If you don’t know what Rage is I’d suggest you climb out from under that rock cause any self respecting South African gamer would be able to tell you it’s the biggest computer, gaming and technology expo we have in South Africa.

This years Rage was bigger and better with over 70 exhibitors from the likes of Intel and Microsoft to local online gaming stores such as Evogames and any kind of games related paraphernalia you could think of, you could even have a photo shoot with a Stuff Magazine cover girl. However, after a brief walk through I did notice something rather strange.

Above: The show floor was crazy on Saturday, it’s great to see the interest in gaming growing in South Africa.

Firstly no Nintendo presence at all, no Wii stand, no DS, no nothing. I understand that the core gamer is not Nintendo’s number one target audience anymore, but I do feel they should have still had a presence, there were a lot of families about, I really feel they missed a good oppertunity. Secondly where was the PS3, I found a large stand that had a couple of PS3′s running Motorstorm, but that is really not what I expected, where was Resistance 2, where was Little Big Planet where was Wipeout HD even. And lastly EA where also no where to be seen, I really thought they would have been pushing Rockband hard, and at least Dead Space, instead Microsoft had, Fifa 2009 and Facebreaker at their stand.

With no first party support for either the Wii or the PS3 this put Microsoft into a good position to really make an impact. And that’s exactly what they did, not only did they have one of the biggest stands at rage but they filled it with their latest titles, and not just the games on shelf now, there was preview code playable for Fable 2, Banjo and Kazooie – Nuts and Bolts, Lips, In the movies and the game everyone was hoping to see, Gears of War 2. Gears 2 had playable multiplayer code from E3 on six large 32 inch LCD’s, let’s just say I found it very difficult to leave.

Above: A member of the Far Cry 2 development team demo’s level creation features in the game, and the ability to set things on fire.

Megarom also had a plethora of new titles on show and without doubt really stole the show, from having the developers of Far Cry 2 on hand to actually demo their game and answer our questions, as well as of Prince of Persia, Call of Duty World at war,  Brothers in arms – Hells highway and Shawn White Snowboarding. The End War developers were also on hand to talk people through their game and of course the much anticipated Guitar Hero World tour was also playable. Megarom also had most of the time on on the Megarom Interactive, MTNLoaded and Xbox360™ stage that was constantly abuzz with activity from the Far Cry 2 developers, to Guitar Hero World Tour demonstrations. Also showing well at their stand was Star wars the force unleashed, Sacred 2 Fallen Angel.

Above: Um ya… the Duke looks a bit small to me.

What we ended up with was a Rage that was a lot closer to the likes of E3 overseas, than it’s ever been before. The shear amount of up and coming games on the floor was great and backed by having the developers for some of those games on hand to answer our questions, we as gamers, really couldn’t have asked for much more. Don’t forget to check back with us this week for our hands on opinions on the titles we saw.

Thanks to Krypty for the awesome photo’s after Nick left us yesterday on a secret mission and took the camera with him without downloading our pics first.