E3 1997 (Concept)

E3 1997

CONCEPT

The 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) took place at the Georgia World Congress Center and Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia on June 19-21.

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Overview

After two years in Los Angeles (Location), E3 (Concept) came to Atlanta (Location) in 1997. Atlanta was somewhat of a popular city at the time, having just played host to the Olympics in 1996 and sporting a brand new football stadium, the Georgia Dome (Location), which was a venue used by the Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, and other special events. The Dome was used for hundreds of booths for smaller companies, similar to that of Kentia Hall in L.A. Right next door to the Georgia Dome is the Georgia World Congress Center, a massive, multi-level convention center that housed the larger publishers' booths. The Georgia Dome and The GWCC would be the home for E3 in 1997 and 1998.

E3 1997 was all about the games. The Sega Saturn was struggling to its second anniversary, PlayStation (Platform) was over a year old, and the Nintendo 64 (Platform) had just released the previous holiday season. So with all the hardware out of the way, the focus was on the software. The only hardware talk was on the PC front, where Intel had just announced the Pentium II, and 3dfx was presenting a new line of video cards. As for the games, the highlights of the show included the debuts of Metal Gear Solid (Game), Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, GoldenEye 007 (Game), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Half-Life. Other notable titles on display in the depths of the GWCC were Final Fantasy VII (Game), PaRappa the Rapper (Game), Crash Bandicoot 2, Tomb Raider II (Game), Daikatana, and Starcraft.

Games of the Show

The games listed below not only include those playable on the show floor, but any game referenced at the show. This would include video presentations, announcements, advertisements, or any other official reference to the game from its developer, publisher, or platform. They are listed mainly according to the publisher of the game, with a few exceptions where the publisher did not attend the show. An example of this would be a hardware company such as Nintendo or nVidia showing a game not developed or published by them. In several situtations, games either changed their title or even their publisher before they were released. For historical accuracy in chronicling E3, such games will be listed with their original names and publishers, and linked to the corresponding page of the final game.