Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

All About

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Get the latest photos, news, and more

BEST CELEBRITY APPEARANCES: One benefit of moving E3 from Atlanta back to L.A.: increased star power. Young Anakin Skywalker, a.k.a. Jake Lloyd, manned Nintendo 64's Star Wars: Episode I: Racer demo, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos received a Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover, while Deep Space Nine's Nicole deBoer supplied the requisite Star Trek autograph vector. The Sony booth was graced by Hanson, Steven Spielberg cruised the floor with his kids in tow, and even gadget lover Dick Van Dyke was spotted.

MOST FLAGRANT CELEBRITY TIE-IN: David Bowie spent three weeks helping create Eidos' Omikron: The Nomad Soul, an unremarkable game except for the fact that it includes eight new Bowie songs, and cheesy digital-avatar versions of the singer and his wife, Iman.

BEST PARTY: No one fetes the E3 digerati like Sony. This year, 6,000 Friends of PlayStation filed into Sony Pictures' Culver City studio lot to nosh, schmooze, and hear Beck play an apropos cover of Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue."

MOST BIZARRE MUSIC/VIDEOGAME COLLABORATION: A two-way tie: In GT Interactive's KISS: The Trivia Game, cherubic Muppet Baby versions of the band dish out Kiss minutiae. Think fighting games get a bad rap? Wait till you see Wu-Tang Shaolin Style, from Activision, in which gamers get to duke it out as Ol' Dirty Bastard while listening to an original soundtrack from the rap group.

BEST BOOTH: Sierra Sports' mechanical bull was more fun than the Professional Bull Rider game tied to it, but the weirdest booths were outside the convention: Gaming network Heat.net offered a climbing wall, and the Gathering of Developers, a rogue game company run by creators instead of suits, circled their RVs around a parking-lot beer garden where booth bunnies mingled with gamers. So, do you play Quake here often?

FUNKIEST PROMOTIONAL TIE-IN: The Heat.net urinal guards. Talk about a captive audience...

Originally posted Jun 04, 1999 Published in issue #488 Jun 04, 1999 Order article reprints
Page 1 2
You Might Also Like

Add your comment

The rules: Keep it clean, and stay on the subject or we might delete your comment. If you see inappropriate language, e-mail us. An asterisk * indicates a required field.

500 characters remaining