Here it is, my last E3 09 video, and there's no game I'd rather go out with than Bit.Trip Core. In this, the final part of a three part series, we hear about the chances of the Bit.Trip series to come to other consoles (including the DSi), how Bit.Trip Beat has sold so far, why the men of Gaijin Games will likely never go retail, and what games turn them on.

My voice cracks a bit at the end of the interview. Second puberty is a real bitch, one they don't tell you about in health class. Hit the jump and hear for yourself. 

Of course, by enter I don't mean, enter, but since this is a game by Edmund McMillien (creator of C*nt), anything's possible. How these guys will be implemented remains to be seen, but what we do know for sure is that Alien Hominid (from Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers) and Commander Video (from Bit.Trip Beat and the upcoming Bit.Trip Core) will join Tim (from Braid) as playable guest characters in Super Meat Boy; the super WiiWare upgrade of last year's Newgrounds hit Meat Boy. Also announced is the method for unlocking these little bastards. All of Super Meat Boy's guest stars will be unlocked by finding warp zones that lead to secret levels based on their games. These levels will be super hard, and involve play mechanics unlike those found in the rest of the game. 

Awesome.

For those keeping score, there are still approximately nine indie guest stars yet to be announced for Super Meat Boy. I can't think of three bigger names in indie gaming than Tim, Hominid and Commander Video. Any guesses as to who's going to show up next?

LAUNCH GALLERY (2 IMAGES)

In this, the second of a three part series, we delve deep into what it takes to program the Bit.Trip games, the research behind the design of Commander Video (the series' main character) and how Bit.Trip Core's bosses will differ from those of it's prequel. You also get to see one of the bosses in action, something I haven't seen anywhere else.

Just watching this video has me all freaked out again. The Bit.Trip series has a way of putting you in a very particular kind of panic, one that usually snowballs into a full blown freak-out. They also have a way of putting you in a type of trance that allows you to completely block out the rest of the world. That's when you're doing well. When you screw up, it's cause for a complete nervous breakdown. 

Here I am, rambling on again about my love of Bit.Trip. Sorry. Please, hit the jump and let the guys from Gaijin Games explain their work for themselves.

Gaijin Games (of Bit.Trip Beat and the upcoming Bit.Trip Core) is the videogame developer you want to work for. In talking to the guys at this year's E3, I really got the sense that they were all equal partners in the pursuit of creating games that weren't about making money or appeasing any one audience, but were rather solely focused on doing what they want to do. After enduring all the wanna-be-action-movie games, soulless marketing ploys and ingenue garbage that comes from being at a massive trade show like E3, my time with the guys from Gaijin was a huge breath of fresh air. These guys make videogames because they love videogames, and that's it. For that reason alone, they are a team you should keep an eye on. 

Hit the jump for first of three Gaijin Games interviews where we get inside info on the storyline of the Bit.Trip series, how to play Bit.Trip Core like a pro, and the origins of Core's unique play style. 

Yes friends, from here on out, Luc Bernard will officially be known as "The Mack", and he has returned. Ironically, his theme song is not the 70's funk hit by the same name, it's actually What's up doc, can we rock?. As for the game he's returned with, it's called Mecho Wars. I love the way it looks, and if the gameplay can keep up, it could be a new favorite. I don't have an iPhone yet so it will be a little while before I find out myself, but Luc has hinted that the game could come to WiiWare or the DS at some point. I'll believe it when I see it; Eternity's Child still hasn't come out on WiiWare as promised, so only time will tell.

iPhone owners can buy Mecho Wars here.

You can expect to see a lot more of Luc in the coming months. He's reportedly the new head of a second game studio based out of Atlanta, working on getting a Mecho Wars cartoon made, and in the process of making a reality show. Keep tabs on the guy via his Cblog, which has also returned, with behind-the-scenes Mecho Wars production art to boot.  

LAUNCH GALLERY (17 IMAGES)

Something amazing happened at E3 this year. Through a combination of deceit, determination, and pure luck, I managed to capture on video an amazing series of events; a daisy chain of game developers playing each others stuff, all for the first time.

It started with a chance encounter with members of Skip Ltd (creators of the Chibi Robo games and the Art Style series) as they were checking out Gaijin games' new title, Bit.Trip Core. From there, I personally escorted the Gaijin games team up to the WayFoward office space for an exclusive play test of A Boy and his Blob. After that, I checked in with WayForward's Sean Velasco as he tried out The Conduit's multi-player for the first time in his life. Then I tried to get someone from High Voltage to play Art Style: PiCTOBiTS in order to complete the circuit, but they were all too busy. Crap, and that would have been a perfect ending too.

