A little over a year ago, Capcom decided to throw away everything that we as a company had been doing to announce our games. In the past, we had put on stereotypical, stultifying "Gamer's Day" events that were about as boring a way you could possibly present Capcom's amazing games. Just saying the phrase "Gamer's Day" could instantly suck 15% of the fun out of games like Lost Planet, Devil May Cry or even Resident Evil. Boo to that. After deep thoughts and serious soul-searching, we reinvented our annual games unveiling, named it CAPTIVATE, and saw that it was good.

Most importantly, we invited you. Well, not YOU specifically, but some of you in general, our buddies from teh intarnetz, the super-classy cornballs that inhabit this lil' pocket of the web known as Capcom Unity. And it was rad. We met Dubindoh, Tas, Croik, Lucent and that Snow Infernus kid, spent some time with them in Las Vegas, and ended up hiring Shawn shortly after (dreams DO come true!). The Fabulous Five got to meet some of Capcom's top talent (plus Ben Judd), hang out in our high roller Vegas suite, go to the Star Trek Experience one last time before it was torn down, have a great dinner or two and then shoot some automatic weapons. All in all, an experience that couldn't be beat.

Until this year. The Powers That Be here at Capcom declared that CAPTIVATE shall now shimmy back and forth across the Atlantic, swapping between the U!S!A! on the good years and Europe the other times. After witnessing the Palms Hotel-powered style of the first CAPTIVATE, our snooty Euro brethren knew that there was only one way to one-up us: Barcelona. Well, that didn't actually work out. So instead, we're going to Monte Carlo!

Where is Monte Carlo? I'll be honest; I don't know. I suppose I could Google it, but I'm tired and lazy and unconcerned about the location of the principality of Monaco as a whole, much less this supposed "jewel of the Mediterranean." All I know is that James Bond goes there, which automatically makes it cool, and it's got lots of topless beaches, so: boing. Monte Carlo is synonymoous with a high falutin' lifestyle, fast cars and Baccarat, which is some kind of video game played with cards and no console but for money or something.

I suppose you want to know what games we're going to be rolling out at CAPTIVATE 09. Tough nuts! Nah, kidding. Here's some (but not all) of the goodness we'll be talking about, showing off and even playing:

Dead Rising 2: Inafune-san himself will be living it up in Monte Carlo. There's a new, amazing trailer that will blow your socks off (more motorcycle action!) and we'll be seeing gameplay for the first time.

Lost Planet 2: Takeuchi-san gets no rest, as he's now full-time on LP2. If you've seen the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine, you'll have read Fran's breathless first-hand account of her co-op play session in Japan. This game is really impressing me, both from a technical perspective (the MT Framework 2.0 looks even better than RE5) and from a pure gameplay stance. Four man co-op to take down Akrids the size of battleships? Yes, please.

Dark Void: Morgano has a new playable demo filled with jetpack-y goodness and weak-crotched robots that is going to really rev you up. With SFIV and RE5 out the door and LP2 and DR2 so far away, I think it's time for everyone to start paying more attention to this hot game.

Spyborgs: announced last year (too early), Spyborgs will be removing its cloaking field to show the direction that Capcom and the ex-Insomniac crew at Bionic Games have taken this title. All new art direction and gameplay mechanics have replaced some of the more "younger" feel of the game, and they've really fine-tuned the Wii controls for this new action directive.

Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles: Kawata-san also earned no vacation; after finishing the immensity of Resident Evil 5, he immediately had to jump back into the zombie-infested world of RE. We got a very early sneak preview of REDSC right before the launch of RE5, but Kawata-san has promised that he's going to go more in depth with the new cover mechanic being introduced in this game, as well as showing off how the Wii remote is being used.

We'll also be talking about and playing with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (coming this summer, finally!), Resident Evil for the Wii and Bionic Commando, as well as announcing NEW GAMES!

Again, we'll be bringing a few members of the community to CAPTIVATE09. This year, European community members have lucked out in the majority, but we have managed to sneak in two folks from God's Favorite Countries: Unity regulars Scott and Andrew are going to be joining us to soak up the sun and fun of this year's event! Shawn will be presenting more details on our lucky Unity members, but rest assured that I'm personally going to put the last to them both to make sure they're blogging while we're there and not just battling international spies or racing F1 cars.

For those of you not able to attend, do not fret! We will be bringing you all the screens, videos, trailers and news on April 29, as well as linking out to all the global coverage that stems from the event. There's gonna be a lot of stuff happening, so keep you Unity RSS feed hot as we open the doors to our elven workshop to let you witness second-hand all the magic we're working on.