comic-con 2002

by sumir on 08/09/2002 12:19:50 -0700

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A number of comic fans would argue that the video gaming industry should at most be an ancillary portion of a comic convention on the whole. Nonetheless, however, the gaming industry had a surprisingly strong showing at Comic-Con, with representation not only in a number of the booths on the expo floor, but also even several panels exclusively discussing some of the finer facets of the video game industry. As games are my hobby of choice, naturally I spent quite a bit of time listening to video game discussion panels as well as playing pre-release versions of some upcoming comic book-themed video games.

One of the game publishers with the most presence on the show floor was, of course, Activision. However, at the Activision booth, there was not too much shown. Naturally there were playable demos of Spider-Man, the hit selling multiplatform game that was released concurrently with the blockbuster movie of the same name earlier this year. More interestingly, Activision also demoed pre-release versions of its two X-Men games, X-Men: Next Dimension, as well as X-Men: Wolverine's Revenge. Next Dimension is at this point a fairly clean looking 3-D fighter featuring huge multi-tiered stages and a comprehensive list of playable characters. Perhaps most intriguing about this game is its more detailed story-line, which strays from the tradition set by the Mutant Academy games. In Wolverine's Revenge, the title character contracts a strange virus and must penetrate the lab in which he was created in order to find the cure. This game will be a third person hack and slash, and so far it seems as if the combat system is fairly versatile. All in all, the two X-Men games that Activision showed looked like they had promise, and perhaps can bring the X-Men universe to a wider gaming audience. Also showed in Activision's booth was Blade II, a third person shooter. The game, scheduled for a September release on the Xbox and PS2, has a storyline that occurs after the events that occurred in Blade II, the movie. The assortment of weapons was impressive; I especially thought the UV grenade to burn up vampire scum was pretty sweet.

Bandai also had a fairly strong showing at the convention, showing two of its upcoming PS2 releases. Bandai showed .hack (pronounce it 'dot hack' to sound like you know what you're talking about) at their booth. This promises to be an epic RPG, and Bandai is releasing it in four separate chapters. The most well-known aspect of this game is that it ties in quite closely with an anime of the same name, and is looking to shake things up in the states. The other game Bandai showed on the exposition floor was yet another fairly typical Gundam game. This was overshadowed by .hack, however. Nonetheless, Bandai demonstrated that anime/game crossovers are amassing a respectable market share.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America showcased some of the offerings for the PS2 in upcoming months, including its assortment of online games: namely SOCOM: Navy Seals and Twisted Metal Black Online. Though neither of these are necessarily comic-related, they nonetheless garnered a fairly large audience who all desired to get their hands on a controller and take out other players. Sony handed out bags containing its demos of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus as well as Ratchet and Clank: basically the same assortment of demos it handed out at the E3 convention.

I was pretty happy overall with the assortment of games and game-related paraphernalia presented at the show. While the gaming industry by no means represented any large share of the expo floor, it still had a notable and respectable presence. As the two forms of media continue to evolve and form new self-images, perhaps we will see even more crossover between comics and video games. With such hot sellers as Spider-Man being released, I think it is a fairly safe assumption that we will, in fact see more of this. And that's a good thing.

- Adam

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