Tag: Museums and Archives

Get A Sneak Peek at the Video Game History Foundation’s Digital Library

The Video Game History Foundation has been collecting and digitizing game magazines, press kits, development materials, and the personal papers of several major figures in the games industry since their founding in 2017.

But recently, they took a major step towards making the items on their shelves available to the public with a sneak peek at their long-in-the-works Digital Library. In the video, which is embedded above, Library Director Phil Salvador walks us through how the database will work, using Nintendo Power, Game Players, and the Mark Flitman Papers as examples. There’s also a blog post, Introducing the VGHF Digital Library, explaining a bit more about their progress:

One of the most frequent questions we get is how you can access our collections of rare video game history research materials. Well, wonder no more! For the past two years, we’ve been building a digital platform where you can explore our archives, without having to visit in person. And we think it’s ready to show off.

We’ve put together an 18-minute demo of what our work-in-progress digital library looks like. This is our first look at how you’ll access the resources in our collection—plus an advance preview of the Mark Flitman papers, one of the exciting collections we’ll be rolling out when the library soft-launches next year.

Remember: This is a preview, and some things are a little unfinished! But if we’re all cool with that, we think it’s about time to show you what we’ve been up to.

This is extremely exciting news for researchers and anyone else who wants to dive into gaming’s often mysterious past. If all goes well, the Video Game History Foundation’s Digital Library should be up and running next year.

Every Season of “The Electric Playground” to be Archived at the University of Toronto Mississauga

Victor Lucas is a name you might not know if you’re on the southern side of the Canadian border, but after launching The Electric Playground during the very early days of the World Wide Web, he’s been shaping how we report on and talk about games for nearly 30 years.

The show first came online as a website (ElecPlay.com) in 1995, and Lucas would later lead a newsmagazine-style spinoff of the site for Canadian television beginning in 1997.

Video game news and reviews on television was a bit of a novelty at the time, but The Electric Playground would go on to create the template for a newsmagazine-style show about games during its initial 18-year run and inspired many game journalists to pick up a camera. In addition to its style, the show was responsible for giving Geoff Keighley, creator of The Game Awards, his first on-screen hosting experience. The Electric Playground would spawn a spinoff of its own in 2002 (Reviews on the Run, which aired as Judgment Day in the US), before coming to an end in 2015.

Lucas brought The Electric Playground (which was rebranded as EP Daily in 2008) to YouTube after its cancellation, and he continues to produce new episodes to this day.

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Hit Save! Launches Press Materials Archive for Video Games

Hit Save!, an organization dedicated to the preservation of video games, is back with another excellent resource for anyone interested in exploring how games were promoted to the public. The newly-launched Hit Save! Press Materials Archive includes hundreds of examples of promotional material for a wide variety of games:

The collection includes press kits, promotional material, concept art, trailers, and more, providing invaluable insights into the development and marketing processes behind many classic, well-known, and sometimes obscure video games. A big thank you goes out to Stephen Keating for donating a large portion of digital press material that he has collected over the years.

By sharing these materials and providing public access, we aim to enable new research and scholarship in game studies. The materials reveal rarely seen details about both popular franchises and forgotten gems. We hope they will lead to new discoveries that expand our knowledge of your favorite games and franchises 🙂

Hit Save! has said that the archive will be growing quite a bit in the coming weeks and months, and you can share your own discoveries by joining their Discord server.

Lists From the Past: The First Ten Years of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Video Game Acquisitions”

Are video games art? It’s a question that has dogged players, developers, and critics for decades, and even now, it’s one without an easy answer.

This cultural dustup was at its most brutal in 2010, after film critic Roger Ebert declared that “video games can never be art” in an opinion piece on his website. It was a familiar drumbeat from Ebert, but this round of vitriol was in reaction to a TED Talk delivered by Kellee Santiago, a developer who was working on the then-upcoming Journey at thatgamecompany. While praising Santiago as “bright, confident, [and] persuasive,” everyone’s favorite film critic ultimately objected to every one of her arguments, sparking a huge backlash of counter-opinions in the gaming press.

