10. Vegas Baby! Vegas!

9. I can tell the wife/gf “I’m going to sell all that junk!” – just to come back with more :)

8. The CGE Museum will make your awesome world-class collection look pa-the-tic!

7. Geeked-out chip music Nerdvana!

6. A cold Corona for 50 Dollars? No, it’s not a strip club, it’s the CGE Auction!!!

5. Kunkels and Daglows and Cranes – oh my!

4. An Elvis impersonator playing Atari 2600? Hey, it might happen!

3. Somewhere in hundreds of banana boxes full of Pac-Mans and Combats hides a prototype!

2. It just might be your chance to touch Billy Mitchell’s hair!

1. Mystery boxes! ‘Nuff said!

 
Miss Peyroux opened up in a playful mood, trying to warm up the rather laid back audience. Already in the first song all the band members were introduced with short soli:
Starting on the left of the stage was Gary Versace playing piano, keyboard and a what looked like a Hammond B-3 organ which sounded fantastic. Gary really went to town on that one but kept things more subdued on the other instruments.
Next was Jon Herington, who played guitar and ukelele, excelling at solos as well as harmonizing very well with Madeleine's own guitar playing. Jon had multiple short and two extended soli and had great stage presence without overpowering his band mates.
To the right or Madeleine and more in the background was Barak Mori playing the double bass (mostly plucking but occasionally using the bow) or electric bass. He too had two extended soli, especially his second one was quite long and groovy.
Last but not least was Darren Beckett playing the drums. He played really well, used the brushes a lot and impressed with lots of variety.

The concert was great with Madeleine and her band really getting the room going after 2, 3 songs. Good move playing the well-known "Don't Wait Too Long" early on to get the audience in the mood. Her singing was a bit more embellished than on the CD but that went very well with the intimate somewhat under-lit setting of the club. No specific album was dominant in the set list with 3 songs coming from her "Careless Love" and "Half The Perfect World" albums, 2 songs from the "Bare Bones" and 1 song from the "Dreamland" album.
Overall I did think the concert was a bit short, she played for less than 1 hour and a half, just 13 songs total. On the other hand I also understand that she had to do a second concert that night at 10 pm and had played double shows every night for three days prior.
Still a great show with wonderful vocals and music from Madeleine and her fantastic band. And of course also in part to the great food at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, my good friend who accompanied me and our wonderful table neighbors Juanita and Ed.
I'll definitely see Madeleine Peyroux again when she comes to Seattle!

Madeleine Peyroux, vocals & guitar
Jon Herington, guitar, ukelele
Gary Versace, piano, keyboard,Hammond B-3
Barak Mori, bass
Darren Beckett, drums

Set list

• I Hear Music
• Don't Wait Too Long
• La Javanaise
• I Must Be Saved
• Half The Perfect World
• All I Need Is A Little Bit
• Rooftop
• No Better
• Ophelia
• Reckless Blues
• This Is Heaven To Me
• Dance Me To The End Of Love
• Instead

This was the first time I have seen Sam Philips live and she and her band were absolutely fantastic. Really! First the warm-up: Seattle's own Robert Deeble opened with well... it's hard to describe. His music is somewhere between indie folk-pop, minimalist and... well head over to his website and check it out for yourself.

The concert was sold out, something that surprised me given that Sam Philips isn't exactly well-known - or so I thought. Apparently she contributed some music to the TV show  Gilmore Girls and even appeared on screen in a season finale. We arrived 2 hours early and still got fairly decent seats but the place was packed.
I primarily own Sam's older stuff such as "Martinis & Bikinis", "The Indescribable Wow" and "Omnipop" and am not familiar with her latest stuff but I figured it should be good :)

After Robert Deeble and his colleague had finished Sam Philips and her band set up:

• Drummer Jay Bellrose with a rather eclectic drum set
• Violinist Eric Gorfain with a variety of violins, including a Stroh violin with a sizeable metal horn, a banjo and some guitars
• Accordionist Ted Reichman sitting a bit more in the background.

