Top 10 E3 Moments That Changed Our Lives
8. The Dawn of Online Gaming
2002 turned out to be a big hitter in terms of revolutionising how we played. Not only were we give wireless controllers, but now we were shown online connectivity to a larger world. Online Multi-Player has become one of the biggest parts of modern gaming. There are now as many games made just for multiplayer as there are that focus solely on story. Games like Far Cry Primal which are made just for the campaign mode are being matched by releases like Star Wars: Battlefront which are aimed solely at online play, with a noticeable increase in focus on multiplayer in games which focus on the single-player aspect, too, like the Uncharted series.
Call of Duty has been synonymous for multiplayer gaming since Modern Warfare (originally shown at E3 2007) and since then has made strides to corner the market for waging online warfare against your friends, only being challenged by Battlefield in recent years which has undergone a serious change in emphasis itself from single to multi-player. In fact Call of Duty: Black Ops included an option to boot the game directly into the online lobby, instead of selecting it from a menu. This online inter-connectivity was first showcased for the mainstream by Sony with the PS2’s peripheral modem, but was demonstrated in its current form with Xbox Live nearly 15 years ago at E3 2002.
Xbox Live had a huge impact on modern consoles, allowing friends to play together seamlessly, around the world. You could buy and download games, play alongside or against your friends and message them or see what games they were playing. Obviously this has evolved massively over the years to become the PSN and Xbox Live services we have today (sorry Nintendo…) where you can stream backwards compatible games on Xbox One or with PlayStation Now, pre-load games for a midnight release, stream video and music from dozens of services and even pass the controller to a friend over the internet if you are struggling with something, even if they don’t own the game, via PlayStation’s SharePlay function. Truly, these services have totally revolutionised the way we play, adding so much more to our games, making their inception an E3 Moment That Changed Our Lives.
7. 1996 & ’97 E3 software lineups
Our next moment revolves, for the first time, around software. 1996 and 1997 were only the second and third years of E3, but the sheer number of top titles they featured would secure each of their demonstrations as E3 Moments That Changed Our Lives. ’96 introduced us, via Resident Evil, to both the Umbrella Corporation and Racoon City, both of which are now infamous in gaming lore. We also met a plucky, orange bandicoot named Crash and another island hopping, tomb-raiding adventurer; Lara Croft.
That’s not to mention the showing from Square that year of Final Fantasy VII, regarded by many to be the series’ most iconic instalment. That one show held so much promise for the future, it seems almost unthinkable when you look back. The next year hit us with a similar volley of titles that would go on to change our lives. Among others, we were shown Half Life, Metal Gear Solid and the fruit of the Unreal Engine’s loins (more on that later); Unreal Tournament.
