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The Video Game History Foundation has just released a set of new collections related to the early years of the iconic video game trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (better known as E3), and it's already turning up a bunch of weird and wonderful discoveries.
From some of the cleanest footage we've ever seen from the E3 1997 showing of Conker's Quest (the game that later became Twelve Tales: Conker 64, before being rebooted as Conker's Bad Fur Day) to a "so bad, it's good" sizzle reel from Acclaim, it's really an embarrassment of riches, and a good reminder of the great work the Video Game History Foundation has been doing since its formation.
The news was shared yesterday through both a blog on the official Video Game History Foundation website and a video shared to the non-profit's YouTube channel.
This explained how the event emerged from the video game industry outgrowing the much broader electronics showcase, the Consumer Electronics Show; explored some of the collections being added (such as the IDSA founding member Carolyn Rauch's event ephemera collection and the Anthony Parisi Tapes); and discussed possible use cases for researchers, such as pinpointing where exactly games were showcased on the show floor.
"The Electronic Entertainment Expo was the event for the game industry in the United States for over 20 years,” the Video Game History Foundation digital librarian Phil Salvador told viewers in his introduction to the collections. “And now, thanks to some new materials in our archive, we’re taking you closer to the event than you’ve ever been before... Everything we've shown you today is free for you to access in our digital archive, thanks to your support for the Video Game History Foundation."
As you can imagine, given the spectacle of the event and its capacity for containing early or pre-release footage of games, people have absolutely wasted no time jumping into the collection to see what they can find, among all the videos, documents, and official guides.
One of the highlights we've seen (h/t: TSR Stormed) includes this early footage of Rare's platformer Banjo Kazooie, narrated by Ken Lobb, in which it was described as having 16 levels (the final game would only have 9). In this footage, interestingly, the Gruntilda head is missing from the cliff face in Spiral Mountain, with Lobb saying the game's plot is instead about a "major giant dude" stealing your girlfriend away to his "castle in the clouds." Later, in the video, Lobb again references a Giant as the original bad guy in the game, saying he's "in the Giant's dining room."
Another interesting discovery, meanwhile, is this footage (h/t: Nintendo Metro) showing a rare example of Charles Martinet, the legendary voice actor of several Nintendo characters, voicing Donkey Kong, and giving a — shall we say — interesting interpretation of the character...
There's also footage of moments we've seen before, like Sony's "299" price mic drop at E3 1995 in high quality, and other historical pieces of footage, such as the initial Nintendo pitch to US retailers for Pokémon.
Here's a link to the digital archive, if you want to explore it yourself. You can donate to the Video Game History Foundation here.