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Every year, the video game industry picks 70,000 people to visit an electronic wonderland filled with porn stars, alcohol and free gifts. These people will get glimpses of games still a year away from release, play systems Americans haven't even heard of and see hundreds of "booth babes" enticing -- no, begging -- them to try out their companies' software. Spending the full 72 hours at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, in Los Angeles will bring any video game fan boy to his knees. And this year, I was one of the chosen few.

Former porn star Traci Lords and comic book legend Stan Lee were signing autographs with lines of fans stretching well down the hall. The booth entertainment ranged from the ambitious (rappers doing a free concert to publicize Activision's True Crime 2) to the surreal (a mechanical wolf, walking skeleton and virtual fish hyping Nintendo's new Zelda). The margarita hut outside and sports bars flanking the conference halls didn't make things any less chaotic for those in attendance.

But beers, b-boys and B-level celebrities aren't anything new at E3. This year's conference was easily the most exciting in years for one reason and one reason only: Microsoft's Xbox 360. Its controllers will be wireless up to several feet, and its games will be high-definition and Xbox Live compatible, meaning players are always online. The power of the system can't be questioned, as it multiplies that of the original Xbox several times over. It will arrive in stores this fall.

Several Xbox 360 games were on display. Quake IV is a welcome return to the old-school, death-match style of the original title, as opposed to the horror adventure of its recent sister game, Doom 3. Also resurrected was Perfect Dark Zero, a long-awaited sequel to the 5-year-old multiplayer shooter. The most-impressive-looking first-person title was Call of Duty 2, with its king-size characters, rumbling battlefields and screaming soldiers. All three games support the multiplayer option, but only Perfect Dark Zero offers death matches that support 50 players or more. It's insane, really.

The new Xbox Live and improved multimedia processing are the highlights of the 360. Competitors can actually invite players to death matches while they're in the middle of playing another, entirely different game; a small indicator tells the player that someone is looking for him. Taking a cue from the blogging phenomenon, Xbox Live allows the creation of "friends lists" -- or more appropriately, "enemies lists" -- of favorite opponents.

The Xbox 360 has more than a tetrabyte of memory -- which is many times the megabytes, or MBs, of the original system -- so it has the power to function as a TiVo, a hard drive and an iTunes player. The system is compatible with all major portable music players and, like the first Xbox, allows users to replace a game's music with their own soundtrack. Microsoft says more of its games will support personalized soundtracks.

Finally, the big question is whether old Xbox games will be playable on the 360. The only thing the big cheese of Xbox Digital Entertainment (not Bill Gates but a guy named Jeff) would tell me was, "All the most popular games would be Xbox 360 compatible." So it's safe to say Catwoman won't work. The Halo series, however, will likely make the cut.

Representatives from Sony and Nintendo also talked about their new systems, both scheduled for a spring 2006 release, but offered few details. Sony said the PlayStation 3 will have about twice the storage of the 360, support up to seven controllers and play all PS2 games. Yet the only thing Sony had on hand was a collection of specs. Microsoft was showing attendees the games.

Nintendo was even vaguer, stating its product was so revolutionary -- hence the name, Nintendo Revolution -- that it has to keep the details under wraps for fear competitors will steal ideas. Nintendo avoided that problem by revealing little aside from the fact that the Revolution will support current Nintendo games.

Paranoia aside, Nintendo has always known that games are where its bread is buttered. The new Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess had a triumphant showing and appeared to be a completed game despite having only a "holiday 2005" release date. A new Mario series won't come out until the release of Revolution, but Nintendo displayed plenty of derivatives: Donkey Konga 2, Super Mario Strikers (a soccer game) and Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix. Ironically, the strongest new Mario title -- Mario Party 7 -- was from the oldest series, but we'll see if it keeps gamers' attention this time around.

