Electronic Entertainment Expo 1995

The LA Convention Center during E3 1995.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo 1995 (commonly known as E3 1995) was the first year of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Created by the Interactive Digital Software Association, now known as the Entertainment Software Association, E3 was created as a response the neglect that video games had at CES. IDSA created the event shortly after they were created due to the Senate's fear of video game violence. After the announcement was made, Sega was the first company to announce their plans to attend the show and their support for the association. Afterwards in the following months, various companies signed up though Nintendo still planned to attend CES. After nearly all companies announced their plans for E3, Nintendo finally budged and announced that they would head to E3 instead of CES.

The show

The show started on May 11th of 1995 and lasted until May 13th. It took place at the Lost Angeles Convention Center, and in the first year of the event over 50,000 people attended the show. While the show started on May 11th, companies like Nintendo and Sega held press conferences the day before to showcase some of their biggest games and reveal plans for the event. A week prior to E3 Nintendo unfortunately had to make the announcement that their console, the Ultra 64, later known as Nintendo 64, was to be delayed by a year.

On the showfloor Nintendo had one fourth of the convention center and over one hundred SNESs and Game Boys. The Virtual Boy was displayed, though no demos were present. There were fifty dressed up females who controlled the Nintendo area. The biggest game at Nintendo's booth was Killer Instinct for the SNES, a fighting game by Rare. They had dancers and huge displays of the game. Fans who were impressed by Donkey Kong Country on the SNES were shown Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and Donkey Kong Land for the Game Boy. EarthBound was also present at the show.

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