I wasn't even in my real state of mind. What a Sneaker!

Todd Hollenshead
Nathan, Jacob and I went cruising by Activision's meeting room to see if Todd Hollenshead was there. We all planned to meet him at our appointment time. The person who had all of his appointments scheduled messed up Todd's meeting with us so we decided to stop by later that day.

We headed down stairs and saw him but he was too busy to sit down and talk right then so we were patient with the whole mess up. There was also another guy that I would see that looked identical to him while I was at the convention center. The only difference between the two was how Todd had longer hair than he did.

Booth Hopping, Top Cow & GameIndustry
I headed straight to the West Hall to get some pictures of as many booths as I could before I had a job interview appointment with Abruthnot, a PR agency for Microsoft games. I ran from booth to booth to each area like a maniac, until there was no more booths there to find.

My next stop was South Hall. I knew this was going to take longer because no matter how hard I try to stay focused, I always get so distracted by games in there. Instead of games some guy leaning up against a wall distracted me. No, I wasn't checking him out! *ahem*  I noticed that it was Frank Mastromauro from Top Cow Productions, he seemed to be waiting for someone. Just then Michael Turner, the creator of the Witchblade and Fanthom comics walks up to him. They both started heading towards the West Hall. I asked them what they were up to and another guy from the crowd walking by called my name. I looked over to find a guy that works on GameIndustry.com, Todd Hargosh. We were both trying to get to our own destinations so it was more of a 'hi and bye' type of thing.

Logitech Booth: Q3A Competition Glance
After entering the South Hall I found Logitech's booth. I realized that Lambadomy had said there was going to be a Quake III Arena Tournament at that booth on Saturday. There was three guys I recognized right off: XP- Magus on one end [Picture], Lambadomy on the other end [Picture], and K9-Moonshine right in the middle of a whole set of other Quake III Arena gamers. I took a shot of them and took off to get some more pictures of booths since they pretty much looked busy playing their matches right then. I was going to stop by later once I finished my booth hopping.

Hasbro Booth: Nemisis From Gamers.com!
The Hasbro booth was cool to check out, I was able to get a couple of booth shots of it. I am glad I ended up getting lost in there because I ran into my buddy Nemisis 'Terence' Wong from Gamers.com. The last time I saw Terence was at PGL Finals in 1998 so I was very happy to see him. He mentioned after I was done talking to him that he was heading to another appointment. He reminded me of how extremely rushed I was last year (1999) when I attended E3 with all of those appointments lined back to back. [Picture]

Fox Booth: Sanity Display
I passed Fox's Sanity Booth and heard someone call out my name. I was trying to get a good angle shot of some Aliens in Hasbro's Booth [Picture]. I turned around to find David 'Chinstrap' Farkas, a guy I had met the day before at Mplayer's booth. I talked to him a tad about Sanity since that was the game he was displaying and he was kind enough to give me a nice Sanity t-shirt. :) [Picture]

Logitech Booth: Back For More
I headed back over to Logitech's booth to find Hakeem and Sujoy talking to some guys. They weren't playing in the competition because they were wearing Razer shirts so you can get the idea there. Sujoy looked so adorable holding his frosty. The only problem with that was how badly I wanted to go buy myself one too!

Someone called out Scumbag and it caught my attention. I looked over to see this nice looking guy with a goatee. He smiled and I blurted out, "Scumbag?" He said, " Yes, that would be me."

I let Scumbag know that someone had mentioned his nickname at XP's dinner but I had no idea who they were talking about.  I introduced myself to him and a guy standing a couple of feet away said, "You're Cali Girl?"  I told him yes and he introduced himself, saying he was Diehard. I've heard about Diehard but I don't think I've ever talked to him online before. He's a really cool guy. [Picture]

Sujoy ended up disappearing from the group so I joked around with Hakeem saying that he probably went to get another frosty. Lambadomy came out of the crowd and started making things rowdy like normal.

