Change of plans. I didn’t take my flight from NYC to LA after all because Nintendo was having a press conference in the city the week after THQ’s press junket. So I hopped a train to Pennsylvania and stayed with my parents for the three days in between the two events. No use going all the way home to LA just to fly back. There was a Sony event the same night as Nintendo’s morning press conference, so I was able to report on that as well.

Nintendo’s press conference focused on the 3DS, its glasses-free handheld that I got to playtest in Los Angeles last year. Now we have a release date and a price: March 27 and $250. I published four stories about this small, but Nintendo-executive-filled press conference here, here, here and here. Liveblogging is a must these days, so rapid-fire news posts with a follow-up GamePro.com story afterward is how I covered this event.

I took a different approach to reporting on the Sony event, which surrounded the launch of LittleBigPlanet 2 for PlayStation 3 and the end of a 50-hour video game marathon. Three players were involved in this record-breaking stunt and broke five Guinness World Records, including longest platform video game played (50 hours). But how do you report on the climax of a video game marathon when it’s being webcast live and people at proper keyboards can beat you to the punch? Looking for another angle. Since LBP2 is a four-player platform game, a Sony rep I talked to mentioned that they were rotating the fourth chair with various celebrities. Two of the celebrities happened to be from the Jersey Shore, JWoww and Pauly D.

Thus, an exclusive article was born: Sackboy meets Jersey Shore as JWoww and Pauly D play LittleBigPlanet 2 at record-breaking launch event. No one else had this story (but hundreds were reporting on the end of the marathon and, remember, that was being by Sony webcast on top of that) and no one had these great photos.

My three-part reporting duties in New York City have ended. Now to get back to Philadelphia and fly back to Los Angeles. Of course, not before I have to shovel at the old house one more time.

Almost as soon as I came back from Philadelphia for the holidays, I was on the road again, this time covering CES 2011 in Las Vegas. This was my first time reporting on the annual technology convention because it doesn’t always cater to video games. However, Microsoft had a large presence on the showfloor and a keynote to boot. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave this year’s keynote, which I reported on here, here and here. I also wrote about Tetris coming to PS3 and being integrated into TVs here.

CES 2011 was very different from the eight E3 video game conventions that I have attended. I found E3 to be more cohesive and organized, but that’s just the nature of the video game industry. You’re more aware of the large blockbuster games before stepping foot on the E3 floor and what’s going to be “hot.” At CES, technology innovations are often found in the nook and crannies of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Big players aren’t always the ones that make big news.

Two days after returning to LA from Las Vegas, I was off to a New York City press junket to write about THQ’s 2011 lineup. It had been snowing pretty badly on the east coast that week, so the van ride from JFK airport to the London hotel took over 90 minutes. Right away, I secured some authentic New York-made pizza and observed a surprisingly empty city. Over the next few days, a bunch of game journalists and I braved the cold to write about Red Faction Armageddon, de Blob 2, MX vs ATV Alive and WWE All-Stars.

The WWE All-Stars presentation was noteworthy first-off because the game is good. The arcade-focused gameplay reminds me of the AKI-developed N64 games from a dozen years ago. Second, THQ brought in WWE all-stars to show off WWE All-Stars: Sheamus, The Big Show, Kofi Kingston and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat. I’ve never been into wrestling, but appreciate the grappling system of the games more than most in the fighting genre.

The final day of the press junket was reserved for Homefront, the first-person shooter and Call of Duty rival THQ has been pushing. In order to get us from the London hotel on 54th Street to the event venue on 34th Street, THQ had us ride in a school bus – something that appears in the first level of the game. I haven’t been in a school bus since 2002, so this was a unique experience that all of the game journalists got a kick out of. “Wait, you didn’t save a seat for me? I thought we were friends?!”

Before heading back to the snow-less coast of California, I had dinner with my parents, who took the train from a station in New Jersey that isn’t too far from our home. We even got a picture in Time Square.

I took the red-eye from rainy LAX to clear-skies but bitter-cold PHL, and I woke up to the familiar Philadelphia skyline. I spent the holidays in seeing my family at home during Christmas and friends in downtown Philadelphia over New Year’s. This allowed me to bring my family up-to-date with innovative, new technology gifts for the household. The goal qa to make their life a little more hassle-free. First up was a new trashcan, which I know my dad will appreciate, as he always struggles with the bag slipping into the old can. The iTouchless Stainless-Steel Infrared Automatic Trashcan solves that problem with a simple, but effective plastic ring that runs the perimeter of the top of the can, holding the bag in place. As the name suggests, it also takes your hand and foot out of the lid-lifting equation.

The next innovative gift was a new toaster – one that toasts four slices of bread or two bagels at once, fries two sunny-side up eggs and heats pre-cooked meat like Canadian bacon or sausage. The best part about the Back to Basics TEM4500 4-Slot Egg-and-Muffin Toaster is that it didn’t cost much more than a normal four-slot toaster. The final state-of-the-art gift was for my sister and her family: The Simplehuman Sensor Pump. My sister has three kids, who may not always be able to reach the top of the soap pump, so this touch-free soap dispenser is an essential home improvement for keeping their life a little more sanitary.

I spent New Year’s Eve in downtown Philadelphia, where I got to see friends and watch the fireworks at Penn’s Landing exactly at midnight. I think this is the worthy of a new tradition.