During every gauntlet of E3 press conferences, there's always one. One moment that stands out above the rest; the kind of experience you look back at fondly, long after the game it was tied to has come and gone. It could be a hilarious line, like "Attack its weakpoint for massive damage" or "one million troops... WOW." Or maybe it's that moment when months of hype pay off with a spectacular reveal, or a seemingly impossible announcement totally blindsides you (in a good way).

Whatever it ends up being, that memorable moment is something to treasure. Now that the press conferences are in the books, it's time to reflect on the moments that wowed, shocked, and delighted us. Stay awhile and reminisce with us about these less-than-a-week-old events, won't you?

Back in the early days of Xbox, then-president of the Interactive Entertainment Business division at Microsoft Don Mattrick likened backwards compatibility to backwards thinking. "If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards," the Wall Street Journal in a 2013 interview, stating that only five percent of users would utilize the feature anyway.

If only Mattrick could have heard the thunderous approval from the crowd at Microsoft's E3 press conference, when it was announced that that backwards compatibility will arrive on the Xbox One this fall.

Guerilla Games doesn't have much of a reputation to those who haven't played a Killzone game, but their next game on PS4 offers the kind of world that'll command anyone's attention. As with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, this post-apocalypse isn't a barren desert; it's a lush, overgrown jungle resting atop a collapsed metropolis, and it's absolutely gorgeous. There seems to have been some kind of robot rebellion leading up to this strange future, because wildlife like deer and birds have been replaced by metal simulacrums (that use car alarm noises to call for help).

The trailer gives you just enough time to fall in love with the female protagonist Aloy, who seems as tenacious and capable as Lara Croft. Her arsenal is an interesting mix of old and new: arrows with bullets for heads, spears made from sharpened machine parts. And then BAM - in charge some colossal cyborg dinos, complete with blue lasers and primal screams. Watching Aloy take down one of the beasts with some metal tethers and a stab to its robot heart is enough to make Horizon shoot to the top of your 'most anticipated games' list.

It was pretty great to recognize Angela Bassett as boss Six in the trailer for Rainbow Six: Siege; her likeness was so accurate that it even recreated her distinctive mouth movements perfectly. An actress of her stature joining the game’s cast was announcement enough, but when the woman herself walked out to share the stage with Aisha Tyler to discuss her role, we kind of lost our minds.

Bassett is an Oscar-nominated actress with a 20-year career that’s included turns as Betty Shabazz and Tina Turner, who (unlike so many others) regards her role in a shooty video game with the same craftsmanship that she does any other acting performance. She treated her appearance on Ubisoft’s stage with elegant, effortless grace, giving her digitized role - and the audience that would be enjoying it - respect. Her appearance at Ubisoft’s press conference also put two women of color on the same E3 stage, a sight practically unicorn-like in its rarity. It was a moment of true class in a sea of hype and awkwardness, and we loved it.

I don't know about you, but I spent the first few seconds of Sony's press conference saying, "No, no" with intense disbelief, and the three minutes that followed watching a boy and his giant bird dog explore a temple while trying not to cry. After years and so, so many vaporware jokes, we not only saw The Last Guardian emerge from obscurity, but there was a release date attached to its fuzzy, feathery tail. Does anyone else hear a triumphant music number coming from nowhere?

The trailer itself was fairly calm, showing the unnamed little boy we all remember from 2009 shouting to call his towering Falcor-like guardian. Most of the gameplay involved him moving onto different platforms, manipulating objects to make a new path, and making death-defying leaps of faith with the belief that the guardian would catch him, oh lord please catch him! Yet it was so charming, so beautiful, so lost to us for so long that even that simple bit of gameplay was enough to get us making incomprehensible noises of joy at each other. And then they followed it up with a splash image that simply read 2016, and the tears were unstoppable.

Let me take you on a journey back in time to PlayStation Experience 2014, where Sony and Square Enix pulled one of the greatest bait-and-switch moves in game conference history. In the middle of a long evening of new game announcements and trailers, a trailer was shown filled with the nostalgic images of Final Fantasy 7. 'This is it,' thought literally everyone watching at home. 'This is when that Final Fantasy 7 remake finally gets announced.' The trailer continued: Cloud fighting Shinra's grunts, the Highwind taking flight, and Sephiroth stepping through the fire. Any moment now those visuals were going to change into something new, something modern. A new FF7 was right around the corner.

