Australian Gamer Feature :: SupaNova 2006

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SupaNova 2006

INTRODUCTION : DAY 1 : DAY 2

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Refreshed from a 12 hour straight sleep, I was in a much better state today. Matt hadn't made it home yet however, having helped setup a new ADSL account for a friend the night before. I arrived at the gates around 10:30 and met up with Frith and another friend of ours Darvin, who is an awesome artist. Matt arrived a bit later, having hitched a ride on a motorbike, and turned up in a fairly badass getup for him with a motorcycle jacket and helmet.

The first thing I wanted to do today was check out the Video Games Live booth upstairs in the Commerce Building. I had never heard of it before, and had gone online to check it out last night to find that it was a massive international concert and stage show, where the best video game music is performed by a full orchestra accompanied by lasers, footage from the game, and live performances on screen. I had also noticed they they had only planned to come to Sydney, which made me wonder why they were at the SupaNova convention here in Brisbane.

Tommy Tallarico was there to take all my questions, I quickly discovered that the guy is a bit of a legend and was slightly embarrassed that I hadn't heard of him before. He is one of the main guys behind the Video Game Live production, and his own personal company, Tommy Tallarico Studios, has produced the composition, sound design and voice over for over 200 games dating back to 1991, including the brilliant Earthworm Jim soundtrack!

He said one of the main reasons they were in Brisbane was to suss it out and see if there was enough interest for the show. He sounded very positive.

We had a few other things left we wanted to see today, but my main goal was to go and get a signature from Summer Glau, who plays 'River' in the movie Serenity. The line was amazingly long on the first day, and I had hoped it would have been a bit shorter today. I was right. I went to find out how to go about meeting her, and the nice lady who helped me out commented on how impressive my hairdo was for the convention. I explained that I hadn't styled it, I had just woken up like this. She said it was impressive for bed hair never the less.

$30 bought me a photo of Summer and a place in the line, however I was about 5 spots from the front when Summer and her assistants decided it was time to break for lunch, and told us all to come back in an hours time.

Frustrated, I was walking back past the Video Game Live booth and bumped into Shadow from the GameArena forums. Myself and Matt had met him months ago at an organised BBQ, and had recognised him sitting at the booth. He had gotten my mobile number from Oracle and tried to call it, but had copied it wrong and gotten the number of some guy called Greg. Funny.

Shadow started talking about some cool life sized dinosaurs that we hadn't seen yet, and took us to see them. We not only found dinosaurs, but full sized replicas of Master Chief from Halo, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, an Orc from World of Warcraft, and Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank. They were the work of Studio Oxmox, owned and run by Marc and Gaby Klinnert. Originally from Germany, they had started out with a life sized model of the original Lara Croft over 8 years ago, and had then landed many contracts with the big companies to design their characters. They were both really interesting people to talk to, and myself and Frith were so impressed we got their autographs on one of their flyers for us.

We went back downstairs for a bit to check out some of the other promotional stuff, which included the portable Xbox 360 car that had a few plasma TV's spewed out the back of it, as well as the car 'General Lee' from the Dukes of Hazzard. Tom from Video Game Live was also doing a speech on stage at this time, and we found out some VERY interesting bits of information about the next generation systems.

Although Tom's speech was initially about jobs in the game industry and about how challenging it is to compose game music, he started talking about his involvement with projects on the Revolution and PS3. Although he couldn't name names, he did let slip that he was involved in the new Metroid game for the Revolution.

Tommy had a seminar, which both Matt and I found remarkably well informed and interesting (and FUNNY). Tommy has worked with the biggest names and games in the world, and meets on a daily basis with people like Warren Spectre and Hideo Kojima. His insider knowledge of the next gen platforms (from playing them) was substantial, and backed up a lot of what we've previously thought.

He described how the Revolution controller worked not just as a pointing device, but in other innovative ways as well. One game he saw had it where when the driving sequence began, you turned the controller on its side, held both ends, and used it like a steering wheel. And in that same game, a flying sequence had you grip the controller and use it like a joystick. Cool!

He also spoke about the state of the industry in America, and how developers are looking at the systems. He said of the developers he knows, only about 1 in 10 are making games for the Revolution. He said that although the Xbox 360 is easier to program for, the Playstation 3 will dominate when it comes out due to the fact that most developers realise it will dominate the market when its released, and its easier to make a game for the Playstation 3 first and then port it across to the Xbox 360. He also mentioned that for online play, the Xbox 360 did dominate over the Playstation 3, but that realistically, only 5% of the console gaming market was currently online.

Soon after Tommy had left, I realised it was time to go back into line to meet Summer, and rushed upstairs just in time to reach the queue in the same spot I was in before. Eventually I got my turn came up, and I went and introduced myself to her and completely botched it up and asked her if she could have my signature. She said she didn't really know me, but if I really wanted to give her an autograph, I could. I spoke to her a bit more, laughed a bit, got her autograph and a photo and made a quick exit. She is much more attractive in person than in the movies, which says a lot.

After my starstruck moment, I met up with Matt downstairs and we headed over to the Pandemic booth, where we quickly asked them why they weren't showing any footage of Destroy All Humans 2. Apparently they couldn't show that much before E3, which seemed to be the general consensus of most of the developers there. What they did say however, was that they were going to be getting people into their offices soon to playtest the game, and that if we were interested we could sign up.

As soon as we mentioned we were from AustralianGamer.com however, they were slightly apprehensive, not really wanting media to see the game yet. We assured them that we were interested in playing the game most of all, our readers be damned. Sorry J

We had covered most of the things we wanted to see, and spent the last hour or so checking out some of the local independent comic book stalls downstairs, then decided to pack it in and call it a day. All round it was a lot of fun, thanks to all the companies, businesses and independent groups that were there, thanks to all the vollenteers who looked after it all, and a big respect to the cosplay people who attended as well, it was extremely impressive.

Maybe next year we will have our own AustralianGamer.com booth there: we could do a live podcast in the booth, or maybe just a setup where you could come and beat us up with big foam hammers, or maybe we could cosplay as each other. We'll do anything for attention, really! See you next year!

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