Soon they started and I was very impressed with the cozy atmosphere of The Triple Door and how well it worked with Sam's style and her accompanying musicians. Especially Jay Bellrose was a joy to watch, pulling one little noisemaker after another out from behind his drum set: rattles, shakers - I felt reminded of a busker and his props. In a big arena this would simply not come across as it would be invisible to the vast audience. In the intimate setting of The Triple Door most people in the audience saw the use of the little noisemakers and the fun that Jay's play exuded.

Eric Gorfain's Stroh violin did not only sound unique he seemed to enjoy playing it quite a bit. He also switched back and forth between the various violins, a guitar and a banjo and seemed to master all these with ease and enthusiasm. The big variety brought some new interesting interpretations to older Sam Philips songs, especially the ones from her first 3, 4 albums.

Sam Philips did change it up as well, at times playing an acoustic guitar, then a very heavily distorted guitar during "I Need Love" or a more moderate electronic guitar during most of the other songs. Speaking of "I Need Love", Sam's new interpretation of this 14-year old song was excellent, a nice new twist on something very familiar. Another surprise was her singing of "Animals On Wheels" when Sam just took a cassette player (think old-school Walkman) and played the instrumental track from that - accompanied by her singing. For some of the vibrato passages she rapidly shook the cassette player, introducing wow/flutter with nice results. Fun to watch and to listen to! Call it a one-woman-Karaoke-show-with-manually-induced-sound-effects but it worked for me :)

Throughout the evening Ted Reichman stayed in the background, consistently playing away on this accordion and weaving dense tapestries of sound. Here and there he would throw in some unexpected embellishments and demonstrate his skill. Overall he was a great addition even when he didn't have the stage presence of his colleagues and perhaps purposefully chose to stay out of the spotlights.

In the end a very enjoyable concert with many old favorites (some of them interpreted in delightfully new ways) as well as the songs from Sam's new "Don't Do Anything" album. Great eclectic music well and enthusiastically played to an appreciative audience - what more can you ask for? I look forward to Sam's next concert in the Seattle area!

While I still checked out the store the owner Peigen Jiang came out, told me that they had literally opened that same day and we agreed to meet on Saturday morning for a listening test.

Fast forward to Saturday: I showed up with a stack of my CDs and Mr. Jiang gave me a run-down of his company eFicion and the speakers that he had set up for demonstration: eFicion was created out of the desire to build better and more affordable speakers and at the same time have the designs manufactured in China for lower costs. Currently eFicion offers two models for test listening sessions in their store:

• Ficion F200, a larger ported bookshelf speaker with an Aurum Cantus ribbon tweeter and an Aurum Cantus woofer.
• Ficion F300, a fairly large two-piece speaker with an Aurum Cantus Air Motion Transformer, a rear-firing ribbon tweeter, and a midrange and a woofer also all by Aurum Cantus.

I was very curious about how these speakers would sound, having enjoyed Aurum Cantus Leisure 2 SE and Music Goddess speakers for years at home.

Mr. Jiang explained the rest of the system (components by Balanced Audio Technology) while I checked out the finish and craftsmanship of the speakers. They are beautiful and meticulously built. The finish is flawless and far superior of the typical China-made OEM speakers - no comparison! The F200 speakers were in natural cherry and the F300 speakers in rosewood veneer.

First up was the F200 and Sniff ‘n’ The Tears with “Driver’s Seat”: highs were very smooth and although just bookshelf-monitor-sized the speakers had a surprising amount of fairly low base. But unlike my Aurum Cantus L2 SE which are just a tad boomy the  F200’s base was dry and very neutral. I moved on to Norah Jones’ “Turn Me On” which is beautifully recorded and has some very prominent vocals as well as a clear base drum. Again the F200’s ribbon tweeter reproduced the vocals very clearly, transparent and without any discoloration. Despite the speakers being away from the soundboarded back wall by at least 3 feet the base was very authoritative yet dry.

No doubt – the F200 is an amazing speaker, especially given the relatively small size and the very fair price of $3400/pair. Very neutral, surprisingly deep yet dry base and very detailed highs and vocals.

Next up was the F300 and well… let’s just say I haven’t heard speakers like that before. Neither in the price range nor in this range of sound reproduction quality. I am not a professional audiophile, just a bumbling amateur but wow, did these speakers sound good! Mr. Jiang played “Jun Fukamachi at Steinway”, a direct-cut LP transfer CD from First Impression Music. I must honestly say: rarely have I been so impressed and impacted by music. The F300’s AMT tweeter is unbelievingly transparent and neutral and when closing my eyes the grand piano was right there in the room! Truly an amazing experience! I played some other CDs and just as expected vocals were effortless and neutral, base was very deep yet neutral and if I had $15K I would have taken these speakers home that very same day!