Except it wasn't. Instead it was a port of the PC version to PS4. We all died a little inside that night. But at E3 2015, Sony and Square Enix redeemed themselves by finally, at long last, announcing the remake Final Fantasy fans have been clamoring for. A new Final Fantasy 7, redone with a fresh visual style, is on the horizon. The internet's reaction can be summed it with one phrase: 'NO WAY!!' followed by 'WAIT, WAIT, NO WAY!!' It was a huge surprise, tempered only by the fact that Sony's press conference was filled with huge surprises.

Nintendo’s been getting pretty good at having some fun with their Directs and Digital Events, but the E3 transformation of Reggie Fils-Aime, Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto into muppets - and then into muppet versions of characters from Star Fox - was their most delightful move yet. Nintendo didn’t take the gimmick too far, but did let the muppet hosts stick around for a while, mostly just to dance. It was pure, unfiltered happiness, which is basically Nintendo’s shtick.

It was a perfect reminder amongst the gore and guns of other press conferences that not everything has to be gritty or mature to be fun. Nothing wrong with a well-placed headshot, of course, but the muppets of Nintendo channelled childlike joy that left us grinning. : “You know and I know the warmth you feel whenever there’s a muppet around.” Everything really is better with muppets.

Sony's press conference was filled with games we had long-suspected of being vaporware, but arguably more surprising was Yu Suzuki taking the stage to reveal Shenmue 3. Okay, so it was to reveal a Kickstarter for Shenmue 3, but still. While The Last Guardian and a Final Fantasy 7 remake were at least churning in the rumor mill, the revival of Shenmue came completely out of left field.

Chills are still running up the arms of Dreamcast diehards and Shenmue supporters the world over, and financial pledges for the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter have poured in at a rate that's shattered records (and looks poised to overtake Bloodstained as the crowdfunding platform's most-funded video game project). Hearing that beautiful orchestral theme again, it's hard to blame fans for getting swept up in the moment.

When Bethesda finally pulled the lead-lined curtain off of Fallout 4, I was satisfied. It looked great, but after years of waiting to hear even the slightest peep about the next game in one of my favorite series, I was ready to keep waiting until next year to actually play it. After all, there was a ten-year wait between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, right? Waiting ‘til spring or fall 2016 would be nothing next to that.

But Bethesda decided to get the whole thing out of the way at once, announcing a Fallout 4 release date of November 11. It makes sense in retrospect, since Skyrim, Bethesda Game Studios' last big project, shipped three years ago. That's plenty of time for a big, seasoned studio to get another project together, I just… just wasn't ready to get my hopes up for it. Sniffle.

When Nier New Project director Yoko Taro took the stage at Square Enix's press conference, it felt like a fractured dream after hours of restless tossing and turning. Square Enix's press conference was easily the most boring of the lot, long on time and short on announcements that weren't already announced the day before, but then… there was that helmet. And everybody watching who hadn't played Nier - which was a cult hit at best, so a lot of them - had no idea what was happening.

See, the helmet was a replica of Emil's weapon-form head from the original game, but nobody said anything about it. They didn't even acknowledge it was there, letting Taro deliver a standard "please look forward to it" speech as if he didn't have a terrifying Majora's Mask reject sitting on his scarf-wrapped shoulders. Which he did... unless it was just a mass delusion. Actually, it might have been a mass delusion.

Every year, the E3 press conferences serve as the bombastic kickoff to a festival of big-budget games and indie innovators. This is where all the megaton reveals and announcements will happen; where developers, CEOs, and celebrities alike will take the stage and delight the audience with snappy or slightly awkward banter. And E3 2015 had more press conferences than usual, with a few newcomers joining the fray. But like gladiatorial combat, the real question on people's minds is: who won?

Every press conference had something great to offer, but some simply had more greatness than others. We've gone ahead and ranked all the press conferences, minus the (GR+ is owned by the same parent company, so we'd be contractually obligated to give them first prize). So, which press conference stood triumphant during E3 2015? In our minds, the ordering goes something like this...

The Square Enix press conference had the air of a Japanese investor meeting, which isn't necessarily good or bad. Everyone on stage was polite and calm, moving from one game demo to the next with minimal fanfare - a stark contrast to the whiz-bang theatrics of most other press conferences. There were a few gaffes, like a translator who seemed to be asleep at the wheel and an enthusiastic Kingdom Hearts fan who realized too late that he was cheering for the wrong trailer. But man, Square Enix has it where it counts: the games.

