Each day at the Nintendo booth they do a little game show sort of thing were you could win a Wave Bird. I woke up this morning and I told everyone that today I was going to win one. They all laughed at me but I knew it was the truth. I was like Babe Ruth calling his shot. I pointed to the Nintendo booth and said today a wireless controller will be mine. After two hours in line with Porkfry we had finally worked our way to the front. That is When Monkey showed up and slipped into line with us. Along with about eight other people we took our places around the prize wheel. The prizes started spinning as we all clapped and banged on the counter top. As the wheel slowed I noticed the little cardboard cut out of a Wave Bird moving closer and closer. It stopped right between me, and the guy to my left. We both looked at it and then looked at each other. As I sized him up a large man in a Nintendo shirt put his hand on my shoulder and said “you’re a winner, stay seated.” I did as I was told and looked across the table to see that Monkey to was still seated as well. We both glanced over to see that a girl and her boyfriend where also still with us. I shot monkey a look that said, “we must destroy these people”. The four of us were then led to a big screen TV and a row of movie style seats located high above the Nintendo booth. Each seat had a Wave Bird resting next to it and Mario Party 4 was on the TV. We took our seats and a woman explained that we would play seven party games. For each victory you would receive a point. As we came to the last game Monkey and I both had two points, the guy had one and the girl had one. Each character now had a stamp and the goal was to bounce around a giant piece of paper. The player who was able to cover the most surface area by the end of the game would be the winner. The match started and we were off, each of us stamping like mad. I looked over and noticed that monkey was actually just following along behind the other guy. He was actually stamping over every square of color this poor bastard put down. It was a brilliant strategy and I immediately put it into effect against his girlfriend. Getting teamed up on in such a way must have been extremely frustrating for both of them. Or at least I like to imagine it was. The game ended and when the stamps were added up Yoshi was the winner. I got the last point of the game and as I walked off a woman congratulated me and handed me a small velvet bag with the words Wave Bird stitched into it. I was a winner.

There was a strange moment where we were talking to humans from LucasArts, and they said that they were big fans, and we said that we were the Goddamn fans around here, and it nearly came to blows with us trying to determine who respected the other more. More surreality from the E3.

Okay. I either won the contest, or Monkey's dead. In which case, I win.

It's really a race, now, between Monkey and myself, to finish our posts and be counted on the front page.

E3 means Penny Arcade's E3 Sketchbook! Today’s comic concerns the US Army game.

In fact, we're quite the opposite.

If there were a Return To Castle Wolfenstein Expansion Pack, and I'm not saying there is, it might include another class altogether - one that specializes in Covert Operations and sneaky stuff. It might include a multiplayer map that takes place in the Single Player campaign's Forest level. Engineers might enjoy an expanded role, with the ability to possibly build bridges, sniper nests, and machinegun emplacements. They might also leverage powerful new weapons, like Land Mines or Grenade Launchers. Soldiers could appreciate the FG42 Paratrooper rifle, or even a mobile MG42. This game, which exists purely in the realm of Theory, might include full bot support, were it to be an actual product that was in alpha now.

It's from a couple months ago, so you might not remember the coupons I got for my birthday.

Where the hell did this Zanzarah thing come from, Germany? I never know what you guys are going to do next. For the uninitiated, Zanzarah is a 30/30/30 combination of Magic: The Gathering, Quake One, and Pokemon. The remaining ten percent acts as a reservoir for cream. It's nuts, and the production values (especially on some of this audio!) are through the roof. I had a hell of a lot of fun with the demo, although I'm not sure if they had me in mind when they made it. Playing a girl who captures fairies in a magical forest is not something I would tell my psychologist I spent my weekend doing.

To help people get their Afterburners installed, we're offering (free of charge) this handy addendum to the manual. I'm not saying you aren't capable of it, I mean, shit, we did it. But to get everything absolutely perfect would require an act of God in my opinion, and as I've gone into already, I'm agnostic.

In a concept that appears to be strung together from every game fantasy I've ever put in a post, this whole "Savage" thing really has me going. There is information available on it at both GameSpy and Gamespot - but in a nutshell, we're talking about an RTS/FPS hybrid. Ooooh!

HI

Here is a quick update to let you know that I don’t care if you didn’t like Episode II, that’s your own goddamned problem. Stop filling my mail box with your inane crap. So you think the acting was shitty and the story was stupid and the romance was lame blah blah blah. I don’t care. How about you type out your four paragraph letter to me exposing Episode II for the shoddy piece of cinema that it is but then instead of hitting send you hit delete and just pretend you sent it to me. Okay? Is it a deal you retards? Great, thanks.

A week or so ago, I mentioned that you could get your mitts on a beta of the Neverwinter Nights tools - all you had to do was pre-order, which any sentient being has already done.

Check this out - Monkey and I saw Episode II on a system like that, and if you can possibly wrangle it, I'd recommend you see it (or see it again, perhaps) on a digital screen. That shit be mad crisp. It was like they had a gigantic monitor in the theater.

I cried during Episode II.