Rewatching the 2004 Spike tv Video Game Awards, a bizarre time capsule

The Game Awards is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. But for a full decade before The Game Awards, there was another, rowdier game-honoring awards show produced by Geoff Keighley: the Spike tv Video Game Awards. Just like the modern-day Game Awards, Spike’s show aired live, but it was on an actual tv channel, without a Twitch chat to accompany it. It had skits. It had a celebrity host; in 2004, that was Snoop Dogg. And present it is simply a high-octane time capsule into how video games were classically marketed side-by-side with utmost sports, Mountain Dew, and lingerie-clad models.

There’s an incomplete, heavy edited version of the 2004 Spike tv Game Awards on YouTube; sadly, the full version appears to have been lost to time, despite my searching. But in an effort to realize what was gained — or lost? — erstwhile the “Oscars of gaming” full transitioned into an independent operation divorced from Spike TV, the self-proclaimed “First Network for Men,” I decided to rewatch as much as I could. For science.

The first half of the YouTube video I found, uploaded by a user named PAPAGEORGIO84, includes a different Spike tv section called “The eventual Gamer” in which 1 fortunate guy wins a home makeover for his gaming setup. It’s a akin time-capsule journey but it actually ends up being highly boring to watch so I skipped most of it.

The actual awards show starts off with Snoop Dogg doing a skit. Here’s a large thought: any of the vibes of this old show could stand to return. I for 1 would love to see Snoop hosting TGAs this year (or truly any year). I don’t know that the “Cyber Vixen of the Year” award should get a reprise this year (or, again, any another year… ever), but TGAs could usage a host like this.

In the cold open, Snoop’s playing golf, complete with an argyle sweater vest, on 1 of those miniature home office golf sets. This is to set up highest 2004 celebrated Athlete Tiger Woods walking out of a close trailer wearing a fur coat, gold necklaces, and a fedora over a black toque. They both look adorable in their respective “switched” outfits. Tiger Woods then wonders aloud if PGA Tour stands for “Pimp Golf Association.” Then he points at the camera and tells us to game on.

In the theater, attendees are treated to a CGI version of the rapper Ludacris greeting the Video Game Awards crowd. Luda is surrounded by another CGI dudes, whom he starts beating up. (This is most likely a promo for a Def Jam game; he was in respective of these in this time period.) Then, of course, we get IRL Ludacris out on stage, performing “Get Back.” There’s a live drummer, bassist, and guitarist accompanying this; Wikipedia tells me this is simply a stone remix of the song featuring Lazyeye. Rap-rock was immense during this time (although it usually didn’t feature people who could rap well). The performers do not play a shortened version of the song. They full complete the track. The audience applauds, and then it’s time for… somehow, another musical performance? The early-2000s hip-hop energy and undiluted joy in this show is honestly exhilarating compared to the formality of current TGAs.

In a voiceover, Snoop rattles off a list of guests who will be appearing, ranging from Lil Wayne to John Madden to Michelle Rodriguez. With equal speed, he then lists off more musical guests who’ll be showing up — Busta Rhymes, Mötley Crüe, Sum41, and on and on.

Before Snoop Dogg actually comes out on stage, radio maven Funkmaster Flex appears behind a turntable setup, serving as his hype man, introducing him as “the biggest rap star of all time.” Snoop Dogg enters wearing a vest over a button-up shirt with jeans and a fedora. “Video games are blowing up so crazy right now,” Snoop says into his handheld mic, “You know what I’m saying? Spike tv wanted me to have a co-host. At first I was like, hell nah. But then I realized who they had in mind.”

Snoop Dogg then introduces… himself. Again. But now he’s CGI and on a secondary screen. The CGI Snoop tells us, “Real people are played out, fool.” Snoop points out that there’s 1 thing real people can do and he uses a distant to turn off the CGI Snoop.

Snoop then introduces an award that is amazingly called “Best Performance By a Human Female.” There is an accompanying “Human Male” award as well. In the erstwhile year, 2003, this award was just “Best award for a Human” — 2004 is the first time it got divided up by gender. (2003 was besides the first-ever version of this awards show, by the way.)

“If there’s 1 thing I love, it’s human females performing for me,” Snoop says. “Which — ladies?” He gestures to the ceiling, from whence 2 Victoria’s Secret angels descend on wires. Snoop thrusts the mic into the face of 1 of the 2 women, who mechanically intones a line about the awards themselves, which are: “The Vector Monkey — awesome, isn’t it? It makes all those another award show trophies look like junk.”

This is around where I’m remembering why I and so many another people did not like this awards show at the time; it’s not all fun musical performances, sadly. There is lots of talk of how bad the Vector Monkey statue looks.

As I half-watch the clips of the nominees for Best Performance By a Human Female, Idiscover that there’s actually a separate Voice Actor category, and that the Best Human Female category appears to mention only to characters who were modeled after circumstantial human beings (albeit not necessarily with mocap tech). For example, 1 of the nominees is Jennifer Garner for her performance as Sydney Bristow in a 2004 Alias video game. The Vector Monkey goes to Brooke Burke for her performance as a character named Rachel in Need for Speed: Underground 2.

