E3 2005: Five years later

The biggest part of Nintendo's show was the one game you had to wait forever to play - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. These poor saps had to wait hours (plural!) just for a fleeting session of a 50-hour game. A year later Nintendo would reveal Twilight Princess as a GameCube/Wii title.

So, E3 2005 was kind of a sad time for Nintendo. Aside from a behind-closed-doors showing of a Zelda game that wouldn't ship for another 18 months, its highest-profile tech was the Game Boy Micro, which Nintendo later admitted was something of a mistake. Whoops, turns out you can only milk a handheld so many times.

New Super Mario Bros DS was also a biggie, but wouldn't be available for a full year. In other words, Nintendo didn't have a particularly strong 2005 holiday lineup.

Here's a shot of Nintendo's booth blocked by Gamespot's mini television studio. Bringing you the news by forcing ourselves into it.

MICROSOFT AT E3 2005

Microsoft was 100% behind the Xbox 360, with this sloped theater taking up a big chunk of its floor space. This kept looping a video of just how awesome the 360 was going to be, and explaining the concept of "360." The answer is: it's all about you and your whole world! 360 degrees of gaming culture wrapped into one machine. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go cash all these Microsoft checks.

Passersby could stop and gawk at the hardware and controllers that lived inside a series of plastic bubbles.

If you weren't part of the game journo elite, most all you saw of Microsoft's booth were the green kiosks spread out across the floor. They were mostly the Xbox leftovers for 2005, like Chicken Little and... that other game you didn't play.

Next page: Activision, Square, EA and 2005's booth babes!