After several months of sniping, the two warring factions reached a truce (or at the very least, a ceasefire) in July when Ebert invited everyone to “play on [his] lawn” and admitted that games could be art. It was a nice gesture, but it didn’t entirely put the question to bed, and it’s something we’re still talking about today. Want proof? Look no further than the recent HBO adaptation of The Last of Us and the argument that it contains “the greatest story that has ever been told in video games.” Many people agree… and many people absolutely do not.

But Ebert’s reaction was just a preview to the main event. So let’s jump to November 2012, when the Museum of Modern Art acquired a collection of 14 games to form the core of their Applied Design exhibit (which would open in 2013), and seemed to settle the question once and for all.

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Noclip Game History Archive is Digitizing a Decade of Videotapes to Preserve Lost Game History

Danny O’Dwyer has been creating video game documentaries under the Noclip banner since 2016, but he and his team are about to take on their biggest project yet.

Noclip has come into possession of hundreds of videotapes containing over a decade of lost video game history, including trailers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, B-roll footage, news reports, and a whole lot more. The collection likely includes a lot of the same videos that Hit Save! is currently streaming as part of their Always On project.

But as O’Dwyer stressed in the Patreon announcement (which is embedded above), no one knows exactly what’s on these tapes, and some of the ones they’ve viewed contain some really interesting stuff. There’s a previously-unavailable Behind Closed Doors Demo for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic from E3 2001, a tour of Nintendo’s Nintendo of America’s Employee-Only Museum, a newly-remastered Reveal Trailer for Uncharted, and a lot more.

You can see everything Noclip has digitized so far at the dedicated Noclip Game History Archive channel on both YouTube and the Internet Archive.

Good luck to O’Dwyer and his team as they work with all the temperamental video equipment needed to digitize these tapes.

New Study by Video Game History Foundation Finds 87% of Games Released Before 2010 Are Out of Print

Thousands of games for the Wii, Wii U, DS, 3DS, and PSP became permanently unavailable after Nintendo and Sony shuttered the digital storefronts on their previous-generation platforms over the last few years. And while they remain available for now, similar closures are on the docket for the Xbox 360 Marketplace and the PlayStation Store for the PS3 and Vita.

These are just the most visible examples of a problem that has always plagued the video game industry, but it’s getting worse. A new study by the Video Game History Foundation has found that 87% of all games released in the United States before 2010 are now unavailable to purchase.

How does something like this even happen? And is there anything we can we do about it?

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“Hit Save! Always On” Delivers a Neverending Stream of Trailers, Interviews, Behind-The-Scenes Footage, and More

Hit Save! is an organization dedicated to the preservation of video games, and last month they launched Hit Save! Always On, a new initiative to help make their vast archive of trailers, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage a bit more accessible:

We at Hit Save! are thrilled to announce the launch of our 24/7 stream dedicated to preserving video game history. This initiative will showcase promotional videos, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and other valuable material from our extensive physical archive. Come join us as we embark on a journey to celebrate the heritage of gaming and ensure its preservation in the digital age.

Our physical archive is a treasure trove of gaming artifacts that spans decades. Through our 24/7 stream, we aim to showcase the information we are preserving, offering viewers an interesting and fun view into the evolution of gaming.

The livestream currently lives on Hit Save!’s YouTube channel and it’s been running continuously since May 30. The selection of videos is very impressive, and having it on in the background while writing this article meant I was also able to hear Mark Hamill, Tom Wilson, and Ginger Allen talk about their involvement in Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger in a vintage behind-the-scenes featurette from the early 1990s.

I can’t wait to see what pops up next.

Koji Kondo’s “Super Mario Bros. Theme” Added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is still dragging their feet on formally adopting Henry Lowood’s Game Canon proposal, but that didn’t stop the institution from including a piece of music from a video game for the first time as part of the National Recording Registry’s Class of 2023.

While a case could certainly be made for “Korobeiniki” from Tetris, this honor actually belongs to Koji Kondo’s “Super Mario Bros. Theme,” which was selected for the list by the National Recording Preservation Board. Alongside the rest of this year’s inductees, the board believes that the recording (officially known as the “Ground Theme”) is a perfect example of an “audio treasure worthy of preservation for all time based on its cultural, historical or aesthetic importance.”

