This weekend, I went to PAX 2008, and for those of you who don't know, that's the Penny Arcade Expo.

It's a huge exposition of video, card, and tabletop games abound. This year, it was rumored that there would be approximately 50,000 visitors, and from what I saw, yeah, that's true. So many people, from everywhere throughout the world, from Florida to China to Thailand, just amazing.

Everyone who loves games all came to Seattle to rejoice in the gigantic community of gamers.

Many people consider PAX now to be the new E3 - because this is open to the public, and it's purpose is to serve gamers: let them experience the new games that are to be released in the future, talk about the new games, and thrill people with amazing preview videos to send shivers down their back in anticipation!

I really wish it was longer than 3 days IMO. Seriously, there really is too much to do at PAX. I didn't get to go to any of the seminars, didn't have a whole lot of time to watch the movies, and I didn't get a chance to do any of the tournaments. What really sucked is that I found out they were doing a Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament on Friday, and sign up started at 2pm - at which time I was still working! Sad face.

Being a Nintendo purist (that means I have never willingly touched a non-Nintendo console in my life), I basically centered around the Nintendo booth - but there were a lot of other companies that also had Nintendo DS and Wii games to play. I'm going to be writing a lot about these games, and especially about one of the most exciting titles to be released for the Wii, The Conduit.

The New Games I Played
Wario Land - Shake It! (Wii)
Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)
Wii Music (Wii)
Kirby Super Star Ultra (DS)
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party (Wii)
Lock's Quest (DS)
Mystery Chronicles - MillionHeir (DS)
deBlob (Wii)
Chrono Trigger DS (DS)
The Conduit (Wii)

Wario Land - Shake It! (Wii)
Ah, how I love 2D graphics. Wonderful animations and controls as well.
It took me a little bit to figure out how to throw creatures (there wasn't a person around the station at the time); I mention this because the new Nintendo Power doesn't say anything about having to hold the 1 Button down before you tilt the remote to aim an object and then release the 1 Button to fire it.
Definitely crazy creatures, animations - heck, Wario got crushed yet he took no damage; he just wiggled out from underneath the block and then recovered! I was wondering if that occurred because they turned off the damage, but I then walked into an exploding block and it then proceeded to take a few hearts away. Boy, I'm smart. :)

Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)
Really awesome! One thing I noticed with this demo was that there isn't any motion-based controls.
When I went to go fishing, I simply pressed the Down button on the remote to deploy the hook and place it into water. No arm throwing, no yanking of the arm back to get the fish when it snagged the line.
What's really awesome is that you'll be able to upload all of your items from the DS version (Animal Crossing: Wild World) into the Wii version. That makes it even better so I can now show everyone I have the Triforce from the DS version!

Wii Music (Wii)
The demo of Wii Music I played was teaching me how to play drums.
The drum set had 2 sets of cymbals, 2 foot-based drums, and 3 top-based drums.
The Wii Remote is your right drumstick, and the Nunchuk is the left drumstick.
By pressing the analog stick to the left, right, or down, you will hit a different drum or cymbal. The same applies to the Remote - press Left, Down, or Right on the Control Pad.
I also played out the lesson mode, which walked me through timing of the drums and cymbals.
You have a personal coach to the side, and it lets you know if you're not doing it right.

Kirby Super Star Ultra (DS)
Just another Kirby platformer; I didn't get a whole lot of time to play this title, so I just played through a few levels in one of the adventures. Same sucking, absorbing and hammer smacking.

Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party (Wii)
When I played this demo, they placed 4 people at a time up on stage and we played out a dancing game. This involved us moving the Nunchuk and Wii Remote to various positions throughout the song.
The guide indicating what to do was shown on screen, as well as a gauge to indicate if you performed the motion correctly or not. To me, it seemed like it was a little too sensitive - some poses didn't seem to think I moved correctly, when in reality, I did exactly like someone else did it.
I was going to get to test out the "butt-sledding" game as demoed at the UbiSoft convention, but I didn't have enough time - they had to go and demo a Naruto game at that moment. Sad face.

Lock's Quest (DS)
Now this was an interesting title. I was able to play for a little bit on the DS that was connected at the booth, but I later found out I could download it onto my own DS - and boy was the demo big! I got to play for the whole first "week" (which I'm guessing is similar to a level). Each "day" involved me battling creatures called Clockwork, and then after the battle was complete, the other half of the "day" involved me building defenses, such as walls and turrets to help prevent the Clockwork from closing in on me or my friends or even my town. For fighting, all I was doing was tapping on an enemy to hit it successively. But after the first time, I then learned of an advance tactic, where when you engage an enemy it battle, a collection of numbers pops up, such as 3-1-2. Tap those numbers in order, and you do a much stronger attack. If you succeed with the combination, you'll get another combination, this time of 4 digits. The process continues on and on; I only got to go up to 5 numbers before the enemy was destroyed, however. I believe Nintendo Power says your attacks can go up to as many as 8.
This game gets released next week, September 10th.

Mystery Chronicles - MillionHeir (DS)
When I played this game, I found it very tricky to find certain items while I was investigating - they really blended in; for example, I had to find a sled; I found out it was part of a door!
Thankfully they give you hints - I wouldn't have found the sled or the spatula (which was on the stairs) without them.

deBlob (Wii)
What an amazing game! It's just awesome to go around and paint stuff. Let me explain: your land has been completely removed of color. You and your friends also have your colors removed - you're basically grey. If I recall correctly, they are called "Greydians". You are a blob. Yes, just a blob. But you have the ability to smash little creatures filled with paint that can turn you different colors.
You paint buildings by moving around and simply touching them/running into them, and then moving all around the building. Sometimes there are multiple floors to paint, so you must jump up and touch them in order to paint them

That was definitely a good part of the game - you only need to touch one wall of a building before it gets filled with color - the color basically spreads out throughout the entire building once you touch it.

For coloring - well that's pretty cool. You can paint multiple buildings different colors - or you can mix and match! You'll get bonus points for using multiple colors on separate sections of town! Not only that, but you can pick up items that will add funky designs to your colors when you paint!

To rescue your fellow Greydians, just simply paint a building, and they're rescued, meaning they will come out of the building they were in. To score bonus points, as well as a time extension, just roll over them while you're a specific color.

Oh yeah, that's right. You are given a certain amount of time to paint a level. When I played the game, though, it was a significantly long amount of time.
But if you wanted certain items, you would have to accomplish challenges, and the time limit on those challenges could be from 30 seconds to 90 seconds (but this didn't take away from the main level's time limit).

Chrono Trigger DS (DS)
Amazing! I completely forgot how awesome this game was back in the old days! It was an interesting setup with the controls, seeing as how you had to touch a certain section of the touchpad to move in that direction. So if you wanted to move left, you touched the left section of the touch pad. The further away from the center you touched, the faster you would run. The representative of Square Enix then told me afterwards that the controls are all completely customizable all the way down to turning it into a pure SNES experience by disabling the touch screen, and having the entire game all present in the top screen.

The Conduit (Wii)
See below. :)