Randall Bennett and I got a nice little sneak peak at Spore last night at Wired Magazine's presentation featuring Will Wright and guest starring Robin Williams. We shot some great video that will be up on the site as soon as it's ready. We also managed to get a private screening of the game thanks to the people at EA Games. Randall will be doing a full write-up of the game play experience later today, but I just wanted to share one little cool thing in the room where they hosted the preview: Figurines of creatures different Spore designers built in the game and then printed out as three dimensional models (like the guy pictured above). Check below the jump for more pics...

Alright, we briefed y'all on what we knew so far about the Wii controller early this morning, but now that we've gotten our paws on the Wiimote itself, we wanted to let you know how it is in the flesh. Nintendo and millions of fanboys are betting a lot on this concept, and Nintendo itself said that "playing is believing" every other sentence of their keynote, so the real question is: do we believe?

The short answer is that we're just not sure yet. The first chance we got with the Wii was for a golfing game (the shortest line we found, go fig) and as soon as we got our hands on the Wiimote we knew it was something special. We slipped the wrist lanyard on so we didn't fling the remote across the room, and held in our hands the light weight, ergonomic, and simply beautiful controller. If this was as far as we'd gotten we would have gone home happy. The controller allows plenty of leverage for the trigger "b" and the large "a" button, and only slipped out of our hand once from a particularly aggressive sword strike in "Red Steel." Click on for the rest.

Here's a brief synopsis of new first-party franchises hitting Wii:

• Disaster: Day of Crisis (Monolith); survival-action - Natural disasters have devastated the US. A rogue Special Forces unit has taken advantage and stolen a nuclear weapon. As Ray, a former rescue task force badass, you must save the world, or at least, what's left of your country. Disaster will feature scenarios like lava avalanches, earthquakes, and floods.
  
• Excite Truck (Monster Games); racing - It's descended from Excitebike, at least conceptually. The game features off-road racing (with trucks). Players hold the Wiimote like an NES controller and steer by titling it from side to side. Once airborne, tilt the controller in the right directions to stick the landing. Power-ups are used to deform the tracks in real time.
• Project H.A.M.M.E.R. - Killer robots are attacking the US. In order to defeat your heartless foes, you must assume the role of one of Project H.A.M.M.E.R.'s cyborg prototypes and wield the awesome powers of ... a hammer? Swing away!
• Wii Sports (Nintendo); sports - Includes tennis (1-4 players), baseball (1-2 players), and golf (1 player) -- Nintendo may add additional games. Tennis features power-sensitive forehands, backhands, volleys, lobs, slices, spins and serves (note: players are automatically moved into position to hit the ball). Baseball is simply a home run derby game. In 2-player mode, one player pitches, while the other bats. Golf features both driving and putting.

[Via Nintendo fact sheets]

See also: Wii first-party titles: old faces

The E3 2006 festivities in Los Angeles are exactly two months away from today. Though we'll be soliciting specific feedback and reconnaissance work on behalf of you readers prior to our attendance, what are you most looking forward to this year at E3? Last year was a big unveiling of next-gen consoles, so we can expect a lot of hardware refinement from Sony and Nintendo along with more playable games this year. And let's not forget the portable and PC game scene.