Authors Note: This entry is still under construction. Last update October 2, 2000

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is the premier video game trade show in North America. It has close analogues in the ECTS show in Europe or the Tokyo Game Show in Japan. It's held in the spring of the year, and it the show to see what's going to be hot in the game industry for the following Christmas. In fact, it's generally considered a truism that if your game isn't at E3, you're not making that holiday season. (And the games industry is still all about the holiday season, at least in the US.)

Founded in 1995 E3 has moved around a little bit, but has been in Los Angeles, California for the last few years. Recently it has been held in the Los Angeles Convention Center and it takes over the entire Center with several different halls crammed full of exhibits.

Trade shows are always pretty insane. Add in the target demographics of the games industry and they don't get any calmer. E3 is famous for games companies throwing crazy parties, booths staffed with scantily clad woman (known as "booth babes". Apparently the LA location makes hiring models or actresses very easy.), and all kinds of insane promotional gimmicks. Highlights from E3 2000 included a model wearing two strategically placed stickers for her top, midgets dressed up as game characters, a guy on huge (like 10 foot) high stilts and a kilt, and any number of even crazier ideas. Walking around the show floor will produce more free T-shirts, pens, bags, posters, frisbees, etc. than any sane person really needs. And of course, there are hundreds of unreleased games to play.

The console manufacturers always have huge booths, pushing their console. At E3 2000 Sony (Playstation and Playstation 2), Sega (Dreamcast), and Nintendo (N64 and Game Boy) accounted for 90% of one entire hall! To put the size of this in perspective, Sega had an entire 2nd story of their booth that had four or five dancers in costume dancing every hour. Nintendo had a small bar inside their booth, as well as a Volkswagen Beetle customized to look like Pikachu. Giant balloons of popular game characters are common.

E3 is technically a trade show, which means that A) they don't let anybody under 18 in, and B) you are supposed to be connected to the game industry somehow. If you ever get the chance to go, the spectacle alone is worth the price of admission. And don't forget the chance for all the free T-shirts!