Sony Memeworthy’s 2006 E3 press conference is now in HD

Sony’s big press conference at E3 2006 quickly became the stuff of legend. Awkward and baffling, funny and perverted all at once, the pressing tool — which popularized the PSP and revealed the PlayStation 3’s price point — was one of the company’s most memorable, albeit unintentionally, products to come out early on. A viral YouTube video Remember its most absurd moments, as well as other widespread satire. And now, thanks to the preservation work of documentarian Danny O’Dwyer, you can watch the broadcast in stunning 4K resolution.

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Through his crowdfunded documentary channel Noclip, O’Dwyer has been slowly mining and unearthing decades of video game history. from Gameplay for unreleased titles to meet 10-year-old Hideo Kojima for never-before-seen adsWell, he’s got it all. And on July 21, he uploaded Sony’s two-hour E3 2006 presentation in the highest quality possible: 2160p at 60 frames per second. Yes, this is a time capsule worth watching for the first time if you haven’t seen it before, or reliving in HD if you have. Trust me, you are in for a great time. So hold on, and let’s briefly recall this silly convention.

In the presentation are some great games

Some great games were shown during the show. Siphon filter: dark mirrorthe fifth entry in the now-dormant third-person shooter series, alongside the PS3 launch title, premieres Genji: The days of the blade. The best God of War cloning Paradise sword, along with some cinematic games. And we got our first look at what’s to come Unknown: Drake’s fortune, a game that would go on to deliver one of Naughty Dog’s most popular IPs. On the gaming front, Sony’s E3 2006 press conference served this period.

Embarrassing moments were remembered

But between these gameplay demos and the teaser trailers, there were some really well-crafted moments. Then-president and CEO Kaz Hirai tried to hype the crowd by shouting, “It’s Riiiidge Racer!” the Genji: The days of the blade A presenter touts the historical roots of the game by fighting a giant enemy crab with a weak spot that you can hit to deal massive damage. A random guy on the street talking about how it hurts when he hits you in PS3 games because “I don’t know”. It was a show of madness that was as legendary as it was funny.

The price of the PlayStation 3 was “yikes”

While the show opens with Hirai rising talking about the impressive success of the PS2, The best selling console of all time, the end was pointless. After all this previous-gen splurging and psychedelic next-gen gaming reviews, Hirai revealed the price of the PS3: $500 for a 20GB console and $600 for a 60GB one. The announcement came out like a ton of bricks, perhaps in part due to the fact that the Xbox 360, which had already been on the market for months, was much cheaper. It was a baffling price point that had me panicking, however The PS3 still ends up selling slightly more units than the Xbox 360 across her age.

Saved screenshots would have been lost forever

in an email to KotakuO’Dwyer detailed the work that went into this memorable press conference. It was saved on two HDCAM tapes by a video game website and was headed to a landfill before O’Dwyer rescued them, and said he “basically did nothing” to the footage, just ripping it from the tapes and converting it to HD.

The process is very simple, we use a professional HDCAM tape deck to pull the signal from [Series Digital Interface (SDI)]O’Dwyer said. “I used a converter to swap that out for HDMI and use a high quality capture device to record that. Once I have it on a PC I export the 4K version for YouTube (to access the higher bitrates available) and the 1080p version for archive because that’s the original resolution and we can upload the file for archiving without replaying it.”

Asked why he thought Sony’s show at E3 2006 had become so infamous, O’Dwyer posited that since memes were so rare at the time, it would have been easy for simple phrases like “Riiiidge Racer” and “giant sprint crab” to live rent-free in our heads. Whatever the forces behind them, conferences like this are among the coolest pieces of video game history to be found since he set out to preserve “a few thousand tapes” that were almost lost forever.

Speaking of the other favourites, O’Dwyer said, “N Nintendo Spaceworld demo is another because it’s such a beloved piece of footage that no one has ever had a clean copy of it.” “My favorite might be him Presentation of Knights of the Old Republic E3 never seen before. Especially considering where this franchise is located.” [A remake announced in September 2021 has been indefinitely delayed.] “I know fans loved dissecting this video. A few days ago I came across a cache of E3 2004 press kits full of screenshots and videos too. So every day we discover new and exciting things.”

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What O’Dwyer is doing is very important work. Considering that 87 percent of classic games are lost over timeBecause older hardware is hard to find and difficult to maintain, there is some comfort in knowing that there are people working to preserve the history of video games. Because if we don’t remember where we’ve been, we’ll never know where we’re going.