If you thought E3 was bizarre and incomprehensible this year, just thank your lucky stars it's not 1995. In a column for US gaming blog, Game Set Watch, Kevin Gifford has unearthed floorplans for the South and West halls of the '95 event. It's an alien terrain, dominated by Sega and Nintendo and stuffed full of deceased giants such as BMG, Virgin Interactive, the 3DO company and Philips Interactive Media.
EA, meanwhile, has a modest stall, not much larger than SNK's (oh the humanity!), while Microsoft's is a medium-sized complex next to the surely wraith-like Ocean and Gametek. Take 2 gets a laughable wooden shack hidden away in a corner next to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board - the irony of it all.
There are also a few companies I don't remember like Terraglyph Interactive Studios (a bigger stand than Namco or Capcom), Randomsoft and Coconuts Japan (what?!). There are strange little stands for big-timers like Apple, IBM and Motorola, too.
Wouldn't it be amazing to go back in time and visit this ancient relic? Oh the advice you could hand-out, Cassandra-like, to unlistening and worried-looking stall attendants. You could tell Sega to pull out of hardware development right there and then, you could suggest to SNK that they just, you know, have a go at 3D graphics. But what would that advice lead to? A better industry or a worse one?
Let's pretend it's the former. Now, who would you visit and what would you tell them?