But I don’t… sigh!

Overall I was very impressed with Mr. Jiang’s creations and his willingness to explain the details, provide background information and let customers like me take the time to listen to their own CDs. Personally I think that locally designed speakers like this deserve more attention, especially given the excellent price/performance ratio of these products!

So, next time you are in Redmond Town Center, stop by at the eFicion store, right next to Matt’s Rotisserie & Oyster Lounge. Or look them up on the web at http://www.eficion.com!

Eficion LLC
Redmond Town Center F225
7525 166th Ave. NE
Redmond, WA 98052
Tel: 425-882-1717

Thanks Mr. Jiang for two hours of wonderful music!

Boy was I wrong...

First of all I was blown away by the massive size of the band: besides Mr. Wonder there were 2 guitar players, 1 base player, 1 drummer, 2 percussionists, 2 keyboarders, 4 background singers, 1 trumpet and 1 saxophone player. And each one of these artists was top-notch and most were able to showcase their skills with extensive solos.

Stevie and the band did a lot of improvisation, players were clearly adding their own little touches, jamming, simply having fun and enjoying the increasingly enthusiastic audience.

The concert started out slowly with many unfamiliar songs - at least to me but from the audience reaction it was clear that the audience was waiting for "the hits". Sure Stevie played some minor favorites but most of the material was fairly obscure. Again, keep in mind that I am not a huge Stevie Wonder fan.

Stevie definitely tried to get the audience engaged, there were a lot of interactive "sing along" and "repeat after me" segments, Stevie even delighted folks by singing some German folk songs in his own way - nice touch!

After about 1 hour things started to heat up and the audience got more and more engaged. Stevie also started to play some more familiar songs yet at the same time kept experimenting with improvisations, extensive solos and even had a segment where he used a vocoder. Unexpected but very cool and definitely something I have not seen connected with Stevie Wonder before!

Despite the concert not being sold out (one staff person spoke of around 7,000 tickets of 11,000 seats sold, not sure if that is true) the crowd was really warmed up now. And so 1 1/2 hours into the concert Stevie was ready to unleash the barrage of big hits.

The light and stage show had continuously become more brilliant, more aggressive up to this point. In the beginning the lights were fairly subdued and primarily in the background. Spotlights and some moving lights, nothing to obvious. Later high intensity LED strips in the foreground above the stage were added (see the vertical strips in the pictures). More and more moving lights got added as the show went on and the 7 giant LED bars behind the stage got used more frequently.

Towards the end the giant LED bars showed highway and downtown traffic footage of an American city overlayed with live images from the stage to create a unique composition.

In the 1 hour finale Stevie unleashed a non-stop crescendo of big hits, with lots of improvised segments in between: "Sir Duke", "Superstition", "Master Blaster", "Higher Ground", "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" and so on. One big hit followed another and the audience was on its feet and making noise like a sold-out venue.

Mr. Wonder and his band clearly enjoyed this enthusiastic response, played extensive solos and just had a good old time.

Overall, the concert was truly awesome and Stevie Wonder and his band really played their hearts out. Passionate and skilled musicians enjoying themselves and an enthusiastic audience appreciating the outstanding performance - what more can you ask for?

Stevie Wonder's daughter Aisha Morris was one of the female vocalists and also had a solo. She received a very enthusiastic response from the audience as well.

Mr. Wonder also made multiple references to the impending US elections and heavily endorsed Barack Obama. Needless to say the German audience responded favorable to that :)

So, enjoy the pictures and definitely try to catch Stevie Wonder in concert, even if you are not a big fan! If you appreciate watching a master at work you will enjoy him and his band!

Interestingly enough STRIPPED saw Eddie Izzard switching into "bloke"-mode as he referred to it at the beginning of his act. No high-heels this time!

