How early in the morning was it when I woke up on Friday 30th August 2002? I'm scared to remember. I think it was about 4.15 AM, just to make sure I was awake and ready to be picked up. No one should have to wake up at that time, but here I was - up and staggering about, like I was still dreaming. Today was the day I was off to ECTS for the second time, the UK equivalent of E3. A huge entertainment trade show, with one exception - this time, Sony are da boss now. Last time I went to ECTS, there was a very sweet balance of consoles and companies. Sony were still there in a huge dominating way, but at least they were surrounded by a fair amount of different aspiring businesses. Not so this year...

We were all standing in the Jester car park in a circle, wondering why we were standing in a circle in a car park at 6.40AM. One of the programmers I'm working with on Music3 picked me up at 6.15AM. The sun was lazily rising above sloth-like crawling clouds, and there was the slightest hint of September in the wind. Colin, one of producers who work at Jester (the only one?) was complaining. "I hate ECTS" he commented. The last ECTS I went to was a pretty pleasant experience, although one marred by the fact we'd all were working early morning in the offices and we spent three days there. This time, it was a day trip. That was probably a very good thing looking back on the trip now.

When the train arrived , it felt strange walking towards the first class carriages. It was my first time on first class! At last, I have elevated myself through the train class system. Whoopee-doo. Actually, it was very pleasant. Kind of uneasy getting waited on hand and foot by trolley dollies, but I can say they didn't skimp on serving tea to me. Even though I had a breakfast, they offered another. A fry up. I ordered, and while waiting for it to arrive, I though I'd try the game developer thing of playing my GBA on the train. I took it out, turned it on and realised the light in First Class was subdued. Must be those businessmen networking 24-7... I must of sounded like a kid - "Whoa! I'm eating a fry up and my surroundings are moving! Normally I'd be in a static cafe! Paul, the Jester web team, pointed out that our tickets said we were Virgin Groupies.

3 hours later and more free tea and we'd arrived at London Euston. The first challenge was working out what ticket to get, and we were soon on the way to Earl's Court. The venue was right outside Earl's Court station, and get this - it was in Earl's Court. I mean, c'mon! What are the chances of that? The place had been totally took over by the razzamatazz of the video games industry. Advertising boards flashed up adverts for Twin Caliber and Timesplitters 2. A skateboard ramp was set up outside while those darn youngsters on their dangerous wheel boots spinning themselves upside down and making a bad example to others. I think I'm getting too old.

After the usual lax security, we showed our passes and were given little transparent covers for them, and we had arrived! Unfortunately, as soon as we entered, the deadly sweat of ECTS had hit us. Hadn't anyone heard of air conditioning? Well, it was too late. The sweat had hit us all, and a day of painful chaffing legs had begun. At this point, I feel sorry for those fat American programmer types who waddle around. Only a bit sorry for them, mind. Again, it was still obvious to see who was an artist, who was a programmer and who was management. There definitely are many, many characters to ECTS. It felt a lot smaller than the last time I was at ECTS, and for good reason - it was. Also, Sony had took over one half of the place with their oh-so-incredible-you-best-believe-it Playstation Experience. An etheral blue glow could be seen at the far end of the hall. Unfortunately, due to Sony being at ECTS, Nintendo and Microsoft weren't.

Actually, Microsoft were, but they were only "developer relations" for Xbox, and the accompanying photo above shows you just how the mighty have fallen when it comes to ECTS. Sony obviously have slung a huge wad of cash in the organisers' direction to get their way, and surprise! They had. The only 2 Gamecubes in the entire building (well, it felt like it) were at the rather funky ATI stand - it looked like a battleground, though I managed to see someone play Mario Sunshine badly! It looked gorgeous, lovely lighting effects, though we could tell that the camera mode was its usual Mario 64 style of crappyness. Still, I can't wait to play it! It was a shame there was no Nintendo presence. It was disheartening, because of all the fantastic titles promised at the end of the year. I could of been playing Zelda, or Metroid Prime. No chance.

I also played some No One Lives Forever 2, the Austin Powers-esque spy 'em up. Badly. I died in the suckiest way possible, though only because my love of big ninja swords clouded my judgement somewhat. Most of the ATI stand was took over by PC games showing off ATI's technology. Jedi Knight 2 was there, as well as some games I'd never ever seen or heard of in my life. Ah, well. There was no Erotic Island 4. This disappointed me somewhat, but I did managed to cheesily pose with two Atari-clad booth babes - notice I look like one of the Atari booth team when I'm blatantly not. Ah, what sleazy fun I had! The booth babes were around, but not many. I saw a demented looking 20-fags-a-day geisha girl and some Nvidia women getting photographed on a reinforced steel stage with fat American programmers.

