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I talked about Modern Warfare 2 recently, but Activision had a lot more going on behind closed doors at E3. In particular, it continued to march its Hero brand forward in the form of Guitar Hero 5 and DJ Hero.

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Unless you're talking techie-geek stuff -- bits, bytes, and all that -- 256 isn't a very practical number. Yet that's the magical number of players that MAG (which previously stood for "Massive Action Game") supports. With each match lasting 20 minutes or longer, it seems that "practical" is an impossible concept with so many people playing this shooter at once.

Can it work? We had a ton of questions and concerns...and we found the answers at this past E3....

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Hmm, not a lot of news today. It's almost as if some big videogame convention happened last week. Nah. That's almost as silly as Microsoft and Sony both announcing motion-control devices to combat the Wii. That would never happen...

News Blips:

• Miyamoto flattered by Wii-nis envy. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto told BBC that he was flattered by Microsoft and Sony's new motion-control peripherals announced at last week's E3. Still, he claims both are still early and don't look to possess the same amount of depth as the Wii Motion Plus. Of course, he could have said this before he had a chance to preview Microsoft's Project Natal himself and experience the euphoric joy of spastic arm and leg flailing. Not any depth, huh? Sorry, Shiggy, but just flailing your arms is sooooo 2006. [1UP]

• Left 4 Dead 2 boycotters want to pick the brain of developer Valve, possibly eat it. Wow, these guys are pissed -- a bunch of angry Left 4 Dead fans are boycotting the recently announced sequel giving a slew of reasons why Valve should apologize for their nefarious sequel-making ways. We hate when companies make sequels, too! Don't get us started about how pissed we are about having to play another Super Mario Galaxy game. Ugh! [Kotaku]

• Internet meme put in Scribblenauts for teh lulz. In case you doubted how many random words/phrases can be conjured up in the innovative DS game Scribblenauts, the folks over at Joystiq discovered the Internet meme play him off, keyboard cat is officially in the game. Pretty cool. Though, sadly, we discovered another popular meme, 2 girls 1 cup, wasn't included. That stinks! [Joystiq]

• Perfect Dark XBLA screenshots look best in the light. Man, these shots look like ass. Oh, yeah -- this is a port of developer Rare's last first-person shooter for the Nintendo 64. So if we were to rewind our brains back to the year 2000 when this game came out, we're sure we'd compare these shots to a different body part. Elbow, maybe? [1UP]

Hit the jump for some video blips, including more Project Natal pimping, Shoe talks about the E3 press conferences, Conan O'Brien addresses his Mario-inspired set, and...more.

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Editor's note: Check out this intricately edited personal history of arcade games by Shea Murphy. The guy has a deep and abiding love of buttons, that's for sure. I think he might like Zero Punctuation, too, as he's got a similar breathless narration style going on. -Demian

One of my best friends put this video together. Most of it was filmed at FunSpot in Laconia, New Hampshire. I'm the little guy with his back to the camera in a few scenes with the wig on. I thought some of you out there might find it interesting. Enjoy.

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Was about to do a search on Google when the image froze me. Why on Earth would they have a Tetris logo (which rules, natch)? Turns out it's Tetris' 25th birthday. Seems a little old, especially since the Game Boy -- which everyone associates the game with -- turned 20 last month.

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Editor's Note: Patrick Bonk -- great gaming name, by the way -- explains why he feels Tony Hawk: Ride just might be the game that gets him back into the series he once loved so much. And actually, I'm hoping for a similar bounceback for this once-proud series. -Greg

It's funny. Out of all the things that could and did capture my imagination at E3, I did not think that Tony Hawk: Ride would have stuck with me the most. I remember when I first heard about a Tony Hawk reboot with a skateboard peripheral, I wasn't interested in the least. Now, after seeing the Microsoft press conference and Tony Hawk's all-too-brief presentation of the game and its unique peripheral, it is firmly on my radar, all $120 of it.

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Editor's Note: Thought the Wii Vitality Sensor was lame? Nicholas has some really interesting ideas for how it could work, from casual to hardcore. Give the full story a read. -Shoe

At E3 2009, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata surprised everyone with a new peripheral for the Wii, known as the Wii Vitality Sensor. The Wii Vitality Sensor is supposed to detect how relaxed you are while playing games. The audience, mostly gaming journalists with core gamer audiences, were left scratching their heads at the revelation.

Truthfully, it's very difficult to try to understand how the Wii Vitality Sensor has any application to the realm of videogames at all. However, the reality is that the Wii Vitality Sensor is most likely another important step in Nintendo's Blue Ocean strategy: getting as many people to play and enjoy video games as possible.

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My tour of the EA booth felt like a trip through hell. Because it was. Seriously -- the demo for action-adventure game Dante's Inferno had us go through the various circles of Hades. See! I'm telling the truth. Uh, sorta.

Now I know there are only seven deadly sins, but the developers at Visceral Games are so damn talented, they managed to create their own sin exclusively for Dante's Inferno: imitation. Holy crap -- Dante's Inferno is God of War. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you better believe Kratos is going to be filing a restraining order against poet-turned-demon-killing badass Dante Alighieri.

Everything (and I mean just about everything) copies God of War. Don't believe me? Well, let's compare:

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Xbox 360's Project Natal isn't even out yet, and it's already huge.

During E3 2009, journalists, developers, and even Hollywood celebrities got wind of the secret demonstrations Microsoft was giving to select individuals and were pulling every string they could find to get in. Even Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto went to the secret area of Microsoft's booth and got a private VIP demo.

Demian and I got to give Natal a go, and we came away extremely impressed...and neither of us are of the easily impressed variety....

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Abstract: The online community at NeoGAF.com focuses its attention almost exclusively on videogames. The conversations can be indecipherable to outsiders, even those familiar with videogames. This passionate group of fans is one of the most influential in the industry. During live events, specific threads provide insight into the reactions of the community. It is the intention of this study to reveal their real time reactions to such an event, Nintendo's E3 press conference held on June 2, 2009.

Methodology: In order to chart these reactions, I assigned a score to each comment. If a comment was optimistic or positive, it scored +1. If it was negative, it scored -1. NeoGAF time stamps each post to the minute, so for every minute interval during the press conference, the sum total of response scores were charted.

A Positive Remark: Any remark that was positive in nature, either optimistic for events that may happen within the conference or approving of events as they happened. These were restricted to the actual conference happenings.

A Negative Remark: Any remark that was negative in nature, either pessimistic of what was to come, or disapproving of events as they happened. These were restricted to the actual conference happenings.

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Earlier this week, Miyamoto revealed to the press a new Zelda for Wii that wasn't shown at E3. Below is the concept art that we saw (man, that would've made for one beauty of an EGM cover). If you need a giant 3531x5000 version to wallpaper your gaming room with, click here.

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A lot of things impressed me about the Modern Warfare 2 demo: the great blizzard/snow effects. A snowmobile chase that would make Bruce Willis blush. That tense climb up the ice-covered mountain with a pair of ice picks....

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