Gaming consoles crowded the spotlight at last week's E3, leaving little room for even big games like "Gears of War," "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" and "Super Mario Galaxy" to get noticed. Nevertheless, there were plenty of below-the-radar games at the show, and below you'll find the top 10 most promising titles.

The games highlighted by MTV News after least year's E3 turned out pretty well — at least the ones that have been released (see "Move Over, Sequels: 10 Original E3 Video Games To Watch"). Here's hoping this year's batch follows suit.

  • "Crackdown" (Real Time Worlds, Xbox 360, release date TBD) - Many game developers and their bean-counting publishers have wanted to copy "Grand Theft Auto." And many have at least managed to re-create the technology that enables open-world, go-anywhere, do-any-thing-next "GTA" gameplay. But few developers — some would say none — have managed to emulate the violently satirical spirit that makes a "GTA" city a playground gamers don't want to leave. An early glimpse of "Crackdown" suggests an exception. This one stars a super cop who can toss cars and shoot overpowered weapons throughout his open city. All is done in such over-the-top fashion that the developers at E3 spent a good portion of their demo time showing how two in-game gunmen can play "tennis" by machine-gunning an airborne body bloodlessly back and forth between them.

  • "Elebits" (Konami, Nintendo Wii, 2006) - This was the most unusual first-person shooter for the Wii at E3. In the graphically simple show-floor demo, players used the Wii's remote-shaped controller to zap, lift, toss and twist the plates, faucets, cabinets and doorknobs in an ordinary-looking kitchen. The goal was to scare out and zap up the excitable soap-bar-sized Elebit aliens hidden in jars, behind boxes of cereal or in the dishwasher. The kitchen became a battleground, which was fun enough. But then the gameplay moved outdoors and the same ray that was upending teacups proved capable of overturning neighbors' homes.

  • "Elite Beat Agents" (Inis/ Nintendo, Nintendo DS, fall 2006) - Released in Japan last year as "Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan," the highly praised game was broken into levels that each focused on a Japanese rock song and a specific character's dilemma: a man on a subway with an upset stomach, a sculptor bereft of inspiration, a guy trying to impress a girl.
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    Those scenarios unfolded as a comic book across the DS's top screen. In the bottom touch-screen, three male cheerleaders called the Ouendan would arrive to cue a rock song and provide some dance-based encouragement. The player's job was to keep the music and the Ouendan going by tapping and gliding the DS stylus across various patterns that also appeared on the lower screen. The better the tapping, the better the story unfolded — simultaneously — on the upper screen. Now tweaked with more American story lines, the male cheerleaders are now male secret agents. Naturally.

  • "Mario Hoops 3-on-3" (SquareEnix/ Nintendo, Nintendo DS, September 2006) - Few people would turn to a cutesy basketball game from the makers of "Final Fantasy" for innovation in sports controls, but somehow "Mario Hoops 3-on-3" pulls tricks that serious basketball games on powerful consoles never have. The DS' top screen showed the expected 3-D view of three-on-three basketball, with team members mostly plucked from the Mushroom Kingdom. The bottom touch-screen provided the twist, letting players tap around a center circle to precisely target each dribble of the ball and triggering shots and dunks with brisk strokes up the length of the screen. Even if just in a little way, "Mario Hoops" imparted some of the physical dynamism of real basketball into the video game variety.

  • "Paper Mario Brothers" (Nintendo, GameCube, fall 2006) - One way to keep a game off people's radar is to keep it out of E3. Nintendo included screenshots and video of "Paper Mario Brothers" in the company's press kit and explained that it would play partially like a side-scrolling Mario platformer and partially like a role-playing game. Why should it qualify for a list like this? Because developer Intelligent Systems has been one of Nintendo's strongest internal studios and because the last two Nintendo consoles saw stellar "Mario" games in their twilight: "Yoshi's Island" and "Super Mario RPG" for the SNES, and "Paper Mario" for the N64. The GameCube now has a chance to close in similar style.

  • "Sonic Wild Fire" (Sega, Nintendo Wii, 2007) - Gamers love the old side-scroller Sonics but have long complained that the camerawork of the 3-D versions impedes Sonic-fast gameplay. Sega promised a full rethinking for the Xbox 360 and PS3 "Sonic the Hedgehog" 3-D game at E3, but the show's unique Wii version, "Wild Fire," came closest to recapturing the old spirit. That's because the game is 3-D in looks only, sending Sonic sprinting away from the player on one extraordinary path after another but bothering players to merely flick the Wii remote to speed him up, slow him down, attack enemies or steer just a little. If players do nothing, Sonic still runs a prescribed path slowly and clumsily. Controlled right, he's off and running with no troublesome design flaws in his way.

  • "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas" (Ubisoft, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, fall 2006) - Graphics are so good and so versatile on today's consoles that a developer can create a standout game simply by programming the same old gameplay in an entirely new setting. So take much of what players have already experienced in squad-based military games, but drop the controllable commandos not in a jungle or desert but on the Las Vegas strip. At E3, the result was a demo that outshone the expected Clancy hit of 2006, "Splinter Cell: Double Agent." Who wants to be a sleeper agent when they can instead command a better-animated, better-looking team of crack soldiers in a night-long mission against hostage-takers in Sin City casinos?

  • "Traxion" (Kuju/ LucasArts, PlayStation Portable, fall 2006) - On the surface, "Traxion" appears to be just another music-based game, albeit one that's portable. The principal gameplay shown at E3 had a player tapping one of the four PSP action buttons to match the beat with the music and a flowing stream of icons — nothing too revolutionary. What's interesting is that "Traxion" is designed to run not just with its own music, but with any music a gamer has saved in his or her PSP. In theory, it turns listening to favorite songs into an instant gaming experience, though it's an idea one would want to try with one's own eclectic favorites before designating this game a must-buy.

  • "Warhawk" (Incognito/ Sony, PS3, release date TBD) - The only game in Sony's booth to use the motion sensitivity of the PS3 game controller, "Warhawk" had players flying a futuristic fighter plane through waves of enemy planes and mother ships, all with a roll or dip of the gamepad. An airbrake maneuver hinted at the controller's potential. Pulling on one of the controller's triggers and then steering the whole thing sharply to one side made the onscreen plane skid out midair and rocket out off to the side. Not even any of Nintendo's Wii games expressed the boundless joy that motion control can give to flight games as well as "Warhawk."

  • "Yakuza" (Sega, PS2, September 2006) - From producer Toshihiro Nagoshi, the man who created "Super Monkey Ball," comes something completely different. "Yakuza" is a game for adults, a story of a man's venture into the underbelly of a realistically rendered red-light area of Tokyo and a game replete with every playable moment that such a journey might entail. That includes brawling on the sidewalks and picking up women at "hostess bars," taking swings at a batting cage or just strolling down the street in a suit. It's moody and noir-ish, aspiring for the narrative sophistication of a good foreign film rather than the bouncy trip of a super monkey ball.

For more E3 coverage from MTV News and MTV Games, check out e3.mtv.com.