Any mention of the Final Fantasy 7 remake gets our hearts aflutter, the teacup attack in Kingdom Hearts 3 is a winner, and the tweaks to Hitman's assassination sandbox are definitely intriguing. Plus, the cult classic Nier is actually getting a sequel, something we never would've expected in a million years. And we'll never, ever forget the surreal weirdness of a presenter with a skull mask on, and absolutely no one in the room acknowledging it.

Read our

Electronic Arts has a heavy burden: the need to show off a slew of sports games to an audience that, let's face it, is largely apathetic about Madden, FIFA, et al. Not only that: everybody watching had their hearts set on some in-game Star Wars Battlefront footage, and EA knew it. That made it all the more difficult to sit through Pele's absent-minded musings about 'the beautiful game', or a Minions mobile spin-off.

Of course, none of those somewhat dull moments seemed to matter after the glory of the Battlefront footage. Watching soldiers shoot their way through the trenches of Hoth looked incredible, and the shifting perspectives gave a great view into vehicle handling as well. And that ending where Luke and Vader clash... we got chills. Besides getting to see our nerdy lightsaber duel fantasies realized, Unravel looks adorable, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst seems like it'll have glorious amounts of freedom, and Mass Effect: Andromeda showed just enough to get us interested.

Read our

We get the sense that E3 is becoming more and more irrelevant to Nintendo, and you can tell by the fact that its biggest surprises - the unexpected arrival of the unreleased NES EarthBound and Ryu's appearance in Super Smash Bros. - were announced on the Sunday before the big Nintendo Direct. Thanks to Nintendo's unique videos, they can announce whatever they want, when they want, and they don't have to be tied to E3 to do it.

That's not to say there weren't things to get excited about during the Tuesday Direct. We saw the first footage of Star Fox Zero, the reveal of a Paper Mario/Mario Luigi RPG mash-up, and a new multiplayer Zelda game on 3DS, and all of that looks great. There are even going to be Skylanders figurines for Donkey Kong and Bowser that will act as amiibo when you twist the base - a pretty big surprise, especially coming from a company as protective of its characters as Nintendo. Long-awaited titles like Xenoblade Chronicles X and the fantastic-looking Super Mario Maker finally got release dates, too. Nintendo's actual E3 conference may have been a bit lacking, but when you combine it, along with Sunday's announcements and the World Championship, Nintendo's E3 wasn't too shabby. Plus, it had Nintendo Muppets. And that's pretty great.

Read our

Ubisoft didn't pin all its hype to one or two games - it spread the love across a diverse collection, which is great. By now, we know to brace for a few awkward moments when Just Dance hits the stage (this time with some off-key singing courtesy of Jason Derulo, aka Blueshirt McSingguy, aka Mikey '2Tyte' Jeanz), and some stilted recreations of actual conversations during multiplayer sessions. But any Derulo downers were offset by Aisha Tyler's charm, and Ubisoft had something for everyone with its game showcase.

Two surprise announcements stood out in particular: Ghost Recon Wildlands, a drug-busting take on the tactical shooter, and For Honor, a PvP battle between history's deadliest warriors. The tense multiplayer of had us enraptured (even with all the scripted teamchat), with Trackmania, Trials Fusion: Awesome Levels Max, and South Park: Fractured But Whole rounding out the strong showing. We could've done with some more Evie and/or gameplay for Assassin's Creed Syndicate, of course.

Read our

Kinect was a no-show, there was no mention of apps, and there was nary an Usher in sight - Microsoft in 2015 is leaner, meaner, and all about games. There were the expected heavy hitters, of course, and Halo 5 and Gears 4 certainly didn't disappoint, but it was all of the little surprises that added up for Microsoft in a big way.

Backwards compatibility was Microsoft's bombshell announcement of the show. It doesn't seem like much, but when it feels like everyone's essentially written off the concept with this generation and doubled down on re-releases, seeing a big publisher find a way to get older games to work on its current hardware is a pretty fantastic move, and it'll be a great way to get more people to leave their 360s behind. Speaking of re-releases, Rare Replay shows the right way to go about it, packing in 30 classic and contemporary Rare games in one package for $30. Rare's even making a brand new game, and it's all about pirates! Microsoft also unveiled a unique spin on early access, letting potential buyers actually try a demo before they spend money on an unfinished game (what a concept!). And last but surprisingly not least, Microsoft HoloLens made an impressive showing with Minecraft (of all games). A solid show from Microsoft.

