My eyes hurt. Playing video games for hours in green fluorescent light will do that. Especially when the setting is in the middle of the desert where there is zero humidity.

But what's early onset of glaucoma compared to getting a chance to overdose on the Xbox 360 at its launch party. Yep, I went to the Zero Hour event in Palmdale, California, and I mashed buttons with 3,000 fellow gamers deep into the night. The venue was the Palmdale Regional Airport, which actually is a high security military airport where they used to fly spy planes, by the looks of it. As you'll see from the pictures in the extended entry, our sandbox was a giant aircraft hanger decked out with hundreds of consoles, beanbag "workstations," surround sound pods and mock living rooms. To relieve tendonitis, there were masseuses to give massages. To relieve boredom (among the jaded), there was a tattoo artist.

This was the scene when I arrived about 6:30 in the evening at the Palmdale airport. It was pretty crowded, considering it was a Sunday night and you had to drive 90 miles from Downtown Los Angeles to get there.

Here's the entrance of the event. Check out the gamer beanbags. They were meant to be picked up and carried around by gamers as they went from game station to station.

These guys (and it was predominantly guys at this thing) were playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour. Not my thing, so I moved on.

I took this shot from the bleachers looking back toward the entrance. Later in the evening people were sitting in these seats to watch a demo with CliffyB and later a Quake 4 deathmatch.

Wasn't kidding about the massages. And look closer at what the guy is holding. It's a portable media center. Life's good.

Speaking of Cliffy, he was on hand at Zero Hour to give a demo of Gears of War. I actually enjoyed watching the preview more than playing Quake 4.

I was tempted to hang around the resident tattoo artist to see if anyone would ask for a Mario.

I had to get out of there at 2 a.m. after spending more than seven hours in that green light. I began to hallucinate that maybe I was stuck in the Matrix dreamworld. So I took this parting shot of the Origen tree.

Contact information for this author is not available.