Museums and Archives – Page 3

The National Videogame Museum is Collecting Stories About Playing Animal Crossing During Lockdown

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone indoors, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was trending towards a massive launch. But I’m not sure anyone expected it to break as big as it did.

Nintendo has always played the long game, and they attracted a small, but very devoted, community between 2001 and 2017 after releasing four games (and a handful of spinoffs) in the Animal Crossing franchise. But after only four months, the consolemaker has already sold more than 22.4 million copies of New Horizons, making it one of bestselling games on the Switch (it currently trails only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe).

New Horizons promised players colorful island vistas and adventurous travel to faraway lands, so a lot people jumped at the chance to escape from the real world for a few hours every night. From there it exploded into an outburst of creativity, billions of requests for good turnip prices, celebrity sightings (including Elijah Wood, Danny Trejo, and multiple high end fashion designers), and a talk show hosted by Rogue One screenwriter Gary Whitta. In short, it was the right game at the right time.

The United Kingdom’s National Videogame Museum will attempt to capture this unique moment in gaming history with their next project, The Animal Crossing Diaries. Players from around the world will be able to submit stories about how they played Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the pandemic, which will help the NVM in their goal to “record for the first time a highly meaningful but ephemeral and intangible experience through the perspective of its players”:

This new collection will focus on the cultural phenomenon that followed the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch in March 2020, just as the world was transformed by the pandemic. This videogame rapidly became an international sensation in which millions of players have been creating and managing their own tropical island along with a cast of talkative animal neighbours. The game became an important social and creative outlet for people unable to socialise in person during lockdown.

This innovative online exhibition will open up new ways of collecting and archiving videogame histories, and record for the first time a highly meaningful but ephemeral and intangible experience through the perspective of its players.

Iain Simons, Director of Culture for the NVM, said “Animal Crossing is the perfect experience for a lockdown. The coincidental timing of its release provided a welcome relief for millions of people who wanted to go outdoors but couldn’t, who wanted to meet friends but weren’t allowed. It’s no surprise that this incredibly creative, social space became a safe haven for millions during this turbulent year.”

Please visit TheNVM.org to learn more about future updates and events related to The Animal Crossing Diaries.

World Video Game Hall of Fame Welcomes its Class of 2020: Minecraft, Bejeweled, Centipede, and King’s Quest

After selling more than 200 million copies over the last decade, it’s hard to remember a time when Minecraft wasn’t nearly synonymous with the entire medium of video games. And though it was only available in an unfinished state from 2009 to 2011, it seemed to emerge from Mojang’s offices as a fully-formed phenomenon even in its earliest days.

So as players continued to flock to its Lego-like world in droves, it was a bit of a shock when the game was denied entry into the World Video Game Hall of Fame three separate times. Shortlisted as a finalist in 2015, 2016, and 2018, the title was passed over again and again and again. But Minecraft’s creative sandbox become too big to ignore this year, and it has finally been enshrined among gaming’s greats.

In a stunning upset, three unlikely candidates also garnered enough support from the Hall of Fame’s Selection Advisory Committee to join the Class of 2020. A genre-defining match-3 puzzler from PopCap (Bejeweled), a classic coin-op from Atari (Centipede), and one of earliest adventure titles from Sierra (King’s Quest) won out over more popular titles such as NBA Jam, GoldenEye 007, and Guitar Hero.

While this year’s class might look a little surprising, historians working at the Hall of Fame’s parent organizations, the Strong Museum and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, helped put their importance into perspective.

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Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 Have Been Announced

The finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 have been announced… and they’re on fire.

This year’s honorees include titles from every era of gaming, though the Star Power of Guitar Hero looms large over the competition. But that’s OK, because there’s a few other firestarters vying for a spot in this year’s class, including Midway’s NBA Jam, Mojang’s Minecraft, and Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Melee.

There’s also the groundbreaking GoldenEye 007, the unforgettable Nokia Snake, the edutaining Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and the addicting Bejeweled. Rounding out this year’s crop of finalists is Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and a trio of classics from the early 80s (Centipede, Frogger, and King’s Quest).

This isn’t the first opportunity to join the World Video Game Hall of Fame for some of these games, and fans will have the chance to make their voice heard by submitting a Player’s Choice Ballot. The public can vote once per day now through April 2nd, and the three games that receive the most votes will join the 29 other ballots submitted by members of the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee.

