This newly discovered Employee handbook video is a piece of gaming history. It is a finals recap video of the 1993 Blockbuster Video Game Challenge where the winners were flown to San Francisco to visit GamePro, EA Studios and Capcom on a 4 day trip.

Until this day, the only documentation of the 1993 event was the Trophy I still have in my posession and an article in a 1994 issue of GamePro.

The video was found by an avyd Nintendo Collector   / ibrahim_faraj_uk  . Here's a little backstory on his history collecting and how the video was found.

"I have been collecting blockbuster competition items for the past 10 years. And as you can see from some of my pictures I have a extensive collection for the 1994 & 1995 competition. However I don’t have anything from the 1993 competition as it was Almost unknown to many.
So over the years I’ve had eBay search terms alert me if such items appear. And it so happens a couple weeks ago I got this alert on the VHS, I knew immediately this was going to be special however I did not expect it to be the 1993 competition. Which is even more historic."

here is the link to the original video
  / b3nf5_zbssv  


Yes, that is the same Alex Jebailey that you currently know from the FGC as founder/director/TO of CEO, CEOtaku, CEO Gaming Inc. and FGC Director for DreamHack. I was a gamer all of my life thanks to my older brothers and family supporting what I enjoyed doing as a kid. I was 11 years old when I walked into my Blockbuster Video and the challenge was announced. They had players from all over go to their store once a week for three weeks to compete in a high score challenge of SNES or Sega Genesis games. I entered SNS and it was TazMania, Super Star Wars in the first two weeks where I didn't do very well. The third week ended up being Super Street Fighter II Turbo to where I practiced as much as I could to speed run perfects and that propelled me into the number one spot to move on to the finals at Downtown Disney. Magic Johnson's Super Slam Dunk Basketball was the game of choice and I picked it up really fast and ended up dominating the finals beating 9 other kids to win.

The following year, in 1994, I qualified again to the final and the event was a much bigger deal. Sadly, my family was traveling to the MIddle East last year and I had to forfeit my spot. Who knows if I would have repeated, but back then I had a natural instinct for competitive gaming and have a feeling it would have been another victory.

A lot of that back then is what created the event organizer I am today, bringing people together for their love of video games creating so many new friendships along the way.