Just then I noticed my buddy K9-Moonsh1ne. I believe the last time I've seen him was at XPCon II in 1998. I asked him if any other K9 guys were attending the show. He gave me a cute grin then pointed over at a guy standing right next to him saying it was K9-Burn. [Picture]

The first time I met K9-Burn was one day when I went on a 1on1 server to play Quake III Arena. This guy was owning the server so I was unsure about playing him. I knew I was going to get owned bad if every other person on the server wasn't able to beat him yet. The really cool thing was how he wasn't harsh and eager to kill me but he was careful I didn't get a frag off of him. After the match he gave me some good tips about what I was doing wrong.

The only guy I can remember in the past that has ever been so patient and cool like that was Jason 'Unholy' Carlton from my old Quake gaming days. At the time Unholy was in the XP clan so it always kept a good image in front of me about them.

Of course I was happy on meeting this cool guy, K9-Burn in person! They asked me if I was going to attend K9 Con this year. I don't know if I will be going but I think I do want to get some coverage for Quake3world since it happens to be in the same area of where I live.

As I went to tell all of the guys bye, Sujoy walked up with another small frosty. I was so right, he did go get a second one but I was originally just joking around with Hakeem. hehe :)

Activision Booth: Rob Huebner & Paul Jaquays
I stopped by Activision booth and ended up noticing Rob Huebner near the display for Vampire: The Masquerade. It was great seeing him again. I saw him and his brother eating in a restaurant while he was in San Jose attending the Game Developer Convention last March.

While I was at the Activision booth, I talked to Rob a bit about some things on the upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption game. At that time John Heineke was showing off the game again to some more people. [Picture]

Another person I noticed at Activision's booth near the Quake III Arena Mission pack display was Paul Jaquays of id Software. I kept an eye out for him in case I saw him at the Game Developers Convention last March 2000 but never ended up meeting him in person. I came up to him to shake his hand because I had promised him if I saw him I would at least say hi. :)

Gamespy Booth: Kornelia & Lisa
I wasn't able to get a good picture of my buddy Kornelia the days before so I stopped by Gamespy's booth for my last time. She was doing here normal threshold, tearing up guys in Quake III Arena games left and right with her mighty rocket launcher and deadly lightning bolts. ;)  

Gamespy had her competing at the Gamer Developers Convention last March so I had talked to her during the event there when she would take her breaks.  My brother Darkviper did play her a game of Quake III Arena one of the days at Gamers Developer Convention.

Kornelia's friend, Lisa was there so we talked a little about some of the happenings around at E3. Once Kornelia was able to take a break I took a picture of the both of them. It is always a pleasure to see Kornelia happy at what she does awesome, being a professional female gamer. [Picture]

Fox Booth: Last Stop
I visited the Fox Booth for the last time, just to get one more glance at that awesome game I am looking forward to, NOLF.

Pezman caught me looking at NOLF again so he came up to introduce me to Killjoy. I did recall David 'Chinstrap' Farkas saying something about Killjoy working for Fox while I talked to him earlier that day at the Sanity booth. I thought he was trying to say my buddy Kiljoy (with one L) started working for Fox Interactive so I was a bit confused at first when he said that. I knew for a fact that my friend wasn't working there so I asked him if the guy had two L's in his nickname or one. He said two L's so that cleared the misunderstanding right there.

Killjoy was a very sweet gentleman. He was extremely tired from the days he was at E3. I honestly could agree I was done with E3 for the year, with only 2 hours of sleep the night before.

Microsoft Booth: Abruthnot Meeting
I went over to Microsoft's booth to meet up with two people from Arbuthrot; Steve Cherrier and Lesli Arbuthnot. We all went out to eat at Fox's Bar and Grill. I ended up eating a delicious buffalo chicken salad with an awesome spicy hot flavor. I had a wonderful time talking to both of them. :)

The Day is Almost over...  ->