Thanks to you, 2019 was our biggest year ever. We built a library, spoke at conferences around the world, acquired some amazing objects, and even built a pop-up museum exhibit!
Look back and celebrate with some of 2019's game preservation highlights here: gamehistory.org/2019-year-in-r…
Look back and celebrate with some of 2019's game preservation highlights here: gamehistory.org/2019-year-in-r…
To make our year-end retrospective a little more holiday-themed, let's count down The 12 Highlights of VGHF 2019, in no particular order. Thread:
In 2019, the we built what we believe to be the first dedicated video game history research library in the country! Our founders have been collecting books, magazines and paperwork for nearly twenty years now, and we're getting closer to opening this up as a public resource.
No need to be envious, this is your library too! We don't have the resources and staff to open it up yet, but when we do the idea is that this will be a resource any researcher can use.
In 2019, @LimitedRunGames went ABOVE AND BEYOND to support our efforts. Not only did they host a 24-hour charity stream (which we of course were a part of), they added a donation button to their website. Customers can easily donate $1 every time they buy a game, and many have!
@LimitedRunGames We had some incredible items come to us this year. For example: on permanent loan from art director Mike Dietz is an amazing archive of paperwork related to the making of Disney's Aladdin on the Sega Genesis, giving researchers a glimpse into its animation process!
@LimitedRunGames And speaking of Aladdin: this year saw a retail package called Disney Classic Games: Aladdin and Lion King. A version of Aladdin on here actually uses source code from our archives, marking the first time a commercial product took advantage of it!
This was a huge victory for us, as our long-term goal is to get the industry involved directly in preserving its history. That we are now in a time where The Walt Disney Company is interacting with our collection is a huge step toward that happening!
Back in March, our co-director Frank gave an impassioned talk about preservation at @Official_GDC to a packed room of game industry professionals. The message obviously resonated, as the audience rankings placed it at #20 out of 410 total talks this year!
@Official_GDC Another incredible donation we received this year: Greg Johnson's archive for the Starflight series of computer games. This includes retail games, commented source code, concept work...just about anything you can think of.
@Official_GDC Did you know about our pop-up museum? For the third year in a row we sponsored the museum room at @RetroGamingExpo. Our main exhibit this year celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Game Boy, and used some amazing items from collectors around the world!
We also hosted two other exhibits curated by outside contributors: a collection of Nintendo Game Play Counselor artifacts from @Galliplay, and a complete collection of American Sega Genesis games from @swlovinist. All in all, an amazing display. Two days was too short.
@Galliplay @swlovinist In May we embarked on the largest video game archiving expedition in history. For five weeks, six of us worked full-time with @gameinformer to help catalog and digitize 29 years of press and production materials used to make the magazine. It was intense.
@Galliplay @swlovinist @gameinformer We were also honored to have been featured in a six-page profile(!) in the October issue of Game Informer magazine. So honored that we went slightly overboard getting copies from our local GameStop stores. The article is online now! gameinformer.com/2019/12/05/vid…
@Galliplay @swlovinist @gameinformer If you're wondering where your donations go, look no further. Housing six volunteers for a month would not have been possible without the contributions from you all keeping our lights on. Thanks to you we rescued over 20 terabytes of data from dying on its old media.
@Galliplay @swlovinist @gameinformer This year we attracted one of our most enthusiastic volunteers ever: @GamemasterH! Howard Phillips hit the road with us to talk about his time at Nintendo of America, and explain the importance of preserving early video game history. We'll be collaborating more in 2020!
@Galliplay @swlovinist @gameinformer @GamemasterH And one final addition to wrap up this list of 12 highlights: this year we became the stewards of the remains of GamePro magazine. Not only do we have a full run of the physical issues, we have the original digital layout files going back to 1993!
@Galliplay @swlovinist @gameinformer @GamemasterH None of this would have been possible without the generous support of our donors and volunteers. If you've got the money to spare, why not join us for 2020? We've got all kinds of options, including a Patreon that gets you into our Discord! Check it out: gamehistory.org/donate
