[1] Organized by Nintendo of America and public relations firm Golin/Harris,[2] the event featured a real-life, staged wrestling match involving four costumed Super Smash Bros. characters performed in front of a live audience.
[3] While a rebroadcast of the match was hosted on the event's official website for several months following its conclusion, no video footage of Slamfest '99 is currently known to exist, and the broadcast is considered lost media.
[4][5] Slamfest '99 took place in the 'Salem Waterfront' district at Las Vegas' MGM Grand Adventures Theme Park on April 24, 1999, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM PST.
[1] The event's primary attraction was a real-life, staged wrestling match between four costumed Super Smash Bros. characters—Donkey Kong, Mario, Pikachu, and Yoshi.
The costumes were previously used in the North American commercial for Super Smash Bros.[7] Promotion for Slamfest '99 was deliberately limited in scope as a cautionary exercise in the wake of the Columbine school shooting earlier that week, as it had spurred controversy surrounding violence in video games.
[3] At the time, InternetBroadcast.com was a web broadcasting service owned by MediaOnDemand.com, Inc.[18] A Real Audio Metadata (.ram) file was available to download from the event's website following its conclusion,[3] which allowed users to view a rebroadcast of the stream when loaded into RealPlayer.
In May 2020, André Segers of the YouTube channel GameXplain published a tweet vaguely recalling Slamfest '99,[20] which garnered attention from members of the Lost Media Wiki.
[4] The search effort has since uncovered a variety of content related to Slamfest '99, such as photographs, magazine articles, written firsthand accounts, and references to the event on archived websites in the Wayback Machine.