As I may have teased here and there, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was pretty wonderful this year. It was my fifth year attending and covering, and also easily my best experience to date. A large part of that is due to having the opportunity to cover the show for the E3 Show Daily, which is run through GamePro and IDG Entertainment and is the official daily newsmagazine of the show. They hand it out free daily to the tens of thousands of attendees, and I covered some of the bigger games and events for the three issues. It also doesn’t hurt that they handled my travel and lodging expenses, which is quite a shock to this expense-juggling freelancer.

For the first issue, I wrote the bottom cover story, which is about EA’s press conference, which I attended on Monday and then hammered out the story in two hours so it could make the cut for Tuesday morning’s issue. It was intense, but admittedly pretty awesome. Most of that story is found on page 7 after the early bits on the cover. I also wrote a few stories for the Show Daily in advance of E3, including a half-page article on Atlus’ lineup found on page 17. Beyond that is a full-page article on Take-Two’s lineup, which includes quotes from an interview with CEO Strauss Zelnick. And finally, I have a half-page article on City Interactive’s showing on page 62.

I don’t have anything on the cover of Issue #2, but you can find a half-page article about NVIDIA’s Tegra chip and associated games on page 14. But it’s Issue #3 that has my most significant contributions, as I wrote both cover stories. The top one (“Something Bold, Something New”) is about Konami’s lineup, while the bottom one (“BioShock’s Infinite Possibilities”) is all about BioShock Infinite, which was easily the most impressive game I saw at E3. Those stories conclude on pages six and seven, respectively. Beyond that, I have a half-page article about Perfect World Entertainment’s games on page 17, as well as a full-page on-site piece (“Viva la Vita”) about the PlayStation Vita on page 64.

Beyond my E3 Show Daily responsibilities, which essentially ended early on Wednesday morning of E3, I also wrote 10 previews for GamesRadar, an article about the Wii U’s similarities to the iPad 2 for Mac|Life, and two previews for Nintendo Power. All of the online coverage can be found by flipping back a page or two on this blog, while the Nintendo Power previews will be included in the August 2011 issue. And if you’re interested in reading my E3 Show Daily stories, you can actually download the PDFs of each issue by clicking here. Naturally, I have 3-4 print copies of each issue.