AMID the marketing decadence and general cacophony of the video game bacchanal known as E3, there was also hushed reverence, the sort of wonder historically reserved for the Holy Grail.
Outside Nintendo's Space Age exhibit at the Los Angeles Convention Center this week, a line snaked for city blocks. Inside, eager young men surrounded a museum-style display case, gazing quietly at the sleek consoles perched there. Some took photos.
"There's never been anything like this in the history of video games," gushed Andru Edwards of Gear Live Media.
The object of their adoration was the mysterious Wii (pronounced "we"). On an elevated stage nearby, uniformed Wii masters performed for the awed visitors, gesturing wildly, their every move registering on flat-screen TVs. Two men appeared to be playing tennis, aiming their strokes toward the screen. One man conducted an animated orchestra that only he could hear. All this while three lovely young women in blue miniskirts used their microphones to discuss the merits of their white go-go boots.
It was all strangely unsettling. But then perhaps that was the point. It's the rush of the new, the unfamiliar, that the faithful desire.
Starting on Wednesday, die-hard gamers swarmed the Convention Center for three days this week, lining up hours early, armed with their hand-held devices and overstuffed backpacks, pale as the undead, hungry for the next level of play, the next retina-blasting battle, the next high-def, high-concept digital dreamscape.
A triumphant cry lifted from a crowd of hundreds when the doors opened for non-VIPs at 10:55 a.m. Wednesday (because who could wait until 11?). Cheek-to-jowl, they moved into the hall with surprising speed. One young man darted out ahead, jogging. A woman on the periphery looked on, agog. "Frightening," she said. Within 10 minutes, the wait to enter the Nintendo exhibit was three hours.
They came for the $25-billion industry's premier video game trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, an annual event that will draw tens of thousands of professional video game players, designers, publishers and retailers from all over the world. It's a world that is changing as video game sales increasingly move online, but one thing is constant: the armies of adrenaline junkies fueling this monster.
