Tuesday 9 May 2006
Mere moments after the conclusion ofSony's pre-E3 conference, we managed to knacker a PS3 with our very own hands - and we weren't even trying.
As the speeches and announcements drew to a close, attendees were given the opportunity to play PS3 for the very first time. Only a handful of pods were set up around the Los Angeles auditorium - but we made sure that we elbowed our way to the front of the queues.
Our efforts were initially rewarded with being able to play Sonic the Hedgehog on the next-gen machine. Or so we thought. To begin with, and once we got over the initial thrill of the simple realisation that we were playing PS3 for the first time ever, we were engaged by the game's classic Sonic styling.
In the demo, players are given the option of taking control of either Sonic or Silver the Hedgehog. Either way, it makes little difference: this game is ridiculously fast. And slightly twitchy and overly-responsive with it. Either that, or we were just so excited to be playing PlayStation 3 that we somehow forgot the skills necessary for controlling a blue hedgehog.
The environments and backdrops are huge - although it doesn't actually look that 'next-gen', more current-gen-and-a-half. As we were in the process of considering this, the game crashed and the screen went blank. We were loath to give up our pad to the civilians in the queue behind us, but there appeared to be little point in standing there looking at a blank screen.
Either way, it seemed as if we'd inadvertently killed a PlayStation 3. Fortunately, tech support was on hand in the form of a man opening up the outsize drawer in which the PS3 was hidden and hitting the reset button. In the process, the truth of what we were actually playing on was revealed: a huge betamax video recorder-looking dev kit, and not a sexy 'clear black' PS3 at all.
As a first taste of PS3, it wasn't quite what we had hoped for. But it was quite funny.
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