Top 10 E3 Moments That Changed Our Lives

6. The birth of eSports

E3 1997 could also be considered the birth place of eSports as it hosted the Quake tournament “Red Annihilation” that brought eSports to more mainstream attention. The prize? Quake‘s developer’s personal Ferrari. Not bad, eh? With the prize pools of eSports now reaching into tens of millions of dollars, I guess a Ferrari is, bizarrely, less impressive. Either way, I’d say the launch of eSports well deserves a place on this list.

The popularity of LAN gaming exploded around the same time with huge groups of gamers filling conference centres and warehouses to play matches together but while the early days were mostly hosted and participated in by regular gamers, professionals eventually emerged and took eSports to new, dizzying heights with massive audiences both watching in-person as well as online or on TV around the world. These kinds of televised tournaments have brought eSports much more media interest and thus the prizes only increased, for instance the prize pool for the latest DOTA2 International Tournament was over $18 million, setting a new record and beating the record previously held by 2014’s tournament set at $10 million. Call of Duty tournaments have a standard prize of $1 million with League of Legends usually offering around double that amount. So I’d say that, sure enough, 1997’s Red Annihilation tournament had to make an appearance in this list.

5. Disappearance of the Dreamcast

1999 saw the first public appearance of two big consoles: Nintendo’s GameCube and Sega’s Dreamcast. Loved by many but owned by few, the Dreamcast made a further appearance at the 2000 and finally 2001 E3 shows, before disappearing forever. This is why I’m choosing the Dreamcast’s 2001 appearance as the next E3 Moment That Changed Our Lives, as it was our last chance to see SEGA as a console manufacturer before its relegation to third-party software developer.

SEGA had brought gamers countless great titles and years of fantastic experiences on their other consoles, including the introduction of one of gaming’s biggest icons; Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as many others like Paperboy, Alex Kidd, Streets of Rage, Road Rash and Desert, Jungle and Urban Strike. Losing SEGA was a massive change for the industry as the torch was arguably passed to Sony’s PlayStation 2 to continue where it left off, hosting post-Dreamcast releases from SEGA like Sonic Heroes and even legacy collections of previous SEGA exclusives.