The show was fun with a wide range of topics and he genuinely seemed to enjoy the audience's reactions. He was quite puzzled though when a joke about Huskies (the local university team nick name) failed to generate any laughter :)

His favorite topic seemed to be Noah's ark and intelligent design in general - very pointed, considering Seattle is the home of the dubious Discovery Institute, a fundamentalist Christian "think" tank advocating creationism and other anti-scientific beliefs. Eddie spent lots of time on why "intelligent" design isn't so intelligent after all.

After the show Mr. Izzard came out the side-entrance to greet an enthusiastic crowd of perhaps 80 fans. He refused to give autographs ("I am too tired!") but did Q&A for about 40 minutes, entertaining all kinds of fun questions and a few bizarre ones.

There was also at least one far-traveling fan from Alaska who begged Eddie to include AK on the next tour, guaranteeing sold-out shows!

Mr. Izzard even got a marriage proposal from a die-hard fan with a "Cake or Death?"-necklace but turned it down :) Some folks were shouting things like "Don't do it!" and "You can do better", rough crowd!

Overall: good show with great Q&A afterwards, thanks Eddie!

What set this event apart was the large number of private collectors that sold and traded at their own booths. Some of the people sold their extras and duplicates at unbelievable prices!

There were about 25 vendors total offering everything from very early Odyssey games (complete with full-size TV overlays), handhelds, VFD table tops, to Atari rarities, custom-made dust covers, Vectrex, ColecoVision games and newer things like PS3, Xbox 360 etc. Even some more unusual systems showed up: NEO GEO, Commodore Amiga, Philips CDi, various store kiosks and much more.

The kiosks were set up for play, so were a few arcade machines, like this Pac-Man (one of the first 1000 made, see the blue speckles on the side).

Overall there were tens of thousands of games and consoles for sale and trade!

There were also many rare import games and game related items as well as some real classic game treasures.

John, Rick the two organizers and Lee, all from NWCGE. Nice referee shirts from Twin Galaxies!

ATARI 2600 CHAMPIONSHIP

The first highlight of Day 1 was the annual Portland Atari 2600 Championship!

The initial qualifying round was a high-score match of Fastfood with last year's champion James R. achieving the fantastic top score of 11309 points!

Twelve people made it into the second round where they went head-to-head with Surround. I was amazed how filled up some of the screens got, the players demonstrated a lot of skill here.

The surviving six players James R., Lee, Jordon, Mike (last year's runner-up), Anthony and Hans now faced the Quarter Finals with a high-score round of Super Cobra.

To the big surprise of everybody James R. and Mike - last year's #1 and #2 both got eliminated and dropped out!

The Semi Finals had a head-to-head in Space War and Lee and Jordon moved on to the Finals. Scores were close, both matches were won 10-8.

In the Finals then Lee and Jordon faced off on the ingenious Ebivision Pac-Man, the best Pac-Man game on the Atari 2600 bar none. Lee got the high-score with a solid 17230 points with Jordon being a close second with 15090 points!

First prize was $100 in gift certificates, second prize was $50 and third prize was still $25.

HIGH SCORE MOVIE WITH Q&A

The second highlight of Day 1 was the showing of the movie HIGH SCORE from Jeremy Mack with the star of the movie Portland's Bill Carlton participating and staying for a Q&A session afterwards.

I had seen Bill in Seattle a few months ago and the showing here at the game expo was definitely much more in depth and quite enjoyable. Bill also signed a lot of memorabilia while I chatted with his girlfriend and learned that Bill now ones dozens of classic arcades. That guy is serious about classic gaming!

For the people with energy left Portland's premier classic arcade Ground Kontrol gave out discounts to show attendees.

SUNDAY - DAY 2

Sunday proved to be just as busy as Saturday with some additional vendors showing up and many of the private collectors starting to aggressively discounting their goodies (leading to manic rushes)!

Scott Boothby brought his full-size home-built R2-D2 and drove it through the exhibition hall prompting Anthony from Portland's Ground Kontrol to go into Luke Skywalker-mode.

Day 2 also brought some additional contests: 8-player Bomberman by the Portland Hobby Fair, Call of Duty 4 contest and the N64 Championship!

There were also numerous raffles: Video Game Wizards raffled off a new Nintendo Wii, Josh a Dreamcast kiosk and Deepend Gear two new Wii Fit sets for various charities.