Me and Paul scouted out the huge orange Intel banners featuring a character from Unreal Tournament 2003, and sure enough... it's there! On a PC! The infamous Unreal "Two Weeks" Tournament 2003!!! It looked lush and played brilliantly. As usual, Intel were great for freebies - a retro T-shirt, a transparent mouse and a retro mug. All that for someone else's - errr, my e-mail address! I also blagged a try-out copy of Softimage 2.0 from someone who noticed that they "may of heard of" Jester Interactive. He tried to persuade me that 3DS Max 5.0 is all evil and we should all be getting Softimage 2.0. He was half right. Max is evil, but only if you're extremely stressed out and sending bad juju to your PC. Windows may play a part somehow too...

We whored our way around the Rage stand grabbing Rocky stickers - a Mr T sticker, for crying out loud!! We also played Twin Caliber remorsely - a game which involves using both analog sticks on your Dual Shock to aim with two independant arms. It was actually a pretty smart experience, there was plenty of zombies, gore and random explosions. The game was mindless shooting fun - take that comment how you want. Rollin' was also there, and I think Lamborghini was there too. I was shocked to see Xbox demo pods in the Sony stronghold at the Rage stand though. Maybe Lamborghini wasn't there... it was all a mirage.... maybe it was all a bad dream...

The ECTS bar was home to many a developer, and in fact it was pretty well signposted for anyone. A huge hanging banner pointed down, and failing that, there was the Carling Bar near the entrance. We happened to accidently buy some stupidly over-priced bottles of booze, only to discover that some guys with magic company credit cards were using them to their own devious needs. As for food, there was only one type. Pizza. Lots and lots of pizza. "Hey, they're developers! They eat pizza all the time!". Maybe some developers wanted a change from the pizza office lifestyle... ah, well. Pizza for lunch then.

We sat next to some of the guys from work, and one of them (who shall remain nameless) was mercilessly ripping apart Codemasters' Toca Driver. As I say, he shall remain nameless. We passed around the Nvidia stand again to tut at the shamelessness of fat developer types, and happened to chance upon seeing Breed being played. It looked great, reminded me of Halo (a good thing indeed) and we mistook it for Unreal 2. Later on, a load of people had an Unreal Tournament 2003, er, tournament, and they all played really, really badly. Honest, they did. All of them. There's only so many times you can see someone die on screen testing out all-new super-ace corpse physics before the bar beckons. Again.

While all this was going on, Jester were showcasing Music3 in a nearby hotel room. From what we heard later on, it was very, very well received. This is good news, and even better news that Future Publishing's Official PS2 Magazine news editor was fawning over it too. Music Generator has a strange influence over reviewers. I dunno what it is, but it's a good influence. I digress...

We managed to blag tickets for the Playstation Experience, and once 3 PM came, a flood of developers gathered outside waiting. So we waited. And waited. And waited. The ticket said 3 PM! What's the big deal? While we were waiting, members of the public were flooding in and enjoying the trademark ECTS sweat. Even in the ultra-blue, ultra-cool Playstation Experience, you can't escape it. No one can. At 3.15 PM, they let us in. The first downer was that the freebie bag wasn't there for us to grab - we had to grab it at the other end of the Experience. Which meant *ulp* having to experience the Experience. No fair. The first thing we saw as soon as we entered was the ultra-unfashionable "Linux Zone". Four monitors full of text does not make an Experience.

Thankfully behind that was a huge amount of PS2 demo pods playing the latest games. *shock* The Getaway existed!!! We did see some of Team Soho, developers of The Getaway, staggering around after obviously another late night in the office. It's scary, it really is. Still, it looked kind of decent. Unfortunately, it was to be compared with GTA3 and will do until it's last minute of gaming goodness. Shame. The demo pods were all set in a rather flat blue backdrop, enlivened by 3D characters sticking out of them. 3D Lara looked pants. The latest Tomb Raider game, the first on PS2 - Angel of Darkness, looks okay-ish. It's still Tomb Raider though.

