E3 06: MGS4 trailer stops show at Konami booth

LOS ANGELES--Each year, the Electronic Entertainment Expo sees several archetypes of people turn up: those who are there to scam swag, those who are there to ogle booth babes, and those who are there to play actual games. There's also the traditional annual rush of Hideo Kojima worshippers over to Konami's booth to watch the latest Metal Gear Solid trailer.

This year, a crowd of attendees took a load off in front of the Konami booth's main screen to watch the new extended trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for the PlayStation 3. The trailer was previously only seen by attendees to the Konami press briefing and was much longer than the trailer shown at the Sony conference. (It is now viewable via the official Konami Web site.) It is a sight to behold and features a new, harder-edged Raiden decimating a squad of biomechanical Metal Gear cyborgs with a katana and some gravity-defying acrobatics.

Given its visually spectacular nature, the trailer drew quite a crowd. In less than two hours, late-comers standing to watch it had overrun to the aisles, effectively choking off a busy intersection at the front of the Los Angeles Convention Center's South Hall. Eventually the gawking mob stretched all the way in front of the neighboring N-Gage booth, where attendance was light.

While Metal Gear was the main attraction at the Konami booth, it wasn't exactly omnipresent. Beyond trailers for MGS 4 and the PlayStation Portable Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, the series was harder to find in the booth than Solid Snake in a cardboard box. Also appearing solely in trailer form were Coded Arms: Assault on the PlayStation 3, the company's new Elebits and GoPets titles, Silent Hill Origins on the PSP, and Yu-Gi-Oh Online.

It wasn't all trailers, however. A prominent Dance Dance Revolution-themed stand let players try their feet at the new DDR console and arcade games there, or attendees could have a go at the latest Guitar Freaks and Beatmania arcade games.

The publisher had an assortment of playable games on display, as well. Xiaolin Showdown and the Marvel Trading Card Game were available for hands-on time on multiple systems, as were the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS versions of the latest Winning Eleven Pro Evolution Soccer.

On the portable tip, Konami showed Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and Lunar Knights for the DS. The company had a full slate of PSP offerings, including Death Jr.: Root of Evil, Coded Arms: Contagion, Online Chess Kingdoms, Steel Horizon, Rengoku 2, Gradius Collection, Brooktown High: Senior Year, and Bomberman Land. The explosive protagonist is also set to appear on the Xbox 360 with Bomberman: Act Zero.