Well, E3 '07: The Trade Show That Wasn't has come and gone. A few years ago, back when we were living in the present, we'd have to wait a month or two to get coverage of the bloated, glorious Trade Show from the video game magazines. But now that we are living in the future, E3 is boring but we get our show highlights downloaded straight into our consoles. It is a tiny E3 in your living room!
There were lots of trailers to watch, and there were some stunning looking spots for some promising games, but the trailer that blew me away was the trailer for Xbox Live Arcade's upcoming offerings. You can watch it here. It was a peppy little showcase for 20 or so games soon to be available for download for XBLA. In two short, joyful minutes this trailer affirmed everything I love about video games.
You see, this preview had games of every possible stripe. There were old games. New games. New takes on old games. The trailer just kept moving from one mad, beautiful game to the next. Some looks great, some looked awful, some were fresh and innovative, others were classic, inducing nostalgia. And no two looked alike. One had tiny soccer-playing men, others had Mechs, rolling cubes, improbably fasthedgehogs, space giraffes, colors, numbers, words, anything was possible because with video games, anything IS possible.
Putting all these disparate games together in one reel sparked in me this sense of continuity, a real feeling of connection. Amongst these games were games that had appeared on the Sega Genesis, on Macintosh computers, or in the arcade. There were new takes on old games and fresh innovations and games that hadn't started as video games. But they all shared a single thread, the thing that makes video gamesmagic: They all tried to be fun. And games need follow no other formula.
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