Nintendo revealed Revolution 10 years ago today at E3 2005

Before it became the cultural phenomenon it did and before Nintendo sold more than 100 million of them the Wii was simply known as the Revolution.

Ten years ago on May 17th 2005, Satoru Iwata took to the stage at E3 and revealed the console to the world, just the console the motion sensing controller which would changing game (and be the but of many jokes) wouldn’t been revealed until later in the year.

The promise was simple, a brand new console (in many colours that never happened) that plays standard 12cm optical discs, 512 megabytes of internal memory, SD card support and graphics that will make you say “wow”.

We gave you DS, a new Game Boy, and new games to play on them. And now, you say you want a Revolution? Well, we’ve got one.

Iwata would also go on to tease Super Smash Bros. for the console, a ‘big plan’ for Metroid and a central focus on Wi-Fi connected games with a couple available at launch. A lot of these promises weren’t ever realised or delayed several years into the consoles life. Like that online enabled Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Square Enix were working on right?

One thing that did happen was the promise of backwards compatibility, Nintendo launched the Virtual Console and of course the Wii supported GameCube games natively.

The last thing Iwata promised about the Revolution is that it would draw in non-gamers and also appeal to core gamers as well, something it certainly managed to do.

Nintendo Revolution shares a common vision with one we outlined for Nintendo DS last year. The machine is just a tool, the experience comes from the software. So let me conclude with one more hint. Those over you who consider the possibilities of combining embedded content with an internet connection and wireless connection and our flash memory, may begin to make educated guesses on what game experiences we might be constructing. When it arrives next year we intend for Revolution to fully serve core gamers with new titles that fully meet their requirements.

How do you remember the time after the Revolution’s announcement, especially before the Wii Remote was officially revealed? Let us know in the comments.

We remembered because of: NeoGAF