I had a lot of fun at GamesCon, aside from driving the porcelain bus Saturday night (Zoid and Brett from Microsoft each had the same chicken as me, and both felt ill as well, I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant to make a warning). GamesCon was a well-run event, and I was very impressed with the participation by game industry folks, as well as hardware and software vendors. There's no way the attendance was anywhere near the 5,000-10,000 that their site said they were expecting, but the folks that were there all seemed to have a good time. In addition to the Tournaments and the general LAN party gamers got to see all sorts of new goodies in operation, including:

• The Voodoo3
• ATI Rage Fury
• Unreal Tournament from Epic Games
• Terminus from Vicarious Visions
• Mortyr from Interactive Magic
• Slave Zero from Accolade
• Zoid from id Software
• Levelord from Ritual
• Pat Lipo from Raven
• Kevin Baccus from Microsoft

As well as free copies of TRIBES for all, many other giveaways, Cuban cigars and the world's worst (or at least the corniest) lounge singer. This singer (from the hotel lounge) was like Bill Murray's Saturday Night Live routine. If you saw the Sopranos last night (and you should watch if it is available to you, it is the best show on TV), he was the equivalent of the stand-up comic in the old-age home. I actually have a couple of mpeg movies of this, if they came out okay, maybe I'll post them somewhere.

Link of the day: The Jesus Dance (no offense intended towards anyone's beliefs), a site doubtless inspired by the all time favorite Blue's News Link of the Day, The Hamster Dance. Thanks RAZ and GreenMarine.