I had to leave before the N64 Championship finished but I was told it was awesome!

Overall the 2008 NWCGE Portland Retro Gaming Expo was an awesome show, well worth the drive from Seattle! A big thanks to Rick, John, Chuck, Toby, Jon and Billy to get this organized!

I can't wait until next year!

Today is the opening day of the 2008 Portland Retro Gaming Expo at the Holiday Inn Airport hotel. Almost 100 people have showed up so far for the best deals on classic and modern video games, to participate in contests and to win prizes!

Just to give you an idea of the kind of deals that are happening here:

• Nice Toploader NES $35
• PS2 JP Space Invaders Deluxe box $50
• Genesis Virtual Reality Set in box $25

I saw tons of Nintendo NES, SNES and SEGA Genesis games and stocked up on some Xbox and Xbox 360 games as well. There were even some Vectrex games for less than half of going Ebay prices!

On the collector's side booths range from "I cleaned out my basement!" to "Here are all my duplicates!".

Video Game Wizards, Recycled Gamer, Billy Galaxy and many more professional video game traders showed up as well. In total there are about 20 booths with anything related to classic and current video games.

On the contest side there are tons of single game contests, the highlight so far was the Atari 2600 Track & Field contest. Very arthritic in nature :)

Some unique things I saw:

• Amiga 500 in a giant box
• SEGA Dreamcast development kit
• Xbox development kit
• SEGA Dreamcast display kiosk that's being raffled of
• PS1 display kiosk
• Various prototype and lab-loaner carts

Still happening today:

• Atari 2600 Championship @ 5:00 PM
• Showing of the movie HIGH SCORE with the start of the movie, Bill Carlton being present and answering questions!
• A few more single-game contests

The show goes on tomorrow with N64 contests and more selling and trading as well as more prices and competitions.

For more information check out http://www.retrogamingexpo.com/

Show banner with a nice Nintendo graphic, show floor on the right

Before the opening of the show, tons of goodies are waiting to be unpacked! On the right: Nate (the organizer) being interviewed by KIRO 710 News Radio.

The Rockband room has a full setup with drums, mic and 2 guitars and if you ever wanted to try this game with a "full band" this is your chance! The second free game room has some arcade machines, a MAME cabinet, some classic consoles (Vectrex etc.) and lots of cartridges on loan!

For more information check out www.jetcityretro.com!

The Best Buy and Bungie/Microsoft folks kept the crowd entertained with tons of swag: t-shirts, caps, posters, Clix-models, inflatible HALO chairs, squishies and tons more! Master Chief made the rounds for photo opportunities, the Mountain Dew crew replenished the thirsty crowd with "Game Fuel", there was pizza and Bungie/Microsoft employees signed pretty much everything that was asked of them.

Mountain Dew not only had folks refill the cups with Game Fuel but they also had "Respawning Stations" with portable arm and hand massage which was very popular! Some RedBull Minis also made a quick run past the line.

Then at around 11:00 the first celebrities started to show up: Warren Moon, former QB of the Seattle Seahawks (1997 - 1998) and today a radio broadcaster for Seahawks radio. Mr. Moon went around, shook hands and signed tons of posters and stayed for the official store opening.

Next was the man himself: Bill Gates made the rounds past the first part of the line, shook hands and was ambushed by tons of photographers. He stayed for quite a while and was enthusiastically celebrated by the crowd - he seemed to genuinly enjoy his celebrity status and mingling with the crowds.

There were a few other folks, Laura Foy (formerly G4tv, but Microsoft these days), also Jeff Bell (Corp VP Global Marketing), Don Mattrick (Senior VP Interactive Entertainment, formerly EA), Marty O'Donnell (HALO music composer) and others. Then a few busses with Bungie folks arrived and the crowd got showered with swag items and went totally nuts. People shouted "Bungie, Bungie" and at some point one half of the line shouted "HALO" while the other half shouted back "3" which went on for quite a while.

Finally a few minutes before midnight the Best Buy folks cleared the entrance and made room for the buyers to enter the store and at midnight exactly the first few lucky folks were allowed into the store. In there was a group of photographers and cameramen interviewing buyers and getting the first reactions. Soon the deliriously happy buyers emerged from the store, shouting to the waiting crowd and holding their treasures up in the air. The Legendary Edition seemed to be quite popular! Best Buy continued to let small groups enter the store and the line was still pretty long by the time I left.

