The Video Game History Foundation has released a massive collection of E3 materials. It's remarkable and just the thing folks like me growing up longed to one day see in person. Now with E3 defunct, this is the closest we will ever get to that show floor magic.

Donated by founding IDSA member Carolyn Rauch, this collection includes over 1000 pages of ephemera from the history of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, E for All, and the Game Marketing Summit.

As senior vice president of the IDSA, Rauch oversaw E3 for almost the entire run of the event. She kept a significant collection of promo material for the event itself, including flyers, brochures, press kits, guest passes, event photographs, panel transcripts, industry reports, and much more.

This collection—maybe one of the single largest collections of E3 ephemera—is an exhaustive snapshot of the public face of the event from 1996–2011. Reading through these materials, you can see the organizers trying to balance the intense public interest in video games with the professional demands of the event.

There's also 12 hours of footage preserved from the first four E3 events, including the legendary $299 price point for the original PlayStation. Can you imagine?

Anthony Parisi attended the first four E3 events, and each year, he brought his camcorder to film press conferences and game footage. If you’ve looked for videos of E3 before, you might have seen some of Parisi’s footage on YouTube.

We’re excited to share that Anthony Parisi has donated the copyrights for these videos to the Video Game History Foundation! We’ve redigitized nearly 12 hours of video from Parisi, documenting the foundational years of the event.

Last July I was rewatching old Nintendo E3 press conferences and I can't wait to dig into these. We have lost something with these pre-recorded, perfectly executed "directs" and "showcases." Having those first years preserved in some manner is remarkable.