To see a game developer try out the competition's new game, especially when the game in question is totally different than their own (and trust me, they don't get any more different than Bit.Trip Core, A Boy and his Blob and The Conduit) is a sociological event like no other. Next year I hope to organize something like this again, but on a much grander scale. Just imagine playing the new Gears game with Luc Bernard, then watching Cliffy B play the new Zelda, then asking Miyamoto to play the new Metal Gear with you, and finally witnessing Kojima's uncensored first time with Eternity's Child Too. I know it'll never happen, but that's not going to stop me from trying; and trying is half the battle.

Anyway, hit the jump for the video. It's a hoot.

Where The Conduit is exciting because it promises to be the first fully featured online FPS on the Wii, and The Grinder looks promising for it's co-op and horror/comedy combo, Gladiator A.D.'s claim to fame is being damn strange. It's both ultra-violent and ultra-realistic, a combination that's never been seen on the Wii before. It plays sort of like Bushido Blade, and also sort of like Punch-Out!!, but it's actually nothing like either game in almost every way. In fact, the game isn't quite like any other fighting game I've ever played. When was the last time you heard someone say that?

Regardless of how the final product turns out in the end, I'll always remember Gladiator A.D. for being a game that was brave enough to follow its own path. By the way, it looks a billion times better than that screenshot up there, or any screenshots of the game currently available. You'll really have to see it for yourself to know what I mean.

Hit the jump for inside info and a hard look at Gladiator A.D. 

Got a butt-kicking interview here with Capcom's Seth Killian on the development and localization of Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, and a little bonus stuff with Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder at the end. I'm still pissed/jealous that Heder got a T Vs C shirt and I didn't, and when you hear how into the game he is, you'll understand why.

Oh, and a little bonus tidbit; Seth told me off camera that it's not impossible for the 2-3 additional Capcom characters that may (or may not) make there way into the Western release of T Vs C to be decided via an online poll. So keep your eyes peeled for that and all other T Vs C news, which could be hitting these internets any time now. 

Hit the jump for the full video, and please let Seth know via the comments section which Capcom characters you'd like to see added to the game. More than anything, he's aware that T Vs C is "for fans, by fans", and I know that he and everyone at Capcom want to carry that spirit into the game's Western release.

Jesus Christ, The Grinder looks awesome.

I'm not a big fan of the FPS genre, but when a game brings this much to the table, it doesn't matter what genre it's in. The Grinder combines the knowingly over-the-top horror/comedy of House of the Dead: Overkill with kick-ass controls of The Conduit and the co-op survival of Left 4 Dead, with a little Monster Squad thrown in for good measure. It will be very hard for High Voltage to screw up a game with this much going for it. My only complaint about the game at the moment is that the backgrounds look a little wonky, but I'm not worried, as the game's E3 09 build was only 6 1/2 weeks into development. Crazy, right? I still can't believe how well the game looked and played considering it had only been around for two months.

Hit the jump for the full video interview, where David Pellas from High Voltage talks about the game's influences, the Left 4 Dead comparisons, and the game's chances of being brought to the PS3/360. 

Right now I'm knee-deep in getting another E3 video edited, so I really shouldn't be posting this, but it's just too fun to pass up.

Remember that artwork for the next Wii Zelda game that Miyamoto teased us with last week at E3? Well, thanks to a rather obvious hint from Miyamoto dropped at the star of this IGN video interview, and the already discussed resemblance the woman shares with Link's most famous weapon, we can now safely assume that weird looking chick in the artwork really is a sword, probably the master sword. 

Miyamoto has already told us that the next Wii Zelda would use motion plus infused power for one-to-one sword control. How the hell is that going to work when your sword is a full grown woman? Is the next home console Zelda game really going to feature Link picking up a sword shaped lady with one hand and beating people upside the head with her?

If so, will that be awesome enough to get you Zelda-haters to buy a Wii?

Here's a look at few more of the PS3/360 games of E3 09. Highlights include some time with God of War III, Left 4 Dead 2, and Project Cube; a really kick-ass looking Geometry Wars rip-off from Square-Enix that is not shy about throwing blood all over your face. Come to think of it, if measured by blood splatters per second, Project Cube was probably the most violent game at the show. I think I love it.