The Strong Museum’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the entity that oversees the World Video Game Hall of Fame, will announce the inductees from the Class of 2020 at a date to be determined in a special ceremony. For now, you can learn more about this year’s finalists after the break.

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National Videogame Museum Launches Preservation-Focused Videogame Heritage Society in UK

The National Videogame Museum, located in Sheffield in the United Kingdom, has launched the Videogame Heritage Society, a new video game preservation initiative that will bring together a network of libraries, museums, and collectors.

The Videogame Heritage Society is a collaborative project that aims to share knowledge with all members about the best way to preserve and exhibit video games:

The National Videogame Museum is launching a new initiative today at BFI Southbank, leading a network of museums and independent collectors who are engaged in videogame preservation. The Videogame Heritage Society (VHS) includes the Science and Media Museum, Bath Spa University, British Library and Museum of London as well as many independent collectors. It will develop best practice and share knowledge across the museum sector and beyond about preserving and exhibiting videogames.

“This group is for anyone who cares about or works in videogame preservation,” said British Games Institute Chairman Ian Livingstone. “We recognise that in the UK and around the world, the expertise in this field isn’t just locked inside museums and heritage institutions, but also inside a wide range of dedicated and passionate private collectors. The VHS will bring everyone together to preserve the important heritage of videogames in our country.”

More information about the Videogame Heritage Society can be found at The BGI‘s official website.

The Strong Museum of Play Helps Wired Pick “Every Year’s Most Iconic Video Game Since 1979”

It’s been slightly more than 40 years since Space Invaders transformed video games from a niche hobby into a global phenomenon. Picking up a year later from that point, Wired recently teamed up with curators from the Strong Museum of Play (which is also home to the World Video Game Hall of Fame) to determine “Every Year’s Most Iconic Video Game Since 1979.”

Jon-Paul Dyson and Shannon Symonds from the Strong Museum of Play dive into the last 40 years of video game history and come up with a list of some of the greatest games of all time. With memorable titles like Halo, Super Mario Bros., The Last of Us, Doom, The Sims and more, see which games were chosen as the most memorable and iconic of the year they were released.

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More Than 2,500 Playable MS-DOS Games Added to the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive has made it their mission to safeguard as much of the Internet as they can, but the group is also heavily involved in preserving classic video games and making them playable for a new generation of players through in-browser emulation.

Earlier this week, they massively expanded the number of retro video games available in their collection thanks to the addition of more than 2,500 MS-DOS games from the 1980s and 1990s.

It wasn’t easy getting all of those titles to work in a browser, and Curator Jason Scott had a bit to say about the process on the Internet Archive Blog:

The update of these MS-DOS games comes from a project called eXoDOS, which has expanded over the years in the realm of collecting DOS games for easy playability on modern systems to tracking down and capturing, as best as can be done, the full context of DOS games – from the earliest simple games in the first couple years of the IBM PC to recently created independent productions that still work in the MS-DOS environment.

What makes the collection more than just a pile of old, now-playable games, is how it has to take head-on the problems of software preservation and history. Having an old executable and a scanned copy of the manual represents only the first few steps. DOS has remained consistent in some ways over the last (nearly) 40 years, but a lot has changed under the hood and programs were sometimes only written to work on very specific hardware and a very specific setup. They were released, sold some amount of copies, and then disappeared off the shelves, if not everyone’s memories.

It is all these extra steps, under the hood, of acquisition and configuration, that represents the hardest work by the eXoDOS project, and I recognize that long-time and Herculean effort. As a result, the eXoDOS project has over 7,000 titles they’ve made work dependably and consistently.

Even with 2,500 new additions, you’re not going to find every MS-DOS game ever released in the Internet Archive’s collection. But you will find a wide variety of games from the Video Game Canon, including id Software’s The Ultimate Doom (#23), LucasArts’s The Secret of Monkey Island (#86), Psygnosis’s Wipeout (#192), EA’s original The Need For Speed (#587), and many more.