Read our

This E3 marked the first time Bethesda has ever hosted a press conference, but you wouldn't be able to tell by watching it, as the publisher took the stage with a confidence and presence like they'd been doing this for years. Bethesda's conference boasted no frills, no nonsense, and no gimmicks - just a solid 90-minute block of fantastic-looking games.

Doom is shaping up to be a wonderful blend of old-school and modern game design, with fast-paced, fluid gunplay, ridiculous hellbeasts, and the newly-announced Snapmap allows for players to make and share their own levels and games. Dishonored 2 is coming next year, and bringing along a surprising new protagonist with Emily Kaldwin. But the big surprise here came from Fallout 4 and its November 10, 2015 release date. Bethesda kicked off E3 in spectacular fashion.

Read our

Sony doesn't have a huge first-party lineup slated for 2015, instead relying on Batman, Destiny, and a slew of indie games to satiate PlayStation Nation’s hunger for games. And no, Sony didn't do much to tell us differently at its E3 conference. What it did do, however, is announce the arrival of three particular games - games that have long stoked the dreams of many a PlayStation fan.

Sony opened its show with The Last Guardian, reintroducing Team Ico's lost game to the masses, and revealed a 2016 release date to go along with it. Fans have also been clamoring for a Final Fantasy 7 remake, and have repeatedly been told no - until Sony unveiled a trailer confirming its existence. Then they gave the stage to Yu Suzuki, creator of the cult-favorite Shenmue series, and announced a plan to crowd-fund the closure that fans have been craving for years. Oh yeah, Sony's also the new home for Call of Duty, yoinking it away from Microsoft in dramatic fashion. An impressive gameplay demo for Uncharted 4 closed one of Sony's best conferences in years - , this is one for the history books.

Read our

Every year, the E3 press conferences serve as the bombastic kickoff to a festival of big-budget games and indie innovators. This is where all the megaton reveals and announcements will happen; where developers, CEOs, and celebrities alike will take the stage and delight the audience with snappy or slightly awkward banter. And E3 2015 had more press conferences than usual, with a few newcomers joining the fray. But like gladiatorial combat, the real question on people's minds is: who won?

Every press conference had something great to offer, but some simply had more greatness than others. We've gone ahead and ranked all the press conferences, minus the (GR+ is owned by the same parent company, so we'd be contractually obligated to give them first prize). So, which press conference stood triumphant during E3 2015? In our minds, the ordering goes something like this...

The Square Enix press conference had the air of a Japanese investor meeting, which isn't necessarily good or bad. Everyone on stage was polite and calm, moving from one game demo to the next with minimal fanfare - a stark contrast to the whiz-bang theatrics of most other press conferences. There were a few gaffes, like a translator who seemed to be asleep at the wheel and an enthusiastic Kingdom Hearts fan who realized too late that he was cheering for the wrong trailer. But man, Square Enix has it where it counts: the games.

Any mention of the Final Fantasy 7 remake gets our hearts aflutter, the teacup attack in Kingdom Hearts 3 is a winner, and the tweaks to Hitman's assassination sandbox are definitely intriguing. Plus, the cult classic Nier is actually getting a sequel, something we never would've expected in a million years. And we'll never, ever forget the surreal weirdness of a presenter with a skull mask on, and absolutely no one in the room acknowledging it.

Read our

Electronic Arts has a heavy burden: the need to show off a slew of sports games to an audience that, let's face it, is largely apathetic about Madden, FIFA, et al. Not only that: everybody watching had their hearts set on some in-game Star Wars Battlefront footage, and EA knew it. That made it all the more difficult to sit through Pele's absent-minded musings about 'the beautiful game', or a Minions mobile spin-off.

Of course, none of those somewhat dull moments seemed to matter after the glory of the Battlefront footage. Watching soldiers shoot their way through the trenches of Hoth looked incredible, and the shifting perspectives gave a great view into vehicle handling as well. And that ending where Luke and Vader clash... we got chills. Besides getting to see our nerdy lightsaber duel fantasies realized, Unravel looks adorable, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst seems like it'll have glorious amounts of freedom, and Mass Effect: Andromeda showed just enough to get us interested.

Read our

We get the sense that E3 is becoming more and more irrelevant to Nintendo, and you can tell by the fact that its biggest surprises - the unexpected arrival of the unreleased NES EarthBound and Ryu's appearance in Super Smash Bros. - were announced on the Sunday before the big Nintendo Direct. Thanks to Nintendo's unique videos, they can announce whatever they want, when they want, and they don't have to be tied to E3 to do it.

