Well, here's the first of a new feature, the Cube-Europe Roundtable. With each edition, staff members will be tackling gaming issues, and giving their opinions on events, games and the things that matter.

What did you all think of this years E3 show?

Tim: Nintendo was by far the most present company at the E3. Not only did they have the biggest stand, they also showcased the best games. That reminds me... The new screen shots of Metroid Prime set tears to my eyes. Doesn't that game look awesome? I bet you cannot wait to get your hands on it, like me. Nintendo is going to release a wacking great list of top games this year, and the company did not forget to throw some new movies and screens of all those games in our direction. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did!

There was also a lot of thrilling news from the developers supporting Nintendo. I was moved to get the press release from Codemasters in which they announced it is going to be fully supporting the GameCube by releasing all of it's new games on the machine. They will truly add to our GameCube gaming pleasure. Also, the announcements of Jedi Knight 2, Full Throttle II, and Quad Power Racing 2 for the GameCube made my heart beat faster... and I haven't even mentioned the new TimeSplitter 2, James Bond - Nightfire and Hobbit media. In short... the E3 kicked butt!

Gerben: In my opinion, this year's E3 was good, but missed some important things. We were all pleased with the expected impressiveplayable versions of Mario Sunshine, Legend of Zelda, Metroid and some new games like Mario Party 4 and Wario.

I was hoping to get some answers at this year's E3. Now that Nintendo hasn't given us the answers, when will they? There might be no Spaceworld this year. So will we have to wait until E3 2003 for the answers?

If you want to know my questions, here are a few: What's going on with Perfect Dark Zero? Will there be a GameCube version of Donkey Kong? How's Kameo getting along, one of my most anticipated games? And one question that has been in many Nintendo fans mind for the last couple of months, what the hell is going on at Rare? When will we find out if Rare is going multiformat or not?

On the overall, I was impressed with the GameCube games, especially Metroid and of course the Legend of Zelda. However, Nintendo could have made this year's E3 much, much better, by revealing some secrets

Jim: In all honesty, i found this years E3 a touch dissapointing. Sure, there was plenty of Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Star Fox etc etc blah blah. But come on, with the slight exception of Mario Party 4, we have known about all these games for over a year now. Where was the new shizzy? Well, it wasn't at E3 that's for sure.

Where was the highly anticipated Mario Kart? Too Human? Galleon? Perfect Dark Zero? Donkey Kong Racing? These are all games that turned me to the side of GameCube when i first heard about them some 18 months ago. But since then, there has been nothing said about them. I was hoping for E3 to be the answer to my dreams, and provide some info on these titles I wanted so badly. Of course, in true Nintendo style, they were nowhere to be seen. Online, wow thats launching soon! Let's show it off at E3... or not.

Yup, as you've probably already guessed, I'm pretty pissed off at Nintendo. Sure Zelda, Star Fox and Mario are looking fantastic as they were 9 months ago at Spaceworld. And yes, I feel Nintendo were the show winners. But in short, there just wasn't enough new stuff to excite me. In fact, I'd rate this as one of Nintendo's worst E3's ever. But the fact that they were still rated as the show stealers proves that I should still have faith in them yet. Bring on Mario Party 4.

Conor: Well, E3 was certainly what I expected. While last years show was all about showing off new games, this years show seemed to focus on playable games that we all already knew about. Granted, I did expect more new games than Wario World but reading impressions, and seeing videos and screens of Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Starfox more than equalled the excitement of seeing brand new games. On that point, I have to say how impressed I was with Zelda. I mean, I liked the cel-shaded look before E3, but after E3 I LOVED it. And judging by all the impressions, it seems to play as good as it looks. Mario looks to be as good as ever, as does Starfox. I am surprised with the lack of Rare games at E3, I was hoping to see some Kameo and Donkey Kong Racing.

Metroid Prime was a big surprise for me. I always knew it would be good, even great, but people are calling it Game Of The Show left, right and centre. All the trouble at Retro Studios has been forgotten in four days, and two rights, the game looks awesome. I must commend Retro on their work. The European Release List NOE released saddened me, after Pikmin we'll have to wait until September for big games. Save your money, that's what I say, because we'll be flooded after the Summer with top-quality games. On the third-party front, there were some delightful surprises, like Jedi Knight 2, Codemaster' support but apart from RE0, there wasn't a lot of "big" third-party games. Overall, E3 was brilliant, it showed us this year is gonna be a great year.

David: Quite a dissapointment in my opinion. There were a few surprises thrown in there, like Mario Party 4 and especially Wario Land. What i fear is that an original game has not been announced for the cube for a while, and three of the cubes flagship titles Rouge Leader, SSBM and Resi are all sequels or in Resi's case a remake. Everyone sawhow the PS2 launced with a dodgy sequel-orientated line-up, and it seems GC's future is continuesly being dogged with sequels. Which i think is no bad thing, but Nintendo is meant to be innovators, not lazy sequel cloners.

The game of the show was clearly Metroid prime, and the video clip released really showed that. I would have thought it would have been Resi 0, but i guess not. The graphics are quite spectacular, and has a nice American feel to it. I really cant wait for that and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

Overall, not near as good as last years E3, but not so bad all the same :)

Nathan: Nintendo really pleased me this year at E3, unlike Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo showed their great titles such as Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Star Fox. I would have really appreciated it more if Nintendo would have announced more games and their official online plans but they very well stole the show. Don't get me wrong, Nintendo announced some games like Wario World and Mario Party 4 but they should have announced more to get us drooling. I am very pleased with the new Legend of Zelda, because at first I had second thoughts on the cel-shading idea but from seeing the movies that Nintendo showed I was wowed by Zelda. Rare disappointed me by only showing Star Fox Adventures for the GameCube, but it really made progress and looks almost complete. So I expect it sometime in 2002 for America which pleases me greatly.

In my opinion, the game that stole the show was Metroid Prime. I have watched the movies over and over, and this is what FPS is all about. It isn't exactly a shootem up which is awesome cause I like the adventurous titles more than FPS. The graphics were some of the best I have seen on a console and maybe the best showed at E3. Metroid Prime has turned out to be a very impressive title which I was actually questioning at first. The gameplay mechanics looked awesome, especially the feature where Samus can turn into a ball and roll around in order to get to certain places.

All in all Nintendo did a great job and stole the show in my opinion. During E3 I was always at a GameCube site looking at impressions or videos. I only went to a few Xbox sites during E3, and that is what Nintendo was trying to do, Steal the show and they did a great job of doing that. The only thing I would have changed was announcing more titles. Also 3rd party developers answered our questions about them not producing much for the GameCube. Which was they are producing a lot and some AAA worthy games.


Check back next time, when we will discuss the apparent low Gamecube sales in Japan.