All in all a great event, the fans kept it going all night long and the Microsoft and Bungie folks as well as the people from Best Buy, Mountain Dew and Clix fueled the frenzy.

Held at the Holiday Inn and Conference Center, 8439 NE Columbia Blvd in Portland, OR on September 29 and 30, 2007, this is the biggest and best in the Northwest! Last year saw some great contests and phenomenal deals on rare items!

Head on over to the NWCGE website and check it out!

Now Ken a fellow at Microsoft is selling his Pong machine on Ebay. As a kid Ken spent some time at a resort in Eastern Washington where he encountered his first video game: Pong. Years later Ken had an itching for this first love and started asking around about Pong machines and eventually found one in Kansas 1997. After some negotiations he ended up sending a cashier's cheque sight unseen to the seller and soon was the proud new owner of a classic Pong.

This machine is in great condition with just a few dings in the cabinet. The face plate is great, all the lettering on the control panels is pristine and everything is original. It even has the original Syzygy service manual!

The counter inside states that 12029 games have been played on this unit, not bad! Game board and coin mechanism are also on great shape, so is the original Hitachi TV with its tie down strap. And yes, it does come with the original back board.

Ken wanted to raise some money for the resoration of a 1936 Ford Convertible so the Pong machine has to go. Well, I'll be bidding on it and so will every other classic game nut out there :)

(* Yes, I know Computer Space was first but that one was a flop! Cool game and cabinet though!)

Just like the last eclipse I was amazed by the speed with which the moon zooms through the night sky. Shooting with a Russian MTO 1000A 1100mm f10.5 M42 tele lens (manual focus) I had to reposition the camera every minute or two as the moon moved out of view.

Here are some tips for decent pictures of lunar eclipses (or night skies in general):

• Use a sturdy tripod! Especially if you're using a heavy lens (mount the lens on tripod).
• Use the longest focal length lens you have, also check for rentals at camera stores if you are serious about getting the best pictures. For example Glazer's in Seattle has the fantastic Canon 600mm f4.0 L IS lens for a fair $80 per day/night! Or search EBay for "MTO 1000A" and buy yourself a 1100mm lens for $200 or less plus shipping from Russia. Oh and don't forget the M42 adapter to whatever system you're using and make sure the lens fits to the body. It's huge and may bump into the flash (some Canon models and others), you may have to use a very short M42 extension tube!
• If using a manual focus lens a view finder magnifier may be useful to check exact focus.
• Do a mirror lock up on your camera to prevent mirror-induced shaking.
• Either delay with the timer or better use a remote to take shots to reduce shaking.
• Shoot a series of exposures ranging from normal exposure to minus two stops. Experiment and take plenty of shots, memory is cheap :)
• For better exposure adjust the metering points to the center instead of weighted average. Experiment.
• Go for short exposure times, the moon is moving surprisingly fast! At the same time try to avoid the highest ISO settings on your camera as noise may ruin the picture. Experiment with 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 seconds while the moon is still fully lit and check the results - is it crisp or streaking?

The pictures above are the full frames with a 1100mm lens. With a 500 - 600mm lens the moon would be around one half in diameter.

You probably saw this earlier at Bungie, people were invited to a "HALO 3 Preview Event" at the IMAX Theater in the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. I went with Nate and after we had prepared ourselves with some good Pho we got in line at around 9:30pm. At this point there were roughly 300 people waiting and we were told that this was the line for the 2nd show!

Originally there was to be one event at 10:00pm but then so many people showed up that they let a first batch inside the Science Center early and then let more people queue up at the gates outside. This line was now for the 2nd show at 11:15pm.

There were tons of young and old gamers and many kids with their moms (yeah, these must be some cool moms you have there, better stop your whining and do your chores!). Finally around 10:30ish the line started moving and we were let inside and queued up at the IMAX doors. Here some Bungie guys took lots of pictures to be posted on Bungie.net and handed out some small swag.

Then the doors opened and thanks to a bunch of really nice PAX folks we got some prime seats right in the middle. The theater was almost filled to the last seat! The Bungie folks had a giant projector hooked up that filled the IMAX screen to the corners - a fantastic setup! Sounds was just in stereo and a bit distorted but that wasn't distracting.

