Holiday Treat #7: The Game Awards...of 1999

The following is part of our 25-day Holiday Countdown Calendar! Every day from December 1st through the 25th, we're posting a cool game history treat, and $5 and up Patrons get access one day early!

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Tomorrow is the 2023 Game Awards. But first, we’re turning the clock back to one of the earliest video game award shows!

This is the 1999 Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, organized by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. The nominations this year were stacked. Half-Life and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time competing for Game of the Year! Pokémon Red and Blue up against Metal Gear Solid for best story! Gran Turismo versus F-Zero X! Coolio is there too, for some reason!

This awards show is still running today, now called the D.I.C.E. Awards. If you want spoilers for 1998’s winners, you can find the results on the AIAS website. But where’s the fun in that?

We recently recovered the tape for this show by visiting the family of Rita Zimmerer, one of the Academy's founding advisory board members. As far as we know, this has never been available to watch online until now! We can't wait to tell you more about Rita and her career in a future post, but for now, we hope you appreciate this little taste of the material she kept.

Watch on YouTube!

Surprise Giveaway!

Our friends at Mother to Earth have a special giveaway just for VGHF supporters!

Mother to Earth is a fantastic documentary on the localization of the original Mother – aka EarthBound Beginnings – for the NES. But maybe more than that, we like it as a documentary that is at least in part about the earliest days of video game prototype preservation, something very much at the roots of the Video Game History Foundation.

Oh, and our founder Frank Cifaldi is in it too. Bonus!

We have 500 rental codes to give away, but they’re first come, first served! And if you're a paid Patreon member, you're seeing this before anyone else does! If you’d like one, simply fill out this form.