E3 2009 Mega-gallery!

Our Monsters and Rockets Covert Photography Operative has sent us her report from E3. There are plenty of articles out there about the various games and gizmos on display at the conference, but they rarely talk much about the experience itself, what it's like to really be at E3. In this gallery of photos, we'll take you behind the scenes.


Something nobody ever mentions about E3: the conference is so big that it tends to spill far beyond the actual hall, often taking over several blocks of downtown Los Angeles. Here you can see three entire buildings given over to advertising the upcoming Final Fantasy game. No photo can really capture the scale of something like this. Think of it this way... You see that cutie on the left, with the pigtails? Your entire body could fit in her ear-hole.






Outside E3. The US army will usually have a big display of tanks, Humvees and other military equipment out here to pimp the game/recruitment tool America's Army: Special Forces. This year there was a huge pile of trash to promote Rabbids Go Home. That poster for the Jack Black heavy metal game Brutal Legend was about the size of a city park. If you spread it on the ground, you could play baseball on that thing.












ED 209 from Robocop? Nope. It's one of the killer mechs from James Cameron's upcoming mega-budget sci-fi action picture Avatar. Cameron himself showed up to promote the upcoming game based on the film, a rare spotting of this reclusive director in the wild.















In previous years E3 offered up some huge, elaborate booth displays, it was like visiting a video game Disneyland. This year things were noticeably scaled back. A few years ago, the Silent Hill 4 booth recreated the game's haunted apartment set. This year, the booth for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was a comparatively sedate affair.













But there were a few impressive displays, like this inflatable samurai the size of a two-story house. (Although we couldn't quite shake the feeling that this was just something they swiped from a used car dealership.)













A very Tim Burton-ish Batmobile, to promote the utterly awesome-looking Batman: Arkham Asylum. The game is the work of the cast and crew of the classic '90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, but in the game everything's been given a more realistic, gothic makeover.










With the Batmobile and Ecto-1 on the scene, E3 was well-protected against both criminals and evil spirits.












Who ya gonna call? Apparently three people who aren't Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd or Harold Ramis. (I guess the Ghostbusters have started franchising.)











Ah, yes. The famous E3 "booth babes." They stand around all day long in a hot convention center, dressed in goofy costumes, tottering heels and itchy wigs, getting ogled by fanboys and doing the same sales patter nine zillion times... And somehow they keep smiling through it all. It's a glamorous life.















Another booth babe. Let's see... Tina Fey glasses. Brunette updo. Firearms. A generally sinister, supernatural quality. This is either Bayonetta, a sexy witch adept with both spells and handguns... Or it's some sort of Sarah Palin fetish roleplay outfit.
















There were lots of toys on display. This is apparently a character from the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII, named Oerba Dia Vanille. It sounds like there's been very little info released about the character so far. She's certainly... very pink.















The gang from G4TV is usually on hand, either doing live interviews or milling around the show. Here we see X-Play's Adam Sessler interviewing... a guy. (Hey, your guess is as good as mine.)











E3 is always so crowded with colorful folks, somehow finding Waldo wandering the halls seems entirely appropriate.
















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