|
Lucky me! I somehow managed to win a pair of tickets to the NERD EVENT OF THE YEAR: The Launch of the Xbox 360! 3,000 lucky gamers managed to secure a place at the biggest launch party of the year, which was a party of such magnatude that it could have only been managed by the folks at Microsoft.
For more than 30 hours, Rob Davidson and I retreated into a secure aircraft hanger to play all the 360 launch titles against other lucky nerds. Follow along and experience the fun and insanity of the event for yourself! |
|
|
Before we hit the road to drive to Palmdale from LAX, we hit the ever popular
"In and Out" Burger to load up on Nerd food!
We even manage to secure some of those totally boss paper hats! We decide to wear
them as we drive because they make us look really dope.
The sun sets on the city of Angels as we begin our haul to the city of Palmdale,
located about an hour and a half outside of LA.
Your first clue that you're on the right track is this weird, glowing green light
that is just sitting in the middle of the desert.
It's blurry, but you get the idea - there's something out in the desert that's glowing
this weird alien green. We're making a bee-line toward it as fast as our
rental car will let us!
...and HERE IT IS! The event itself - located in Hanger 74 (apparently bits of the Space Shuttle were
assembled here). It's a fantastically massive structure.
We've checked in and we're on the move toward the event. Security is tight but we've got
the golden ticket - or rather, white bracelet, which is strapped to our wrists. The braclet
is the key - without it, you can't buy an Xbox!
Here's a little video of us walking toward the hangar, ready to
nerd it out. We're a couple of babbling Nerd idiots, totally excited!
it's fuzzy but here we are, ready to get our game on!
the first thing you were greeted with when you entered was a massive pile of
bean-bag chairs. Basically, you just grabbed a bean or "marshmellow" as everyone
called them and crashed out in front of a 360. By hour 20 people were using them
as beds!
The whole place was flooded with "Xbox Green" which helped with the branding,
I guess. After 20 hours my rods and cones were starting to get a little freaked out.
Here's a little panorama shot of the whole place.
Rob's showing off his free 64 meg memory card - you were issued one when you checked in.
The first stop was the "Migration dome", where you migrated your Live account from Xbox
to Xbox 360. Totally smooth process, and for the most part was flawless.
The guys working the booth were no six dollar an hour schlubs - the guy who did my account
was one of the lead engineers who designed the CPU pipeline. Rob got his Xbox Live name changed
(for free!) by one of the Live team managers! It was super cool to see the REAL MS team
running all the stations - I think it was really exciting for them to have spent three years
working on a project like this, and for them to come out and throw a party for core gamers
like us, and to see the excitement on our faces as we experience thier work,
I think was really cool for those guys.
Bravo, Xbox team! Nice work!
So once you had your little bean-bag / marshmellow chair, you just wandered to a station
and started playing. Each 360 had it's own Samsung LCD HD widescreen (which actually were
kinda crappy, I thought the color was mushy) and they were arranged in pods of 4. Not only were
they system linked, they were all online too, so our friends could see us in their friends lists
playing games that weren't even released yet! Awesome!
We head outside to take a break and have a go at the giant Foosball game....
...results of game are above...
Back inside, we're ready for more. The memory cards worked great, you just popped them
in the 360, pushed the big "Xbox" button in the middle of your controller, and logged in.
Totally flawless, worked great.
Here's more gaming madness.
While people were gaming, there was a constant flow of stuff happening on the main
stage - demos, Q&A, etc. Here they're setting up the arena for Kauji Big Battel!
Rob and I sat across from each other and played Perfect Dark Zero for...
I dunno, like five hours. It was awesome. Rob mastered the game mechanic
VERY quickly and try as I might, I seldom beat him!
Getting close to Kaiju time!
The Nerds have gathered and the Kaiju match begins!
first up is Neo Teppen versus Kung Fu Chicken Noodle!
Here's some actual video of this AMAZING duel!
The crowd goes wild!
Next up is Super Wrong, who raced around the audience
before his match to get them charged up, and actually
tripped on a marshmellow and ended up crashing to the
ground. He's a true hero, though, and went on with the show!
