SG Roundtable: The Worst Video Game Showcase Moments (Patreon Request)

In this Source Gaming Roundtable we got into the spirt of the not!E3 season when we were asked by our Ultimate Patron, Mr. JBRPG, about our favourite terrible moments in videogame showcase history. From terrible game reveals to cringey business executives to hilariously bad showcases. We weren’t restricted to E3 either, we looked across all of gaming history for the moments that wre so bad its funny (or painful), so give it a read and let us know yours in the comments!

I’ve been watching E3 for a while and there are some absolute classic cringe moments from throughout the years. The Peggle 2 guy, Miyamoto’s demonstration of Wii Music and Project Giant Robot (“please clap”), and everything about Mr. Coffee. But the leader of E3 Cringe has to go to the 2010 Konami Conference. Everything from the awkward pauses, stunted delivery and technical issues is a treasure trove of horrifying awful cringe that I can’t help but laugh at. This is the real content we miss out on now that E3 is dead.

So this isn’t, technically, “out.” And it is, technically, “new.” And it could be, technically, “good.” But few Game Awards announcements were as depressing and unappetizing as the one for Crime Boss: Rockay City last December. An ugly, boring, joyless looking crime stealth shooter? That’s bad but borning on its own. What really cemented it in my mind was the game’s selling point: a big name cast filled with has-beens, jokes, and also people I really like who deserve so much better than this. I’ll never feel bad for Danny Trejo taking a role since that wonderful man loves acting way more than I’ve ever loved anything, but Kim Basinger? Danny Glover? Damion Poitier? This is beneath all of you. But it’s not beneath their co-stars Vanilla Ice and Chuck Norris, who appear to be playing long-outdated memes of themselves. Watching the trailer, reading the cast list; it makes me feel sad that some of these people have sunk to the point where they can be in something this ugly. And sad that a barely-was, no talent musician and the world’s second most obnoxious mealy-mouthed, sanctimonious action star are put on their level. It all feels ripped straight out of bad big games from fifteen years ago.

Granted, it was not as bad as when, in the same show, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League ghoulishly marketed itself as having Kevin Conroy’s last performance as Batman. But that was not a new announcement, so it doesn’t count.

Every time I watch The Game Awards there’s always an announcement or two that makes my soul evaporate from my body. While I’m thankful that Geoff lends his huge platform to developers who don’t have a ton of exposure, there’s always a few announcements from games that you can just kinda tell are bad from looking at them. From the utterly baffling trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance to the show-ender Fast & Furious Crossroads, I think 2019 had the worst show since the event got relatively more professional after its inception in 2014. Keighley’s other venture, the Summer Game Fest, does not fare much better, dedicating some of its runtime to embarrassing non-gaming advertisements that remind me of the good ol’ days of Geoff sitting in the middle of Mountain Dew and Doritos and looking completely done with his life. I’ve gained a small amount of entertainment from watching it with friends and turning on Tequila by The Champs every time a game from a notoriously abusive developer comes on. This year I blasted 6 tabs of Tequila when Mortal Kombat 1 was shown for 10 minutes.

Lately, Metroid’s been in a great position. Dread was a phenomenal return to the 2D series fans had been missing for years, and Prime: Remastered gave some much-needed love to the franchise’s other corner. But even before those two, Samus Returns was winning new fans over after its reveal alongside the still-enigmatic Prime 4. Compared to the state of this brand just a few years beforehand, this turnaround has felt unreal. Remember when they thought it was a good idea to break Metroid’s radio silence throughout the 2010s with a co-op shooter on the 3DS that hardly featured Samus at all? Metroid Prime: Federation Force has gotta be one of Nintendo’s most baffling games in recent memory. It goes without saying that next to no one wanted this when the future of Samus herself was uncertain. It’s all the more confusing when you remember that they revealed this project with just the name “Blast Ball” beforehand. Needless to say, hardly anyone bought the game, and it was quickly forgotten. Imagine how all this might’ve gone if Federation Force was revealed after Metroid’s comeback began. If conventional titles like Samus Returns and Prime 4 were already announced, this quirky spin-off might’ve been accepted as just that. But no, instead of getting yet another addition to Metroid’s outstanding return to form, we got yet another example of how out of touch Nintendo was prior to the Switch’s debut.

Maybe it’s cheating to use something recent, about less than 5 days ago as I’m writing, but I’m doing it anyways. Geoff Keighly’s Summer Game Fest 2023 headliner showcase, although featured a few announcements that I enjoyed, was a mess tonally and pacing. While cynics may view any video game presentation as a glorified commercial, the reality is that most showcases like a Nintendo Direct or XBOX Games Showcase treat each of their announcements as something special. Each title, whether a world premiere, a new trailer, or even part of a sizzle reel; every game shown is given time that allows it to shine, in hopefully the most straightforward way as possible, and give a glimpse to the potential player of why they should give it a shot. Unfortunately, the Summer Game Fest show does not do that. There may be instances where Geoff himself will introduce the next title and trailer, inbetween every “big” announcement are commercials that either show off a new OLED television or another video game. Another video game, presenting itself also as a trailer, but sandwiched between two commercials that then makes that game’s presentation also feel lacking – just like a commercial. There is a lack of tact and respect, not just to the viewer but to the developers as their creation that is looking to be highlighted as part of the summer celebration of gaming is just treated as an inbetween and padding before we get to the newest anticipated title from a big First or Third Party Publisher. Where many people would rate the SGF ‘23 presentation as a B or C, I just view it as an overall waste of time.

