Slamfest '99

Super Smash Bros. Slamfest '99 (also Super Smash Bros. LIVE or Slamfest '99) was an event created by Nintendo of America and the public relations firm Golin/Harris to promote the Nintendo 64 game Super Smash Bros.. It happened on April 24, 1999 at MGM Grand Adventures, a theme park in Paradise, Nevada, United States.

Event
Donkey Kong, Mario, Pikachu and Yoshi (who all appear in Super Smash Bros) fought a wrestling show in the boxing ring meant for Mike Tyson's next boxing fight. The game was also playable on demo kiosks.

Ed Espinoza of Golin/Harris produced the event. The choreographers and actors were from Cirque du Soleil. The actors wore costumes designed by KCL Productions for a Super Smash Bros. commercial in North America.

Promotion was reduced after the Columbine High School massacre earlier that week made violence in video games seem bad. More than 100 children from the Andre Agassi Foundation and six people from the media,Winnipeg Free Press, April 29, 1999, pp. C10 including an Associated Press photographer, were invited to visit the event."Star-studded affair". The Sacramento Bee. April 25, 1999, p. 30.

N64 Magazine, X64 and Nintendo Magazine System (the Australian magazine) wrote about the event. Images of it were used in The Sacramento Bee (one from Associated Press) and Steven L. Kent's book The Ultimate History of Video Games (one of Donkey Kong).

Firsthand accounts

 Broadcast 
The wrestling show was broadcast live using Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) on InternetBroadcast.com (then owned by MediaOnDemand.com, Inc.).

A Real Audio Metadata (RAM) file of the broadcast (which only linked RealPlayer to the video) was then released. The broadcast has been lost since the Slamfest '99 website was removed seven to eleven months later.

 Legacy 
Nintendo has not talked about the event again. It became notable in May 2020, when André Segers of the YouTube channel GameXplain said on Twitter that he remembers it. Members of the Lost Media Wiki then started looking for footage of the wrestling show. They have found photographs, magazine articles, firsthand accounts, and mentions on the Wayback Machine. Ed Espinoza sent them high-quality photographs of the event, which were made public in February 2023.

Advertisements for the event have also been found in a talking Donkey Kong plush toy from the Nintendo Collectibles line.

 References 

 Other websites 
All found images on SmashWiki
More information on Lost Media Wiki

Category:Nintendo
Category:Super Smash Bros.
Category:Wrestling
Category:Events