Tekken 4 had a stupidly huge crowd gathering for it - it's just Tekken, for christsakes!! There was also an amusing "18" section for Mortal Kombat. Some parents moaned that little Johnny couldn't get into the 18 section to see ultra violence and blood 'n' guts. I saw twelve OAPs playing with PS2 pods, which was very heart warming. One day, I shall be one of those OAPs. Gungrave was a fantastic game - cel shaded, though more so. I swear Smilebit (JSRF) developed it - though now I find out it's Red Entertainment, released through Sega. It certainly has that comic book look. The whole game was explosions, explosions and more explosions. Oh, and plenty of gunfire too. I loved this game too much.

Haven was the only real stinker in there - it was crummy platforming pants, and after the criminal "jumping into the screen" business, and dying for no reason, I decided to leave it be. Let it die in peace... Lord of the Rings was incredible - after a movie involving clips from the movie and gameplay footage, you could actually play it! It looked nothing like a PS2 game - bump mapped textures, real time shadows, lighting effects. It was Xbox quality - extremely lush to look at, and everything was incredibly faithful. Kingdom Hearts was another game which captured my attention - especially the Nightmare Before Christmas level. Square and Disney's unusual real-time RPG looked stunning, and seeing Jack Skellington stride with you around a perfectly-created Halloween Town woulc guarantee I would be making a purchase. It was also weird to see a Sega logo in the Playstation Experience, though it pointed down to Space Channel 5.1 (Yikes) which actually looked fantastic but due to the stupidity of no headphones being included, it was impossible to hear what Ulala was saying to you to copy above the noise. Insane.

We could of stayed longer, but among the ECTS sweat there was the main stage. One of the many from So Solid Crew shouted over some random beats before Emily Newton Dunn announced the first Pro Evolution Soccer tournament. Even though there was an urge to run on stage and scream my unrequited love for her, I thought enough was enough and made my way out of the claustrophobic laser-induced nightmare which was the Playstation Experience. At least the freebie back was worth it. It contained a fair amount of quality stuff including The World's Best Pen (TM). It lit up blue when needed, and it looked ace. Colin, the anti-freebie aforementioned ECTS hater, was in love with it. Among the freebies was a magazine called Rumbled - complete with DVD. Unfortunately, it didn't take long to realise it was a huge Acclaim advert, prominantly featuring Turok-bloody-Evolution.

On the DVD, we're introduced to David Dienstbier - he's a loon with an unhealthy interest in guns of various sizes. This was overlaid with a mockney wide boy commentary. It was Loaded with games, basically, complete with over-the-top remarks about breasts.

We decided to get the train home early, illegally using our first class tickets to get an earlier ride home on first class. While drinking the free(ish) beer and munching into my jacket spud with brie, bacon and walnut (jeez, I really love First Class), I had time to reflect on ECTS 2002. Two of the guys from our art team spent time shadily filming the Bodyworlds exhibition - an exhibition I really, really should of visited instead of ECTS. Think cadavers preserved and turned into works of art. It really did look fantastic from the covert footage taken (inbetween all the shots of various arses, the covert tape filmed at waist level) . What had happened to ECTS? I actually enjoyed it last time I went.

There still were stands there which were "by appointment only". Capcom certainly have a tradition of just letting their best mates in. Eidos (Or Eid s - someone robbed the o) also had a ultra-stupid-secretive vacuumed atmosphere. For the average gamer-cum-developer (oo-er), it's pretty pissy to have this kind of thing still going on. What have they got to hide? Show us!! 3DO also had their traditional "by appointment only" tag, but I'm guessing that all that would be there would be their "incredible" Army Men games.

I think that it was basically a case of Sony domination once again. Not just Sony domination, but also the fact it put off Sony's contenders. Surely a result. It amazed me that so much space could of been used for more stands, but they weren't put to use. It almost was as if Sony made sure that none of their competitors could share the limelight. For crying out loud, even Mr Eazy CD Clean had his own stand! It was even more sickening to know that Sony swept the board at the ECTS Awards ceremonies. It's not my imagination. It's not paranoia. It's basically bully-boy tactics which has ruined the event. Where were the Xbox first-party games? The Nintendo first-party games? Nowhere. Maybe next year? I doubt it. Many have cited the lack of variety in companies was due to Sony's dominance, it's a real shame.

Still, at least I have free stuff. That's all that matters. *sob*