Who the hell is voting on these awards? Here’s the answer (according to a Spike tv press release reposted on thefutoncritic.com): “Winners for the Spike tv Video Game Awards were determined by votes from Spike TV’s Advisory Board, made up of a group of gaming manufacture experts, and consumer voting […] More than 4.6 million gamers and Spike tv viewers logged on to cast their votes for their favourite games.”

Pulsing techno music plays as Brooke Burke takes the stage, delivers a two-sentence acceptance speech, then books it. I will learn, as the show goes on, that this short “speech” dimension is standard across all winners and categories. Immediately afterward, Funkmaster Flex yells into his mic, “And now, hot girls read cheat codes!”

We get treated to a clip of a female wearing only underwear reciting part of a cheat code in a sultry voice. The audience is mostly silent during this part until a couple of people titter awkwardly. It’s grim.

Next up, BMX rider Mat Hoffman walks out with pro skateboarder Bam Margera. Did you know that there was a Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX game in 2001 and a sequel in 2002? Margera, meanwhile, made regular appearances in Tony Hawk games. The pair read any jokes off the teleprompter about fake, hyperbolic injuries they’ve incurred in their respective sports, then Hoffman tells us it’s time to announce the winner for Most Addictive Game, “fueled by Dew.” This was a fan-only vote, Margera reminds us, before name-dropping Virgin Wireless Mobile (because, uh, you gotta usage the net to vote? Sure).

The most addictive games included City of Heroes, which gave me a good nostalgia surge, Donkey Konga (of all things), The Sims 2, Katamari Damacy, and Burnout 3: Takedown. They don’t announce a winner, and at this point I realize that the voting is going to happen live during the show itself. There are no Twitch drops during this show due to the fact that we inactive have 7 years until the livestream service is invented.

Funkmaster Flex then introduces “the next generation of sports superstars,” Bobby Crosby (who had appeared in MLB 2005) and Freddy Adu (who was in FIFA 2005). Their staged bit is that Bobby is besides busy playing games on his PSP to read his part on the teleprompter. Apparently, the PSP had only just come out in Japan, and “this one’s the only 1 in the country.” Freddy makes a gag about selling it on eBay and runs offstage with it. Bobby takes over reading the nominees for Best First-Person Action, including any absolute all-timers like Half-Life 2, which actually loses out to Halo 2 (Half-Life 2 does win another awards later in the show). There’s besides Unreal Tournament 2004, Far Cry, and Doom 3 in this category — a truly stacked year for FPS games.

Michelle Rodriguez and Ron Perlman are there to accept Halo 2’s award, which feels like a amazing amount of star power even by today’s standards. besides present: Bungie composer Marty O’Donnell (because… sure?). Ron Perlman fires off a one-sentence acceptance speech in which he gestures to his character on the splash screen and says it’s “the best I’ve always looked.”

Next is time for Tony Hawk, who is not in attendance to talk about a Tony Hawk game, but alternatively to hype up Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is 1 of the games in contention for the large GOTY prize at the end of the night. Each of these nominees will seemingly get a small hype cycle throughout the show.

Hey, and now it’s time for, as Geoff Keighley would say, a “world premiere” exclusive. Snoop returns to introduce a trailer for The Godfather video game adaptation. In looking up how this game did, I learned that James Caan lost out on the 2006 Spike tv Best Supporting Male Performance award to James Gandolfini who appeared in The Sopranos: Road to Respect. The early 2000s were all about gangster prestige game adaptations. In any case, the 2004 trailer is mostly just a cutscene featuring James Caan in CGI form. The tagline? “An offer you can’t refuse.”

“That game looks mad crazy,” says Funkmaster Flex, before introducing boxer Roy Jones Jr. to talk about any nominees for best driving game. one more time I am baffled that the career of the individual introducing the award has absolutely nothing to do with the nominee(s) they’re talking about, but that’s most likely due to the types of content that aired on Spike tv (extreme sports) and not truly about the video games of the era. These were the gettable celebs!

Anyway, Best Driving Game is sponsored by the Pontiac GTO. After the clip reel of nominees, an actual Pontiac GTO rolls up in front of the stage. Its driver hands a copy of Burnout 3 to Roy Jones Jr. who holds it up and announces it as the winner. Alex Ward, the game’s manager of design, comes onstage to accept the award with DJ Stryker, a Spike tv mainstay who besides appeared in the game as himself. Alex Ward notes while accepting the award that “78 people made this game,” a number so circumstantial that it genuinely endeared him to me. Short as it was, this minute felt like an actual acceptance speech as opposed to just a two-sentence quip, for once.

Funkmaster Flex then introduces his “new favourite actor,” Giovanni Ribisi, who was in Call of Duty (as in, the very first Call of work game ever, titled simply that, back in 2003). Ribisi immediately hands off to Sum41, performing “No Reason,” which seemingly appeared in NFL Street 2 so that’s why they’re at the show. The 2004 Spike tv Video Game Awards is inspiring me to coin a music genre called “gamercore” that is made up of all musician who has appeared onstage at this event.

