Well, due to a few connection issues I didn't get to Live Blog either of Nintendo or Sony's press conferences, and E3 has officially kicked off, meaning my time reporting is limited. I do have a window now though, so I thought I'd throw up some impressions from each show (especially since I got to hold the 3DS).

Once again, Nintendo reiterated that this whole motion-sensing sensation was basically their idea, but instead of gloating or saying "we told you so", they went right into the games. Last year they lacked a lot of core titles, showing only a single piece of artwork for the new Legend of Zelda they quietly revealed was in the works. Today however, their press conference kicked off officially with a gameplay demo by Miyamoto himself, running us through the game's control, how it's changed, new weapon and gadget additions and more.

The most notable thing here was that the artsyle has changed dramatically. While Twilight Princess delivered the mature Zelda everyone had been screaming for post-Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword marries both games together. So what we get is a stylised mature zelda with something of a cel-shaded look. I wasn't immediately a massive fan of this (and I'm a huge Zelda fan), but as with most Zelda titles (and Wii games, really), it's going to be more about the gameplay than visuals.

The game uses Wii MotionPlus for near 1:1 movement, and a lot of what was on offer in Wii Sports Resort has made its way into Skyward Sword. Shooting your bow, for example, requires the physical action of doing so on the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, while sword swinging is all directional (ala Red Steel 2), with certain enemies requiring specific waggle.

New weapons and gadgets come in the form of a mechanical flying beetle launched from your arm. Once it's launched, you take motion control of it, though flight is limited. You can use the beetle to fetch items from far away. Link also has a whip that looks more like a wand, but as you would expect you essentially flick your Wii Remote about, and you can use it to grab items, cut grass or break pots (a staple for Link) as well as attack enemies. Bombs also return though now you have the ability to roll them like a bowling ball.

The whole menu system is very streamlined, and the game looked like it would tap heavily into the series' gameplay roots, but what little we saw honestly didn't blow my skirt up.

They also revealed Mario Sports Mix, which is a bunch of collected mini-games based around various sports, such as basketball, ice hockey, volleyball and more. It looked exactly as it sounds - if you've played any Mario Sport game, you're going to know what to expect here.

We saw more casual games announced. Wii Party is a giant board game that looked pretty casual - definitely for the granny-gamer, while Ubisoft talked up the release of Just Dance 2.

From here though, Ninty jumped into some serious core gaming, showing us more of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn for the DS (why it wasn't shifted to 3DS, I have no idea) which was looking very cool. We grabbed a release area for the RPG of this holiday season (so somewhere around Christmas).

Next up was GoldenEye for Wii, as somewhat reimagined. The trailer really did look cool, and while it's obviously not being handled by Rare, Eurocom have taken the reigns, and it features actual gameplay moments from the N64 original (like descending into the Dam compound bathroom above a stall featuring a soviet soldier). Eurocom handled arguably the next best Bond game after Goldeneye, Night Fire, so I'm actually a bit excited about this one. It will feature 16-player online multiplayer as well, which is awesome news.

Warren Spector came out and demoed a bit of Epic Mickey which looked like a cool platformer/adventure hybrid. We didn't see a lot of gameplay, but the game's main mechanic is a paint brush or paint thinner, and Spector talked about a design pillar called "play style matters", which he elaborated meant it was up to the player to decide when to use the brush to be creative and help the world, or use the thinner to erase parts of the world or characters, and that it was all dynamic and adverse, so here's hoping that pays off in the final product. One cool thing he showed was an example of a mission that involved jumping into a side-scrolling level built around Mickey's first ever cartoon, Steamboat Willie, which did look pretty rad.

Next up we saw another side-scroller (it actually becomes something of a theme), with the triumphant return of Kirby in Kirby's Epic Yarn. This was a highly stylised side-scroller built around the visual theme of needle and thread. Kirby is basically stictched into the background which is a patchwork of various types of cloth. A zipper pulled back dropped a part of the level away, opening up all sorts of gameplay options based on the visual theme. This looked very, very cool.

They talked up the US release of Dragon Quest: Sentinals of the Starry Skies, which will be landing for DS on July 11 (no idea about AU yet), and showed of more Metroid: Other M, which again looked seriously incredible, and will be rocking store-shelves at the end of August in North America (so hopefully not too far behind for us).

Finally they talked about Retro Studios (Metroid Prime series) and what they'd been upto, which was Donky Kong Country Returns - another side-scrolling platformer that looked to maintain the heritage of Rare's classic games, but I was pretty disappointed - Retro are an amazing development studio, and this game seems wasted on them.

But enough about the games, as Nintendos President and CEO, Satoru Iwata came out and finally unveiled Nintendo 3DS. The basic details are:

• Dual screen
• The bottom screen is smaller and still a touch pad
• The top screen is wider (3.5 inches), and features a slider for the 3D (so you can adjust the depth of field or just disable it)
• There is a new analogue controller
• It has a gyro sensor ala iPhone
• There are two cameras on the face of it to take your own 3D photos
• It is entirely capable of playing 3D movies like Avatar without the need for glasses

They revealed Kid Icarus: Uprising as a 3DS title built from the ground up via Project Sora (which was a project created specifically for 3DS development), and also showed a video featuring Star Fox, Mario, Link and Donkey Kong interacting with the machine, but nothing about any other first-party games was revealed.

Third parties on board include Capcom with a specifically designed Resi called Resident Evil: Revelations and Street Fighter IV 3D Edition. MGS creator Hideo Kojima revealed he would be bringing his famed series to the handheld (along with his excitement for it), while other third-party games include Saints Row from THQ and Batman from Warner, among more.

Finally we were allowed to have a look at the handheld to truly see if this 3D thing is for real (because they couldn't really demonstrate it on-stage), which I did and it's incredible. Perfectly naked, it's the same as watching stereoscopic 3D with glasses. There were images of Mario and Yoshi, Pikmin, Samus, Link and more that we could scroll through, and I was free to move the camera about with the analogue stick. The 3D is the real deal, and the images were actually GameCube quality, and looked HD. Unfortunately we didn't get anymore time with it, or find out anything like price-point, memory, release period, power etc, but so far this is a serious game-changer. The hardware stand-out of the show, to be be sure.

That was it for Nintendo, so check back in a little bit for my rundown of Sony's Media Briefing - right now I have a date with the new Test Drive. Later!