This is an AMAZING three way "Dance, Dance, Dance" battle with a member
from each of the factions. Team Space Bug's Dai Hatchi Hatchi faced off against
Super Wrong and DW Cycloptapuss the 3rd.
Now it's time for Call Me Kevin to battle American Beetle's new protige, the Hero Intern.
The action is tense! The intern is getting trounced in this photo, but he came back
to defeat Call Me Kevin (despite my cheering for him).
GOOD GOD! It's the Evil Doctor CUBE! Heres here for a title match with Unibouzu!
Cube taunts the audience, who are booing him relentlessly.
Cube retains his title belt, with Unibouzu defeated in the ring! Awesome fun.
I'm not the only one enjoying the fun of Kaiju - sitting in the crowd is none other than the lovely
and talented Heather Kenyon and her workplace associate Todd Kasey, both good people
from Cartoon Network! Everyone loves the Kauji.
Ok, let's get back to the gaming. We're now so jacked up on Red Bull that we can't
stare at a screen for too long without getting the urge to throw up.
I think this was about 6am, it's thinning down but still going strong.
The Kaiju Ring is dismantled and the crew make room for the next special event!
More views of the gaming floor
There was plenty of great swag that you got when you checked in;
your free memory card, a cool hoodie (it's FREAKING cold in the
desert at night - like 2 degrees celcius!) and this kickass custom
faceplate (which will be mailed to me later). We also got to download
custom Xbox gamercard icons that will only be issued to those people who were
lucky enough to attend!
Here's the link to my gamercard...
and here's the link to Rob's.
For some reason it lists us as being US citizens, we'll have to fix that.
Speaking of swag, here's a shot of some toque and shirt throwing madness.
My camera has pretty much given up the ghost, might want to turn down
your sound a little, there's a horrible static sound in this movie.
Doing a few laps of Project Gotham 3.
First and second place, baby!
Hey Rob, look! This is the controller that I used to beat you in the last game.
There was a crew of guys who just managed the pillows; they would cruise around
in this golf cart and pick them up and maintain the pile at the entrance. At one
point they crafted the pillows into an actual igloo.
Man these chairs sure are comfy!
We got here at 7pm and now it's 8:30am, we can't leave now because our
designated time to pre-pay for our 360's is between 9am and 10am. We're
desperately tryintg to keep our eyes open - my body is going into shock with
all the caffiene i've thrown into it.
It's now like 8pm (we went back to the motel and crashed for 5 hours after
a 25 hour stint) and the line is forming to claim your Xbox. Soon the trucks
will arrive with our 360's (one per person!) and we'll be some of the first people
to own it!
In the meanwhile, there's more demos and stuff going on at the main stage. Here Ken Lobb, the
manager of Microsoft Studio X. He used to run Nintendo. Ken's got chops.
Ken randomly selects four gamers from the crowd and throws up a team Perfect Dark
challenge. He's picked what could have been the four worst players in the building,
it's embarassinly bad. Rob would have mopped the floor with those guys!
Nerd!
We're waiting for our Xboxes - back to Perfect Dark Zero.
The TRUCKS ARRIVE! The camera has it's audio issues again here; I say
"this is ridiculous' at the end, but you can't hear it. It was, absolutely and completely
ridiculous. And totally awesome!
The trucks advance and 3000 frenzied gamers race to get in line! If there's one thing
Nerds do well, it's line up. Man, do they love lines. Rob and I hung back and waited
for the insanity to calm down a bit.
The giant screen is now counting down - 63 seconds until you can get your 360!
The place is going bananas!
The police are here to guard the millions of dollars worth of Xboxes
inside those trucks! Plus they look cool.
Somewhere in that truck is my 360!
Yay!
Here's Rob with our new toys.
We're DONE! The place emptied out at an amazing pace right after this; everyone
literally raced to the parking lot once they got thier 360, and it was this constant stream of geeks
who couldn't drive home fast enough to get online and play right away!
Xbox 360 Zero Hour was a totally fantastic event that ran really smoothly, the people organizing
it were pros, and the gamers themselves were really well behaved, nice, and totally charged.
What an awesome little vacation! See you online!
