Slamfest '99 aka "Super Smash Bros. LIVE" (lost livestream of promotional event for Nintendo 64 crossover fighting game; 1999)

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Costumes for the characters used in the Super Smash Bros. commercial and the Slamfest '99 event.

Status: Lost

Super Smash Bros. is a 1999 game for the Nintendo 64 where players can fight each other using various iconic Nintendo characters. The game was a massive success, spawning a large fanbase and five other games, with the most recent game being Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018.

To promote the first game on the Nintendo 64, Nintendo held a promotional event called Super Smash Bros. Slamfest '99. This event featured various costumed characters from the game fighting each other in a boxing ring. The "fight" was livestreamed via RealPlayer, however the livestream has never surfaced.

History

On May 11th, 2020, the "Supper Mario Broth" Twitter account posted an image showing Yoshi, Pikachu, Mario, and Donkey Kong costumes, along with their actors.[1] These costumes were used in the North American commercial for Super Smash Bros., with the costumes being made by KCL Productions. The Tweet gained much attention from the Mario community, being used in many memes and being retweeted 4.1k times (as of June 2020).

Andre Segers' Tweet, mentioning the Slamfest '99 livestream.

Andrè Segers, founder of YouTube channel "GameXplain", retweeted the image with a comment talking about "a real-life Super Smash Bros. Battle using the same costumes used in the commercial that was livestreamed." He also said in the same Tweet that he has found noone else mention it existing online.

This retweet also garnered much attention, with many people scouring for an archive of the livestream on databases and video-sharing sites to no avail. Users had also speculated that the event was held around April-May 1999 and the event was being held in Las Vegas at a boxing ring. YouTube user and contributor to the Lost Media Wiki "LSuperSonicQ" went to the Wayback Machine, and looked for captures of the website that hosted the livestream. The website revealed the name of the event being Super Smash Bros. Slamfest '99, as well as a link to a rebroadcast that turned out to be dead.[2]

Along with this, "LSuperSonicQ" also found that the website Z64 Central had a page that had more info about the event.[3] This website confirmed that the event was held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, with a summary of the event included. It also hosted many images of the event (see Gallery). While this had very useful info about the event, the livestream was nowhere to be found.

"LSuperSonicQ" had looked into other websites mentioning the event and old magazine scans, all with no success. It wasn't until Twitter user Robert Sephason tweeted to Andrè Segers an image of a page in a magazine Donkey Kong in a boxing ring. This image originates from the book The Ultimate History of Video Games.[4] This peaked interest for "LSSQ", who contacted a event manager who had worked at Nintendo at the time of Slamfest. The event manager did not respond, and it is unknown if any other contact was made.

Availability

While many people made many efforts to find the livestream, such as contacting people possibly invloved and finding a possible archive of the stream, the livestream has not been found as of the writing of this article.

Although the stream was not found, several images taken at the event were found on the websites of interest, shown in the gallery.

Gallery

Images on Z64 Central

Other Images

Videos

The North American commercial for Super Smash Bros., using the costumes used for Slamfest '99.

LSuperSonicQ's video on his search for Slamfest '99.

blameitonjorge's "Lost Media Case Files Vol. 2", which mentions Slamfest '99.

References