That's not to say there weren't things to get excited about during the Tuesday Direct. We saw the first footage of Star Fox Zero, the reveal of a Paper Mario/Mario Luigi RPG mash-up, and a new multiplayer Zelda game on 3DS, and all of that looks great. There are even going to be Skylanders figurines for Donkey Kong and Bowser that will act as amiibo when you twist the base - a pretty big surprise, especially coming from a company as protective of its characters as Nintendo. Long-awaited titles like Xenoblade Chronicles X and the fantastic-looking Super Mario Maker finally got release dates, too. Nintendo's actual E3 conference may have been a bit lacking, but when you combine it, along with Sunday's announcements and the World Championship, Nintendo's E3 wasn't too shabby. Plus, it had Nintendo Muppets. And that's pretty great.

Read our

Ubisoft didn't pin all its hype to one or two games - it spread the love across a diverse collection, which is great. By now, we know to brace for a few awkward moments when Just Dance hits the stage (this time with some off-key singing courtesy of Jason Derulo, aka Blueshirt McSingguy, aka Mikey '2Tyte' Jeanz), and some stilted recreations of actual conversations during multiplayer sessions. But any Derulo downers were offset by Aisha Tyler's charm, and Ubisoft had something for everyone with its game showcase.

Two surprise announcements stood out in particular: Ghost Recon Wildlands, a drug-busting take on the tactical shooter, and For Honor, a PvP battle between history's deadliest warriors. The tense multiplayer of had us enraptured (even with all the scripted teamchat), with Trackmania, Trials Fusion: Awesome Levels Max, and South Park: Fractured But Whole rounding out the strong showing. We could've done with some more Evie and/or gameplay for Assassin's Creed Syndicate, of course.

Read our

Kinect was a no-show, there was no mention of apps, and there was nary an Usher in sight - Microsoft in 2015 is leaner, meaner, and all about games. There were the expected heavy hitters, of course, and Halo 5 and Gears 4 certainly didn't disappoint, but it was all of the little surprises that added up for Microsoft in a big way.

Backwards compatibility was Microsoft's bombshell announcement of the show. It doesn't seem like much, but when it feels like everyone's essentially written off the concept with this generation and doubled down on re-releases, seeing a big publisher find a way to get older games to work on its current hardware is a pretty fantastic move, and it'll be a great way to get more people to leave their 360s behind. Speaking of re-releases, Rare Replay shows the right way to go about it, packing in 30 classic and contemporary Rare games in one package for $30. Rare's even making a brand new game, and it's all about pirates! Microsoft also unveiled a unique spin on early access, letting potential buyers actually try a demo before they spend money on an unfinished game (what a concept!). And last but surprisingly not least, Microsoft HoloLens made an impressive showing with Minecraft (of all games). A solid show from Microsoft.

Read our

This E3 marked the first time Bethesda has ever hosted a press conference, but you wouldn't be able to tell by watching it, as the publisher took the stage with a confidence and presence like they'd been doing this for years. Bethesda's conference boasted no frills, no nonsense, and no gimmicks - just a solid 90-minute block of fantastic-looking games.

Doom is shaping up to be a wonderful blend of old-school and modern game design, with fast-paced, fluid gunplay, ridiculous hellbeasts, and the newly-announced Snapmap allows for players to make and share their own levels and games. Dishonored 2 is coming next year, and bringing along a surprising new protagonist with Emily Kaldwin. But the big surprise here came from Fallout 4 and its November 10, 2015 release date. Bethesda kicked off E3 in spectacular fashion.

Read our

Sony doesn't have a huge first-party lineup slated for 2015, instead relying on Batman, Destiny, and a slew of indie games to satiate PlayStation Nation’s hunger for games. And no, Sony didn't do much to tell us differently at its E3 conference. What it did do, however, is announce the arrival of three particular games - games that have long stoked the dreams of many a PlayStation fan.

Sony opened its show with The Last Guardian, reintroducing Team Ico's lost game to the masses, and revealed a 2016 release date to go along with it. Fans have also been clamoring for a Final Fantasy 7 remake, and have repeatedly been told no - until Sony unveiled a trailer confirming its existence. Then they gave the stage to Yu Suzuki, creator of the cult-favorite Shenmue series, and announced a plan to crowd-fund the closure that fans have been craving for years. Oh yeah, Sony's also the new home for Call of Duty, yoinking it away from Microsoft in dramatic fashion. An impressive gameplay demo for Uncharted 4 closed one of Sony's best conferences in years - , this is one for the history books.

Read our