After the last few stragglers had been seated, Frankie (Franklez) and Luke (Lukemz) started to demonstrate the Campaign in competitive co-op mode. They chose to play Tsavo Highway (3rd level in the game, 1st level with vehicles) on Heroic (the audience wanted Legendary): they started out in a garage with some Warthogs, loaded up with Marines, left the garage and right into the thick of things. Graphics are amazing! Beautiful lighting effects, tons of enemies and action with no slowdown whatsoever! The route goes through some caves and finally into a Canyon of some sorts into the open. Landscape design is stunning with reddish rocks and some shrubbery here and there and of course the occasional sniper tower or other fortification.

Frankie and Luke used lots of different weapons, occasionally jumped off the Warthogs for some close-up action and yes, they died a few times as well :)

After some time they got to the actual highway and followed that until they came to a scenic bend atop of a steep cliff. Here you were told and saw that the Covenant had excavated the Ark in the background with a few Banshees swarming around it. One of the highway bridges was out so Frankie and Luke had to leave the Warthogs behind and continue on foot, making their way across the bridge. I wonder if you can jump that gap with a Warthog? More enemies and finally they had to hole up with some Marines and beat back a Covenant assault until reinforcements and new Warthogs arrived. Lots of action with mines and shields, nice!

We were told that the demonstration of Tsavo Highway was roughly twice as long as the previous group, a little "thank you" for "waiting patiently in line".

Next up was a demonstration of Forge where you can edit objects in existing maps, in this case High Ground. Frankie changed into a Monitor and picked up items, rotated them and placed them somewhere else, played with some weaponry, a Scorpion tank and finally with the Flamethrower. Yeah, the Flamethrower looks sweet and really heats things up :) Frankie set fire to Luke (now playing as a monitor) and Luke took off, trailing flames and smoke before blowing up. I also noticed a secondary turret on the Scorpion, it looked like there was a machine gun of some sort? The Scorpion was very detailed with lots of intricate textures. Each weapon item costs money from $2 and up and vehicles start at $5 all the way to $20 for a Scorpion (if I remember correctly), with an overall budget above $100 - that's a lot of stuff to play with! Finally we were treated to a quick demo of the water (looks great) and some teleporter objects (sender and receiver). And we were shown the Gravity Hammer, this thing is brutal!

You can change spawn points, flag capture points and so on, Forge is amazing, as Frankie said: there really isn't anything you cannot do. I imagine a lot of BBQ fun with Flamethrower-only maps :) Forge alone has amazing potential unseen in console games before.

Lastly we were treated to a saved multi-player movie of Sand Trap that was shown on the HALO 3 build from E3. Two teams of three each with lots of vehicles: one Brute Chopper and two Warthogs on each side. The Brute Chopper has a boost feature which kills some other vehicles when rammed into. Warthogs were killed with a single hit. We were also shown the Elephant, a giant transport tank/base of some sort, as Frankie put it: "It's really slow but has an amazing horn". Elephants can hold complete teams, can be loaded up with Warthogs and even Scorpions fit inside! Unfortunately no action with the Elephant but it is huge and could be a lot of fun!

The movie mode has full time line control: fast forward, slow motion etc. but also has spacial control: you can stick close to one player and pan around him/her or you can move freely in 3D space. You can take screenshots and post them in double resolution on Bungie.net, you can take small video segments and send them to your friends that you just owned and so on - tons of functionality!

Finally Frankie showed off a series of crazy kills: some nice rocket launcher hits in slow-motion, Spartan Laser hits close-up frame by frame and so on. Graphics are amazing with debris, lighting effects and even dust particles coming off the tires. Audio stays positional in freeze frames as well. The resolution will always be translated to whatever your viewing resolution is, so even when your friend kills and records you on a low-res set-up you can later "enjoy" this on your own setup in full hi-res glory.

The event closed with a huge ovation and a thanks from the Bungie guys.

Well, I look forward to HALO 3. The campaign looks amazing, Forge and the Movie features look amazing, it's all good. This game is so much more than just a first person shooter, with all the extras it will set the bar for a long time to come!

Bungie-folks: THANK YOU!