“Game Masters: The Exhibition” Opens at National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

Earlier today, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in Canberra officially opened the doors to Game Masters: The Exhibition, a new exhibit that chronicles “an interactive journey through five decades of video game history.” Museumgoers who visit the Game Masters exhibit will be able to view “interviews, never-before-seen concept artwork, [and] an amazing display of vintage consoles and collectable items,” as well as an arcade installation with dozens of games.

Game Masters is an interactive journey through five decades of video game history, offering both a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process behind the world’s most popular characters and franchises, and a chance to play them. Featuring interviews, never-before-seen concept artwork, an amazing display of vintage consoles and collectable items, and 80 playable games, visitors won’t want to leave!

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Game Masters is divided into three sections: Arcade Heroes, Game Changers and Indies. It features unique experiences such as a spectacular multiplayer dance stage for Dance Central 3 (2012), hands-on experiential music booths and a selection of original classic arcade machines from the 1970s and ‘80s acquired especially for the exhibition, all playable in their original form.

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia will also use this opportunity to begin archiving important games developed within Australia. The first eight games selected by the program include a nice variety of titles released over the last 37 years:

Initial List of Games Selected for Preservation by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

The Hobbit (Beam Software, 1982)
Halloween Harry (Interactive Binary Illusions / Sub Zero Software, 1985/1993)
Shadowrun (Beam Software, 1993)
L.A. Noire (Team Bondi, 2011)
Submerged (Uppercut Games, 2015)
Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017)
Florence (Mountains, 2018)
Espire 1: VR Operative (Digital Lode, 2019)

More games will be added to the archive on an ongoing basis, and Game Masters: The Exhibition will remain open to the public through March 9, 2020.

World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019 Includes Super Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat, Windows Solitaire, and Colossal Cave Adventure

The World Video Game Hall of Fame has welcomed four new games into the fold, as the inductees from the Class of 2019 were announced this morning in a special ceremony. This year, three games that practically defined gaming in the 1990s lead the way, while a groundbreaking text adventure from the 1970s also made the cut.

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Introducing the Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019

The World Video Game Hall of Fame, which is overseen by The Strong Museum of Play, has announced the finalists for this year’s crop of inductees. We’ll have to wait until May to find out which games make the final cut, but we now know that a dozen classic titles will be in the running for the Class of 2019.

This year’s finalists include several games that are taking one more shot at immortality, including Midway’s Mortal Kombat, Cyan Worlds’s Myst, Microsoft’s Windows Solitaire, and Valve’s Half-Life. All four have a strong claim to “Hall of Fame” status, as Myst helped popularize CD-ROMs, Half-Life pushed narrative games to new heights, Mortal Kombat’s controversial violence is still discussed today, and Windows Solitaire may just be the most-played game ever.

But they’ll have to compete against a slate of other titles that includes King’s Candy Crush, Atari’s Centipede, William Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure, Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution, Sega’s NBA 2K, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and Nintendo’s Super Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Gaming fans from around the globe will be able to influence which games will be eligible for induction this year through the Player’s Choice Ballot, which will be open from March 21st through the 28th. The remaining ballots will come from the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee, which is comprised of journalists and scholars who are “familiar with the history of video games.”

The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019 will announced on May 2, but you can learn more about this year’s finalists after the break.

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The Queer History of Video Games is Now on Display at Schwules Museum’s “Rainbow Arcade”

The Schwules Museum in Berlin has opened the Rainbow Arcade, an exhibit which will explore the “queer history of video games”:

For the first time in the world, the queer history of video games will be explored in a major exhibition: RAINBOW ARCADE at Schwules Museum features a wide variety of exhibits spanning over 30 years of media history, including 12 playable titles, concept drawings, modifications written by fans themselves and documentations of online communities. RAINBOW ARCADE will be taking stock of contemporary pop cultural questions of representation, stereotypical and discriminatory narratives in entertainment media, and our cultural memory. For the first time, research by the LGBTQ Game Archive will be presented in a museum.

Visitors to the museum will be able to play several examples of gaming’s queer history, including GameGrumps’s Dream Daddy, Midboss’s 2064: Read Only Memories, Anna Anthropy’s Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars, and more.

The Rainbow Arcade exhibit is curated by Sarah Rudolph (herzteile.org), Jan Schnorrenberg (Schwules Museum), and Dr. Adrienne Shaw (Temple University, LGBTQ Video Game Archive), and it’ll be open to the public through May 13, 2019.