As for PlayStation games, Konami's Castlevania: Curse of Darkness takes the 3-D view of the most recent sequel and adds some old-school flavor. The pace is faster and the enemies more challenging. Capcom's highly anticipated Killer 7 also looks good. The strange first-person shooter, about a schizophrenic psychic who resembles the X-Men's Professor Xavier, uses cel-shaded graphics to give the game a hip, comic book look. Killer 7 is due later this summer, while Castlevania will be released in November.

With the success of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so-called urban games have become the flavor of the month. There were no fewer than 10 titles claiming to keep it real at E3, from Namco's beat-'em-up Urban Reign to Activision's aforementioned True Crime 2. Eidos' 25 to Life could be called Call of Duty: South Central, allowing online multiplayer gaming between cops and gang members. Rockstar Games hyped The Warriors, an adventure game based on the classic 1979 gang movie that, ironically enough, inspired the Grand Theft Auto series.

Vivendi Universal had a lush display for 50 Cent: Bulletproof, complete with a white living room, a plasma TV looping the game's trailer and king-size flags bearing the rapper's likeness. Unfortunately, like most of the other urban-themed games represented at E3, Bulletproof didn't offer a full version of the game to try out. We'll wait and see if it delivers what it promises, which, to paraphrase the multiple-gunshot survivor, is the essence of Fiddy.

Jumping on the movie bandwagon was another big trend at E3. Screenshots of VU's Scarface: The World Is Yours, as well as EA's highly anticipated Godfather game, were on the convention floor. Both claim strong visuals, probably because they have been announced not only for PlayStation 2 and Xbox but also for the 360 system. Majesco dug up another old Robert De Niro movie, and based on my time with Taxi Driver, this slower-paced, Grand Theft Auto knockoff could be either a sleeper hit or a total dud. More promising are the action games, such as Majesco's Jaws Unleashed, in which gamers play as the shark. The blood in the water and the 25 detachable human parts make it fun as hell. Even more addictive is The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, with its gigantic graphics and destructible cityscapes.

The conference's attendees gave a collective shrug to the hand-held displays. Nintendo announced a new hand-held device, the Game Boy Micro, a tiny Game Boy that fits in your palm -- just in case the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS weren't small enough. The Gizmondo and N-Gage had decent-size booths, but they seem to be also-rans in the battle with the Nintendo DS and the formidable Sony PSP. It's likely only one or two hand-held systems will still be around at this time next year. We'll be spending too much money on the new home systems to worry about the little guys.

For more info and images from E3 2005, visit www.e3insider.com.

Show us your titles! E3 presented glimpses of hundreds of new games. Here are seven of the best.

by Damon Brown

• Fight Night Round 3 (Xbox 360, release date TBA) was the best-looking title at the show. The power of the new system reveals more bone structure so faces and other body parts literally wrap around fists. It's painfully good.

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GameCube, fall) will bring back fans turned off by the cartoon visuals of the previous Zelda game. Twilight Princess is much darker, and the pacing is similar to the old-school Nintendo 64 classic Ocarina of Time.

• 50 Cent: Bulletproof (systems and release date TBA) wasn't playable, but the demo looked gorgeous. The Grand Theft Auto-inspired gameplay isn't original, but the Dr. Dre-supervised soundtrack and authentic likeness of Fiddy make it notable.

• We ♥ Katamari (PlayStation 2, fall) is a worthy sequel to last year's quirky and addictive Katamari Damacy. The player's goal is still to roll as many objects as possible into a junk ball, but the new game has larger characters, huge arenas and a more extensive two-player mode.

• The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube; August) takes the angry green man and puts him in a Grand Theft Auto-like city, which he can basically destroy. Action fans will be feeling this one.

• Getting Up (PlayStation 2 and Xbox, September) is a graffiti-adventure game strictly for b-boys. The thumping soundtrack is incredible, while the graphics are pure New York grit. Conscious rapper Talib Kweli voices the lead character.

• Okami (PlayStation 2, 2006) stars a wolf dog that must defeat demons in feudal Japan. Players fight by using -- get this -- calligraphy, drawing swords and other weapons to beat opponents. Artsy graphics and fast action make this the one to look for next year.