VIRTUAL RAZZLE-DAZZLE VIDEO-GAME COMPANIES SCRAMBLE TO CREATE BUZZ FOR THEIR NEW ELECTRONIC ADVENTURES.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

They'll come to fight, bearing slingshots, lasers, machine guns and animated sponges to a brawl that will pull in millions of dollars for the victor.

The video-game industry introduces its brightest, showiest, geekiest games this week at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in the Los Angeles Convention Center. The three-day trade show and convention, beginning Wednesday, allows publishers and developers to showcase their wares in front of one another and the gaming media. In an industry with annual revenues estimated at more than $20 billion worldwide, this is a competition that game makers must win.

``You've got to have a good showing, because if you get bad press at E3, it's the kiss of death,'' said Brian Hastings, vice president of programming for Burbank-based Insomniac Games. ``You get a bad buzz, it's guaranteed you're going to have to delay your launch.''

That death kiss can have serious financial repercussions in a business that has grown rapidly, more than doubling in annual sales in the past decade. The show's sponsor, the Entertainment Software Association reports that last year 41 percent of Americans said they planned to buy a video game, accounting for 231 million titles sold.

``This is as close as you get to a Hollywood premier for the video-game industry,'' said Colin Sebastian, a research analyst who follows the industry for San Francisco brokerage Schwab Soundview Capital Markets. ``It's a place where people form their opinions about the titles, so it matters. Video reviewers look at the titles, investors want to know what's coming out for the holidays and publishers get to talk to the retailers.''

Insomniac, a developer for Sony, will bring the title it spent more than a year working on, ``Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal.'' A tale of two well-armed space explorers, the title follows two successful predecessors and expands the franchise into an online battleground. The developer increased its design team to more than 100 - all of whom will be on hand one day to hype the title - and began working more than two months in advance specifically to buff up the game for the show.

The trick is that to come away with one of the show's key titles, a company has to vie with more than 400 other exhibitors to get the attention of thousands of industry insiders, media members and fans. While a small developer like Insomniac can focus on its one game and hope its association with Sony will garner attention, large publishers like THQ Inc. do not have the same luxury.

Calabasas-based THQ will bring nine different games, accounting for more than 70 different products across all the game consoles and the PC market. Bringing a variety of product, like kid-theme ``The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Game'' and ``Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams'' to guns 'n' gore shooters such as ``Full Spectrum Warrior'' and ``S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadows of Chernobyl,'' gives the publisher a chance to appeal to many different crowds.

At the same time, however, it also makes it harder to deliver a consistent message when a giggling animated sponge has to share floor space with squads of heavily armed Russian mercenaries.

``It's a lot of stuff, but look at our performance as the No. 2 two publisher behind Electronic Arts,'' said Peter Dille, THQ's senior vice president of worldwide marketing. ``If you're a little publisher and your title flops, you're in a lot of trouble. We've got kids, reliable wrestling games and value-oriented stuff. It's a testament to how much product we have.''

THQ comes into the show brimming with confidence after a banner fourth-quarter earnings release last week. The publisher plans to shift more focus to the high-end PC titles that make full use of high-tech video cards, as well as bringing in more hard-core gamers. Key to drawing the latter will be the Xbox-based ``Full Spectrum Warrior,'' a hyper-realistic military simulator originally developed for the U.S. Army to teach the rigors of urban squad combat.

For a less-realistic form of combat, Burbank's Buena Vista Games will debut its latest offering of the ``Tron'' franchise, adapting the cult classic movie for Xbox with ``TRON 2.0: Killer App.'' As a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co., the publisher has the advantage of recognizable characters for its offerings. In addition to ``Tron'' it will bring out games tied to ``The Nightmare Before Christmas,'' ``Kim Possible,'' ``Lizzie McGuire'' and the upcoming Pixar collaboration ``The Incredibles.''

``The proof of the pudding's in the game, but having a pre-built audience is a huge advantage in marketing terms,'' said Sanjeev Lamba, Buena Vista's vice president of marketing and international. ``It's also a challenge, because they have pre-built expectations.''

Regardless of the way companies garner the publicity, whether through glitz or game play, they clearly need it. With thousands of demanding reviewers and potential customers hungry for the next hit, companies will try their hardest to get that coveted buzz.

``There's a huge, huge boost if you can come away being the key title from E3,'' said Insomniac's Hastings. ``If you can get the enthusiasts, the real hard-core people, to pay attention, it'll make a difference at sales time.''

Brent Hopkins, [phone]

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- 2 -- color) Above, Burbank's Buena Vista Games will debut ``TRON 2.0: Killer App,'' its latest ``Tron'' franchise offering. At left, THQ Inc. will premiere its ``Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams.''

(3 -- 4 -- color) Above, at the E3 expo this week Calabasas-based THQ Inc. will showcase its kid-theme ``The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Game.'' Below, ``TRON 2.0: Killer App'' is Buena Vista Games' adaptation for Xbox of the cult movie classic ``Tron.''