Top 10 E3 Moments That Changed Our Lives
2. Epic unveil the Unreal Engine
During E3 1996, we were shown something fantastic. A company called Epic MegaGames announced their new in-game engine. While they didn’t produce their first game using it (Unreal Tournament) until 1998 (the first time we saw Duke Nukem Forever, by the way), the new engine promised to allow improvement and customisation as gaming progress and evolved, so you wouldn’t need to redesign an engine for every new console released.
Some of the latest Unreal Engine’s work is genuinely difficult to tell from real-life imagery and I don’t throw those words around lightly. Textures, lighting and shadows look incredible and all of this capability and potential has been handed to everyone to use. There are now literally thousands of games using the engine including some version of the Unreal Engine including games like Bioshock, the Batman Arkham series and one of my personal favourites, Deus Ex and again, each of these game went on to become Games That Changed Our Lives, largely thanks to the fantastical gubbins that powered them all; the Unreal Engine, securing its place as an E3 Moment That Changed Our Lives.
1. Sony’s PlayStation shows us 3D graphics
50,000 people attended the very first E3 to see the unveiling of a brand new device from a brand new entrant into the video games arena. Sony were keen to show off a new games console called the “PlayStation”. This used 3D graphics instead of the previous generations mostly 2D sprites, occasional 3D wire-frames or spare use of individual polygons and came a full year ahead of Nintendo’s reveal of the Nintendo 64 (N64), showing the world the way forward for gaming. The PlayStation didn’t need a big, bulky arcade cabinet to run, nor did it struggle with the frame rate when playing its games. I
nstead, the PlayStation heralded the arrival of some of history’s greatest franchises from Metal Gear Solid to Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider to Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy VII & VIII to Gran Turismo, all of which went on to become Games That Changed Our Lives in their own right. This huge catalogue of games, coupled with the total shift from 2D to 3D graphics and the acceptance of games by the wider world now they weren’t so “cartoony”, makes Sony’s PlayStation reveal my top E3 Moment That Changed Our Lives.
