Remembering The E3 Gaming Expo in Photos
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If you were playing games at all over the past two decades, you've probably heard about the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for short. It was an exclusive event for most of its operation where game developers and studios would unveil their biggest new games or some fancy new hardware in elaborate presentations and huge demo areas in a massive convention center. Like many live events in 2020, it was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and its 2021 virtual show drew a lukewarm reception. Unfortunately, the Electronic Software Association, which manages the event, recently announced that the show would not be returning after a failed attempt to get a 2022 expo off the ground with the help of ReedPop.
Since we won't be seeing E3 again, it's a great time to stroll down this nerdy memory lane and check out some amazing moments in gaming history that happened on this convention floor.
1995 - Michael Jackson at the First E3
The late pop superstar is pictured trying out the first entry in the fighting game franchise Tekken, which has continued to this day. Jackson has some involvement in gaming—he famously composed some music for Sonic The Hedgehog 3, and you could play as him in the arcade and Sega Genesis game Michael Jackson's Moonwalker.
1996 - id Software Previewing Quake
Texas-based game company id Software was huge in the '90s because of hit games like the Commander Keen series, Doom, and this game being shown off: Quake. It's widely considered one of the best and most influential first-person shooter games of all time, but suffered a rocky development period which led to many of the studio's employees (and one co-founder, John Romero) quitting after it shipped.
1996 - Shigeru Miyamoto with the Nintendo 64
Nintendo has had some stellar moments at E3 through the years, and this early reveal of the soon-to-arrive Nintendo 64 built up a ton of hype for this 3D gaming console. Shigeru Miyamoto, who was showing off the N64's unique controller, is known for creating iconic Nintendo franchises including The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong.
1996 - Convention Show Floor
E3 was basically Gamer Christmas, even if it took place typically in the summer. Journalists could get hands-on time with new games and great interviews, retail vendors picked consoles and games to stock on their shelves, and developers got to make valuable connections and show the world projects they had been working on secretly for months, or even years.
1999 - Game Boy Demo
Gamers check out a revision of the Game Boy, a smash-hit handheld console Nintendo first released in 1989. You can play whatever you want on your phone nowadays, but seeing games go this small was revolutionary at the time when the first popular video games were on chunky computers and arcade cabinets!
2001 - E3 & Survivor Crossover
Soon after the premiere of the hit reality show Survivor, the developer Infogrames released a licensed PC game where you could try to be the Sole Survivor. Colby Donaldson and Jerri Manthey, two early Survivor favorites, were promoting the game at E3. The game went on to receive negative reviews for reportedly poor graphics and simplistic gameplay.
2001 - Trying Out The Xbox
Microsoft developed this console as a competitor to Sony's PlayStation 2, and quickly gained tons of fans with a solid slate of release titles, like Halo: Combat Evolved and Project Gotham Racing, a memorable design, and a great controller.
2003 - Midway Games Area
Midway Games was first formed in 1958 as a manufacturer for amusement park games, but later became well-known as a developer and publisher of games like Mortal Kombat, Rampage, and NBA Jam. While it was hugely successful and influential in the late '70s and '80s, Midway filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
2004 - Sony PSP Reveal
Sony stepped into the handheld space with the Playstation Portable, or PSP, which was the first legitimate handheld competitor that loosened Nintendo's grip on that market. It supported extremely impressive graphics for a small system at the time, with many gamers looking fondly back on this piece of tech.
2005 - Prima Games Booth
It wasn't just game developers showing off there stuff at E3. Companies like Prima Games, which published incredibly useful video game strategy guides (and now has a gaming news site as well), would pay top dollar for booth space on the show-floor because of how important the expo was.
2006 - Miyamoto with Director Steven Spielberg
The director Steven Spielberg, pictured here playing the Wii with Miyamoto, is known to be an enthusiastic gamer, and he has even dipped his toes in game design a couple of times throughout his Hollywood career. He helped to create the Boom Blox game series for the Wii, and is credited with creating the WWII first person shooter series Medal of Honor.
2006 - Nicole Richie with Pac-Man
What video game character is more significant than Pac-Man? The first Pac Man arcade cabinets appeared in Japan in 1980, and over the decades it has accrued a total of $14 billion USD in revenue.
2008 - The Beatles: Rock Band Reveal
These events were often star-studded, with celebs being invited to check out games, and obviously promote projects they were involved in. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr took the stage at Microsoft's 2008 press conference to show off a Beatles-centric version of the hit music rhythm game franchise Rock Band.
2009 - Playstation Move Showcase
After the huge success of the Nintendo Wii, Sony and Microsoft scrambled to develop motion control peripherals for their systems. Neither of the company's efforts became as popular as giving your family a Wii and Wii Sports for Christmas at the time, but Sony's Playstation Move was by most accounts a solid device according to tech critics.
2010 - Xbox 360 Redesign Reveal
Don Mattrick, a former Microsoft executive, unveiled a sleek new model of the hugely popular Xbox 360 system for this press conference. Microsoft's Xbox followup was beloved, but the first model was notorious for being slightly faulty and occasionally shutting down with the "red ring of death" appearing on the power button.
2011 - Gaming on the iDome Monitor
You could try out a ton of experimental technology on the E3 show floor. This was called the iDome, which developed an interesting interpretation of a gaming monitor by projecting gameplay onto a uniquely shaped screen.
2012 - Usher Performing for Dance Central 3
Here, Usher is promoting Dance Central 3, a series which was a key part of the Xbox 360's Kinect peripheral. The Kinect could scan players and allow them to replicate gestures with their whole body in-game, so you could dance along to to hit songs without any controller.
2014 - VR Headset Demonstration
Virtual Reality has fascinated designers and gamers for years, but the tech finally caught up with the ideas in the form of the Oculus Rift, and other cool virtual reality headsets that revived the industry. The Oculus line was discontinued in 2021 when Oculus VR was acquired by Meta, and began developing new headsets under the Meta Quest line.
2015 - Lance Reddick at the Destiny Booth
Reddick was known for memorable roles in shows like The Wire and Fringe, and he also had a massive impact on the popular first-person shooter series Destiny as both a player and the voice actor of the major character Commander Zavala.Reddick tragically passed away in March of 2023, prompting heartfelt tributes from all around Hollywood as well as in the Destiny community.
2017 - There's an Orc on Stage!
To promote the Lord of the Rings licensed action-adventure game Middle Earth Shadow of War, developers Monolith Productions went all out with an actor in full Orc dress for an onstage bit.
2018 - Phil Spencer Speaks to Audience
Spencer, who started at Microsoft as an intern in 1988, has been a public face at the company since 2010 when he first got involved in an E3 show, and he currently heads the Xbox division at Microsoft. Some of Spencer's noted initiatives at Xbox have been the development of the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, and the acquisitions of huge game developers including Mojang, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard.
2019 - The Final In-Person E3
Starting in 2017, E3 became available for the public to attend with general admission tickets, and the increase in live-streaming technology also made more press conferences viewable online. This year was also marred in controversy when the ESA accidentally leaked the confidential information of 2,000 press members and influencers who attended the event.
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