60k people crammed into a convention center never sounded appealing to me, but now that its changing, I find myself regretting it- is this the end of an era?

well, if you are at all into gaming then it was anything bug crammed or wack.

you've got to imagine huge multi-story screens demoing all the latest games and technology; isle after isle of demo stations where you can just walk up and play games that won't even be coming out for a year; all the cool gadgets, gizmos, and all other gaming accessories known to man; and of course, the booth babes.

to be honest, it is a pretty high impact event, but i never felt cramped. the convention was enormous, so even at the most popular booths there was still room to move around and see things.

one the great things i remember was going through the nintendo area the year they were about to release the gamecube and getting to demo all the launch titles 6 months in advance. pretty damn fun.

the only drawback i ever found was that some booths which only did viewing screens would have long lines, like 2 hours long, and it was a bitch to wait for those and only get a 10 minute video :/