Over my eight years at PGC/NWR, I've been on plenty of adventures. I've interviewed several Nintendo game directors, covered trade shows, and reviewed dozens of games. Heck, I even reported on a Pokémon spelling bee right after puking in the parking lot. That's dedication! So as you might imagine, it's a tad difficult to pick my best memory. However, my most unique experience was a few days before E3 2001….
As a seventeen-year-old video game journalist who had cut his teeth mere months earlier on an awkward interview with Hal Barwood, I was greener than Luigi in a frog suit. Site Director Billy Berghammer had arrived in Los Angeles a few days before the show to settle down and scope things out. Being the only Southern Californian resident on staff at the time, I drove up to meet him at Ye Ole Comfort Inn.
Billy flagged me down from his balcony, and we kicked things off by playing some single-cartridge multiplayer on our AA-powered Game Boy Advances. Say what you will, but our import GBAs were THE SHIT at the time. F-Zero, Mario Advance, and Mr. Driller were good times, indeed.
Anyway, after warming up our gaming juices, we set out in my '97 Subaru Plumber-mobile to check out the LA Convention Center, where E3 was still being unpacked. Little did we know that our excursion would become part of video game history! We parked on the street, so as to not raise additional suspicion. (and we wanted to save some cash.) With our trusty cameras in tow—mine being a shoddy 0.3 megapixel point-and-click—we ventured to the LACC and entered through a surreptitious side-door.
As you might imagine, I was nervous as f-ck. It was all Billy could do to keep me calm. Fortunately, none of the workers setting up shop seemed to notice my trembling as I walked from South to West Hall for the first time. When we reached the entrance to West Hall, we were ecstatic to find the glass doors were unobstructed and the show floor largely assembled. And then—lo and behold—we had confirmation of the Nintendo GameCube logo.
"I'm sorry, but you aren't allowed to take pictures." the oblivious guard told us after we had each snapped a shot. "Oh, okay," Billy chortled as we strolled away with breaking news in tow.
Now, it gets a bit blurry after that. Billy kept repeating "holy shit" as I drove us around unfamiliar streets for thirty minutes, hunting for a Taco Bell. I can only presume we posted the breaking news either before or after said meal from the hotel.
Nonetheless, we got our story, our tacos, and our Mountain Dew. It was a good day.