After a commercial break, Funkmaster Flex introduces Danny Masterson by saying, “While his castmates were off dating Lindsay Lohan and Demi Moore, he was playing video games.” This was, reportedly, not all that Masterson was doing during this time period.

Masterson appears to be chewing gum before introducing 1 of the Game of the Year nominees, which is Half-Life 2. alternatively of being a trailer for the game, this place includes interviews with various anonymous gamers (I assume, anyway, since no of them get chyrons). The first 1 says “I like Half-Life 2 because it’s a continuation of the first Half-Life.” It certain is, buddy. It certain is! Another guy tells us that it is “in fact mandatory to replay all level.” I mean, it’s not. But I get it.

Funkmaster Flex then reads 1 of the more horrifying jokes of the night off the teleprompter: “She’s the star of the upcoming movie Alone in the Dark, and I know all guy in here wants to be alone in the dark with her.” Yikes!

Anyway, it’s Tara Reid. We get a cutaway to a bunch of guys in the crowd full-on hooting and hollering at her. Reid introduces Best Song in a Video Game, which is actually a lineup of pop songs that were licensed for games as opposed to tracks that are first to the games in which they appear. The winner is “American Idiot” by Green Day, which appeared in Madden NFL 2005. A fresh classical gamercore track. The thought of a Green Day song in a Madden game winning an award for Best Song in a Video Game is making me feel disconnected from reality and the average meanings of words.

Steve Schnur goes up to accept the award alongside part of Green Day; Schnur’s occupation is listed as “Executive in charge of music” at EA (this appears to still be his same job, 20 years on). Clips from Madden play in the background, due to the fact that this is an award honoring a Madden game, technically. It’s hard to make out the bandmates in this low-res video, but I’m beautiful certain that’s bassist Mike Dirnt who elects to talk into the mic, holding up his hand to show off what he calls “gamer gloves” (they appear to just be regular black leather driving gloves, not even fingerless ones or anything). He then holds up his Vector Monkey and says, “That is 1 funky monkey. Mmm.” Again, this is the standard dimension and speech of this event’s acceptance speeches.

Now it’s time for Lil Jon and the East Side Boys. They’re not performing a song, though, they’re actually just introducing “the planet premiere performance” of Snoop Dogg’s song “Let’s Get Blown.” Pharrell sings backups on this 1 so he’s here too. Snoop walks out and the crowd loses it. A couple of seconds pass. “Can we get the music?” Snoop asks. Nothing happens. “Well, can y’all play it? Come on,” he says. The musicians behind him yet start and it’s not entirely clear to me if that was an intentional hold or not.

What happens next is lost to time, but the YouTube rip picks back up with members of Papa Roach moving through multiple awards at once, which is very modern-day Game Awards of them: We get Best Fighting Game, Best Action Game, Best Graphics, Best fresh Technology, Best Handheld, Best Mass Multiplayer Game, and Best Cyber Vixen of the Year (featuring a custom-made video clip of the winner, Rayne from BloodRayne 2, who thanks the voters).

I’m realizing I have barely any time left in the video that I’m watching. My individual grand finale before the YouTube video cuts out is JC Chasez, of NSYNC fame, who comes out to introduce a item reel for Game of the Year nominee Burnout 3: Takedown. (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas takes home the large prize, but I was not treated to anyone at Rockstar accepting their Vector Monkey.)

The main thing that’s changed in 20 years is that flagrant, in-jokey misogyny isn’t a part of The Game Awards anymore, and I request everyone to realize how grateful I am for that cultural shift because… I’m about to admit that I do think something else was lost erstwhile The Spike tv Video Game Awards died and the modern TGAs rose up from the ashes.

The wooden but well-intentioned joke-telling on the part of somewhat uncomfortable celebrities reminds me more of the Oscars than the current-day Game Awards do, at least from the vantage point of making up the pieces of a show that has decent pacing and a sense of humor about itself. In between lowering Victoria’s Secret angels onto the phase via wire and telling a downright disturbing gag about Tara Reid, this show besides managed to get mics in front of more women than multiple iterations of the modern-day Game Awards. (I have no possible moral justification for the mediocre female who read off a cheat code in her underwear, though.) It’s besides undeniable that by featuring hip-hop and punk stone artists of the era, the show ended up with a far more diverse lineup of famous, entertaining guests. If the teleprompter jokes had been just a bit better written, I would have had to compose an article about how this show was legitimately decent.

There is plenty of crap to laughter at here. Bleach-blond spiky hair, “gamer gloves,” Mountain Dew — these are the trappings of a bygone era. But I gotta admit, this show was besides just plain fun to watch. It absolutely helped that it wasn’t stacked to the gills with back-to-back advertising for upcoming games. Instead, it was a show that was designed to be an entertaining romp celebrating 2004 in gaming.

Now I’m sitting here reasoning about how the best part of Half-Life 2 is the fact that it was a continuation of Half-Life. I can’t deny that.