It’s hard to imagine these days that there was a time when Blizzard wasn’t repeatedly walking into a garden rake, Sideshow Bob-style. You can point to any number of Blizzard presentations in recent years and find at least one historically bad moment. But what list of particularly bad gaming conferences and reveals is complete without Blizzcon 2018? Five years(!) ago, a dictionary definition of failing to read the room took place in the halls of the Anaheim Convention Center, whereupon Blizzard representatives told a crowd of enthusiastic, largely PC gamers (one would presume, anyway) that their next big Diablo game, Diablo Immortal…was a mobile exclusive, with no Diablo IV in sight. And then, to rub salt in that would, they ask, condescendingly, if the audience doesn’t have phones (protip: not everyone has the latest and greatest, even if they do play on mobile), because that’s how you win skeptics over. The famed Red Shirt Guy of that year’s Blizzcon made waves in the opposite way by properly reading the room and asking if the whole affair was an out of season April Fool’s joke, bringing actual cheer and laughter to a conference room filled with booing and dread. And then Immortal took four more years to come out, after which it earned even more negative press that more or less justified the visceral reaction upon its reveal.

Say what you will about mobile gaming and its business models, but even the bigger gachas out there don’t have the insane monetization that Immortal has and look wildly reasonable by comparison.

NantenJex already touched upon it, but Nintendo’s E3 2008 showing was notoriously bad. An ultimately underwhelming Animal Crossing sequel for the Wii, City Folk, was among the bigger reveals. The console also got two peripherals, the Wii MotionPlus (which enhanced the motion controls of the Wii Remote and was required for select games) and voice chat-enabling Wii Speak, neither of which would see widespread use. And Nintendo closed the show with… Wii Music. I rarely use this word, but watching legendary game developer Shigeru Miyamoto, professional drummer Ravi, and their colleagues flail around on stage in a misguided effort to sell this software could not have been more cringe-inducing.

Now, I should stress that I don’t expect every game reveal at these events to appeal to me. That’s fine; that’s good, even. Nintendo’s blue ocean strategy was important for a litany of reasons, and expanding the Wii games into new genres made sense. Plus, we did get the impressive Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS out of this presentation. But the reception to this E3 showing speaks for itself, with many diehard fans left feeling alienated.

Thankfully, Nintendo got the message—their E3 showing the following year was solid, containing Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and even sequels to Sin & Punishment and Golden Sun. Granted, that was also the year that unveiled the execrable Metroid: Other M, but even its inclusion was a clear effort on Nintendo’s part to highlight “hardcore” titles for longtime fans.

Okay, so, in 2014 Nintendo had that superb E3 presentation with Smash, Splatoon, and Yoshi’s Wooly World. But immediately after the show, if you were watching the IGN stream, you got to see one more Wii U exclusive revealed! How exciting! And that game was Devil’s Third. We got a campaign trailer, gameplay demo, a multiplayer reveal! All this for a Nintendo(!)-published Wii U exclusive, and it wasn’t in the E3 Direct itself and not even part of the Nintendo Treehouse aftershow? For the next year and a half, it became pretty clear that Nintendo (or at the very least Nintendo of America) just didn’t really want to acknowledge that game was on the way. Hell, the North American release was months after the Japan/Europe release. Granted, now we know why. But you know what, I thought it looked cool.

Okay, let’s end this with the absolute best and most memable E3 presentation of all time. Let me set the stage – the year is 2006. Sony is coming off of perhaps the most dominant video game generation win we will ever see. The PS2 outsold it’s next closest competitor by over a 100 million units, leaving Nintendo and Xbox to fight over the scraps and SEGA to see itself out the door. Anticipation for Sony’s new console is at an all time high, and pundits and fans alike felt like the company could not fail. Then came Sony’s infamous E3 2006 conference. A conference that went so badly that it fostered an environment where Nintendo would go on to set record sales numbers and where Microsoft would grow a lead that they would not relinquish until the very end of the console generation. This conference had everything – the dumb “Eye of Judgement” game for the EyeToy peripheral, a launch price of “499 US Dollars”, a giant enemy crab whose weak point can be hit for massive damage, and, or course, RIIIIIIDGE RACER. Oh, and who can forget the motion tilt added to the six axis controller that was in no way a response to the Wii. The lackluster software and price point shown at this conference was truly a low point for the Playstation brand – one that the company could not fully escape until the launch of the PS4.