The tune was originally released in 1985 alongside Super Mario Bros., and the Library of Congress believes that it is “perhaps the most recognizable video game theme in history.” It’s hard to argue with that assessment, or with its description as a “jaunty” piece of music with a “Latin-influenced melody.”

It’s hard to believe that Koji Kondo was just 23 years old when he created this iconic theme, and he seems genuinely touched by its inclusion in the National Recording Registry:

“The amount of data that we could use for music and sound effects was extremely small, so I really had to be very innovative and make full use of the musical and programming ingenuity that we had at the time,” he said through an interpreter in a recent interview. “I used all sorts of genres that matched what was happening on screen. We had jingles to encourage players to try again after getting a ‘game over,’ fanfares to congratulate them for reaching goals, and pieces that sped up when the time remaining grew short.”

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“Having this music preserved alongside so many other classic songs is such a great honor,” he said. “It’s actually a little bit difficult to believe.”

The “Super Mario Bros. Theme” will be inducted into the National Recording Registry this year alongside a lot of other great music, including “Imagine” by John Lennon, “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by Eurythmics, “Like a Virgin” by Madonna, and “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey.

The Last of Us, Quake, and Computer Space Lead 2023’s Crop of Finalists for Induction into the World Video Game Hall of Fame

HBO’s live-action adaptation of The Last of Us completed its first season to widespread critical acclaim this past weekend, and now it looks like the original game is a finalist for induction into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

Naughty Dog’s groundbreaking action game is part of a dozen finalists vying for a spot in the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023. It was joined by a cadre of other first-time finalists including Ensemble’s Age of Empires, Mattel’s Barbie Fashion Designer, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Nutting’s Computer Space, id Software’s Quake, and Sir-Tech’s Wizardry.

The remaining slots on the shortlist were filled out by five returning finalists, including a few others that have recently been in the spotlight.

There’s GoldenEye 007 from Rare, which will get its second chance at the Hall after a highly-anticipated re-release for the Xbox and Switch in January 2023. Rovio’s Angry Birds is also up for its second shot at induction alongside the surprise delisting of the game from the Google Play Store. And FIFA International Soccer is taking its third shot at the Hall of Fame in the final year before the publisher rebrands the franchise as EA Sports FC. Rounding out this year’s finalists are Visual Concept’s NBA 2K and Nintendo’s Wii Sports.

As always, the World Video Game Hall of Fame will give the public a voice in the final vote from now until March 22 with the Player’s Choice Ballot. The three games that receive the most public votes will be forwarded to the final tally, and they’ll will be weighed alongside the other ballots submitted by the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee.

The inductees to the Class of 2023 will be announced on May 4. And you can learn more about this year’s finalists after the break.

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Lists From the Past: The Library of Congress’s “Game Canon”

Henry Lowood has served as the Curator of the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University since 1983. Thanks to this role, he’s been part of the growing field of Game Studies practically since its very beginning, and in 2006 he used his position to pitch a proposal to the Library of Congress about the importance of the academic study of games.

Partly inspired by the National Film Preservation Board’s National Film Registry and his own efforts to preserve important game-related artifacts since 1998, Lowood asked for the Library’s assistance in creating a “Game Canon,” a group of titles that would best represent the cultural and historical significance of video games. He got his wish a year later, and a committee (comprised of Lowood, his Stanford colleague Matteo Bittanti, game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky, and Joystiq’s Christopher Grant) was formed to decide on the canon’s initial composition.

After a lot of debate, the committee delivered ten recommendations for the “Game Canon,” ultimately highlighting 15 titles in total. Civilization and Civilization II were grouped together as part of this initial batch of games, as were the four games in the Warcraft series (Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and World of Warcraft). The rest of the eight selections covered a wide range of genres from the first three decades of game history, starting with 1962’s Spacewar! and moving forward through time to the aforementioned Warcraft series.

In between you’ll find 1985’s Tetris, 1989’s SimCity, 1993’s Doom, and a few other foundational games…

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