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Follow along with me:
1- A Champions or Norrath calendar and a totally unrelated Metal Gear Solid 3 promotional CD (featuring the hit theme song: Snake Eater!). The MGS3 discs were a much-coveted item -- a CD in a holder shaped like a vinyl record case, with a nice little poster to boot. Konami gave out limited numbers every 15 minutes, so people had to hang around the booth and swarm the guy handing them out before they disappeared. It wasn't a pretty sight. The calendar I gave to my cousin.
2- Nintendo's promotional binder, featuring information and pictures of all of Nintendo's games at the show. One of the most informative pieces of swag in this picture.
3- Postcards and fliers for literally dozens of games from all sorts of publishers. If they were sitting on a desk, I picked some up. I'm still not sure why.
4- A Magic the Gathering starter kit, featuring a CD copy of the Online version of the game and a starter desk of cards. Below that, an assortment of informational CDs from various publishers including Vivendi Universal, SNK, Tapwave, THQ, Gizmondo, Activision, Eidos, Bandai, Nintendo and PlayLogic. Many booths required a business card to get these discs... I quickly ran out of the paltry number I took. Lesson: take plenty of business cards!
5- A cute little AlterLife purse from NCSoft containing a thin can of
6- Stuffed pokemon characters! Two Bulbasaurs, a Charmander and a Pikachu (I did not get a Squirtle, unfortunately). These were given out at the Nintendo DS section of Nintendo's booth. As you exit, you scratch a DS screen to reveal which toy you've won. These also went to my sister. Behind those, six sets of Game Boy Advance SP headphones, specifically designed to work on a system that lacks a headphone jack. A big bin of these was sitting in a corner of Nintendo's booth with an attendant handing them out. I kept one and distributed the rest to friends.
7- An Ashen comic book from Nokia's press conference bag, and a Rifts RPG game book signed by the creator from a trivia contest at Nokia's booth. No, I had nothing better to do.
8- Six Nintendo DS T-shirts, also given to those departing the DS section of the show . I just kept going through and getting shirts throughout the show. On the last day they seemed desperate to get rid of them. All but one of these went to friends. I also snagged shirts promoting Gizmondo (two), the Phantom, and City of Heroes. I saw a few people on the floor wearing WarioWare shirts from 2003 saying "My swag is better than yours." I was so jealous! Shirts are like the Rolls Royce of E3 swag... the one item you're guaranteed to be happy you took. Get as many as you can.
9- Game demos for the new Sly Cooper, Ace Combat, 989 Soccer, and Crash Bandicoot/Spyro the Dragon games, plus a full version of the America's Army expansion (which can also be downloaded for free). A few of these are still sitting unopened in my living room.
10- Three hats, one from ApeXtreme (now a collector's item!) and two from Logitech. I think I've worn one of these once. They aren't very fashionable, even at the ball game.
11- Various small things including a classic video game expo paperweight, my n-Gage press pass, six special edition E3 2004 Nintendo DS styluses (guess where they're from) and a deflated ball which I think was promoted Lineage II (these were EVERYWHERE at the show). Not pictured - A handful of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 band-aids that an attendant handed me. One of these turned up in my wallet the other day. No fooling!
12- Twenty-four magazines. That's right, 24. Many were from little cubbies throughout the showfloor that had daily copies of the Hollywood Reporter and Variety (both of which gave E3 cursory coverage), as well as traditional game magazines like Game Informer and EGM (both with special pre-E3 issues). GamePro gave out free copies at a small kiosk, and Ziff-Davis had a massive booth where free issues were distributed two at a time (I snagged XBN, GMR, the Official Playstation mag and a few others). Also, a guidebook to the show floor and special E3 editions of GameDaily for each of three days of the show, and a copy of nGage Insider from the Nokia conference. I'm likely forgetting some more mags in this list.
13- A cool, camouflage bag promoting Pathway to Glory from the Nokia conference. This is what I used to carry most of my swag through the show.
14- An equally cool camouflage notebook from the Nokia conference and my E3 media badge and holder, with included pen and pad. This was a lifesaver, making it easy to carry a camera, a notepad, and a variety of swag bags with only two hands.
My swag-grabbing advice to all the first-timers... pace yourself! Decide if you, or anyone you know, will really use that pair of Tecmo nose tweezers. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's worth lugging around all day.
I miss the "Please do not call it the 'Ape Extreme'" ApeXtreme. :(
ReplyDeleteI have a Squirtle :P and a Wario Ware shirt. I am totally wearing that one this year. It's one of the few shirts I've gotten at E3 available in a size other than XL.
ReplyDeleteNC Soft is Korean not Japanese, bro. Doubt they'd be handing out Japanese Coke
ReplyDeleteWhoops. I made an assumption, but those are what get you killed in this business. It's been changed in the story.
ReplyDeleteThough I don't go to E3 (and probably never will, now that I quit my video game retail job), what sucks is that they only seem to give out shirts in XL or L. Game stores often get free shirts to promote games, and also shirts are sometimes pre-order bonuses. I have to swim around in shirts that are several sizes too large. T_T Don't they know that gamers come in all sizes?
ReplyDeleteThat's why I treasure the Nintendo soccer jersey I bought from a "model" (*cough* booth babe) on eBay -- it's girl-sized, and that's rare!
No doubt you'll get lots of cool stuff. You should make another post showing us your haul. :-P
Like last year, I was planning to limit what I pick up to the bear minimum – now I’m tempted to copy you and sell the stuff for charity… but that just sounds like too much work… [looks a photo, again] and you mean to say you didn’t get the Nintendo bag?
ReplyDeleteOne of the cooler pieces of swag last year was a Guild Wars thumb drive. It had some images and a demo pre-loaded on it but you could erase that and just use them for your own purposes. On the last day in the last few minutes of the show they were just letting people take handfuls of them.
ReplyDeleteI pack an extra bag with me specifically to carry the extra stuff that I acquire at the show. All of the press discs and other related material is enough to break your back.
ReplyDeleteI've started taking my wheeled bag that I get at CES and it helps GREATLY. It is roomy enough to hold my laptop as well as all the required press stuff, on top of the swag that publishers give away. At the end of the day I head back to the hotel room, empty the bag, and start over in the morning.
Wheeled bags rock.
I was lucky enough to attend E3 in 2003 (my friend owned a game store). The swag that year was nuts. The hot item were the Soul Calibur t-shirts (thrown to the crowds to fight over). I snagged 2 despite only being 5'9"...the GT4 t-shirts were also hard to get, as you had to win the race in the demo booth to score it (though you got a sweet t-shirt just for playing). Sony had a good bit as well w/ Socom dog tags, demos of Jak II, Aler Echo (blech), & Sphinx. Got shitload of mags (mainly ziff-davis stuff). the worst swag? The t-shirt packaged to look like the god-awful n-gage and it was touting the Tomb raider game...talk about to ashitty franchises getting together.
ReplyDeleteFunny how the swag all seems like a good idea at the time, but 90% of it just ends up getting stuffed into a bag in the closet when I get home.
ReplyDeleteAt least that's the case with me... I don't wear T-shirts that much, and especially not XL ones.
The best swag is the stuff you can actually use, like the PlayStation memory stick and binder from the press conference last year, the GBA SP case from 2003, and the various notebooks.