For the record, this will be the last E3 09 video recap I post. We do have a few video interviews coming up in the next few days, covering games like Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, Bit.Trip Core, The Grinder, and Gladiator A.D., but as for videos that try to condense six hour gaming sessions into 3 minute youtubes, this is the last of them.

The process of examining, uploading, and editing all this E3 09 footage (probably more than 20 hours worth) has left me totally desensitized to the whole event. Thats the bad news. The good news is, I now pretty much have all of E3 09 memorized. It's a beautiful thing. At the risk of sounding corny, E3 09 was a time in my life that I never want to forget.

Hit the jump for the final recap, and don't forget to wave goodbye to E3 09 for me.

I have the feeling that I missed a lot of best PS3/360 games at this year's E3. Shadow Complex and PixelJunk Shooter were supposedly on the show floor, but I never saw them, despite looking high and low for them all three days of the show. I've heard that each of these games actually had to share monitor-time with other download only titles, which is a real crying shame, especially when you consider the fact that Infamous, a game that's already been released, took up multiple screens on the floor.

Combine that with the fact that I don't really care for games about guys shooting other guys (as opposed to shooting aliens, zombies, etc) and the fact that by the time we shot this footage I was already sleep deprived and overstimulated, and you have a video that is a lot more grumpy and frown-y than the previous entries in this series.

Hit the jump for a video I sort of hate.

I went to E3 to learn about videogames, and I did, but by the end of the show, I had also learned a whole hell of a lot about women.

While hoofing it around the show floor, it seemed to me like there were actually more women at E3 than there were videogames. Now that I think about it, most games in attendance at the show had two, three, or even four "promotional models" apiece. Even Nintendo's booth was brimming with part-time model-looking ladies. They were slightly more classy and family-flavored than the other "professional spokeswomen" at the show, but they were all most definitely "booth babes."

This video doesn't even cover a fraction of the women I met at E3 (God, that sounds terrible). If you're curious about what we didn't get on camera, this video by my new friend Storm Dain does a lot to pick up the slack. He managed to meet the modestly dressed Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma babes, the so-real-it's-creepy Bayonetta babe, and the 3rd hardest working babe in videogame journalism, Jessica Chobot.

Ugh, all this use of the word "babe" is making me feel dirty. Just hit the jump and watch the video so I can go wash my hands. 

[Update: Got some complaints about not enough pics in the gallery, so I added a few more. Also, due to popular demand, here's Jessica Hall (the KoF XII girl) in her underwear.)

LAUNCH GALLERY (11 IMAGES)

Everyone's been saying that E3 09 has marked the return of the "real" E3. What does that mean? I'm not rightly sure, but I think it has something to do with all the batsh*t insane, barely videogame-related stuff that was constantly afoot in and around the convention hall this year. Andy and I tried to capture all of it as professionally as possible, but we definitely weren't able to catch everything. At one point, we had to choose between stopping in the hallway to beg Walter Day for an impromptu interview and racing outside to the far end of the convention center to take a gander at the probably-fake religious activists trying to stop EA's game Dante's Inferno from getting made. I'm still not sure if we chose wisely, but there you go.

So yeah, this video is dedicated to all the "personalities" we encountered at E3 09, booth babes notwithstanding (that video is for later in the week). Highlights include meeting a hamster man (there to promote the upcoming G-Force game/movie), a run-in with the two best pirates of all time, and pitting Napoleon Dynamite against the most important videogame question ever asked ever.

Hit the jump for the video.

Last year, me and my good friend Andy McCarthy were responsible for the bulk of Destructoid's E3 coverage. This year we have a whole video team, led by the humble and lovable Rey Gutierrez. Not only is that going to lead to bigger and better coverage for you, but it's really freed Andy and I up to do whatever we want, without worrying about covering everything. As nice as that is, it's also a tad overwhelming in a different way. This year's show is so much bigger than last year's, and it was hard to even know where to begin. 

This video will hopefully give you a sense of how it feels to be thrown into something like E3 09 with no map and no direction home, and the insane amount of fun that comes with trying to find your way through it. None of the games shown here are necessarily my favorite or anything, it's just the first stuff that I saw. From here on out you can expect to see a lot more focused videos, including in-depth interviews with multiple developers, off the cuff chats with booth babes, religious activists, and other "actors", as well as impressions of all the best games coming to Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft platforms.

Until then, you have this video. I hope you enjoy it.