gamehistoryorg

1993 Sega PR Slides

Hi backers! It's been a while since I did any kind of "behind-the-scenes" post, so I thought I'd show you a quick little thing I worked on today.

The following are slides that Sega included in a circa-1993 press kit. I don't have the kit itself, but its owner very kindly let me borrow the slides to scan them. 

If you were reading video game magazines at the time, you've probably seen a ton of these before. But now you can see them in...slightly more detail! 

2018-05-10 01:51:27 +0000 UTC View Post

The first video game advertisement

How do you advertise the first video game ever sold, when nobody knows what a video game is yet?

That was the challenge faced by Nutting Associates in 1972, when the original Computer Space debuted. 

Writing Fund recipient Kate Willaert explored this question, and dug deeper than anyone ever has into the design decisions that went into Computer Space's iconic flyer (above). Check it out here, and let us know what you think in the comments below:

2018-04-10 20:35:20 +0000 UTC View Post

Tomb raid-ing the remains of GamePro

Hi all! Here's a quick backer-only update from the VGHF Top Secret Storage Unit to show you a massively cool donation we just received: just about everything that remained of GamePro magazine, straight from the IDG office they were made at.

What we have here is a nearly-complete run of GamePro, from its first issue in April, 1989 all the way through its last in 2011. Officially, the IDG office in San ...

The time I excavated a Power Glove dinosaur

So after yesterday's discovery of an undocumented Spinnaker game hiding in a pile of 90s GIFs (you did read that, didn't you?) I was inspired to dig a little further into the GIFs Galore CD. And what I found, and brought back to live, was a lost Power Glove dinosaur. 

Sort of.

Let's back up for a secon...

TFW a Twitter bot solves a video game mystery

Something pretty fun happened yesterday that I wanted to share with you all: a bot on Twitter accidentally provided the clue that finally solved a 28-year-old mystery about a DOS game that never shipped.

Yesterday, the VGHF Twitter account was tagged in a thread by @awesomonster, who was frantically trying to figure out the origins of a screenshot:

2018-02-07 22:07:35 +0000 UTC View Post

Nintendo's (First) Lost Donkey Kong Game

Thanks to a VERY GENEROUS donor, we were recently able to acquire something of a holy grail for me and my scanner: an original 1983 promotional handbill from Nintendo, advertising the games that were slated to be coming soon to the Famicom.

(the above is just a thumbnail, get the full 600ppi PDF 2018-01-31 00:11:56 +0000 UTC View Post

The hunt for the first video game commercial

I'm so thrilled to finally be able to introduce the latest series from our Writing Fund: an ongoing, in-depth investigation into the history of video game advertising, starting at the very, very beginning.

Author Kate Willaert went out in search of the first video game commercial, and made some fascinating, undocumented discoveries along the way. Check it out here:

https://gamehistory.org/first-video...

World Exclusive SimCity NES Screenshots

Hi all! I'm working on a big article about the unreleased NES version of SimCity, but since it's coming together a little slower than I expected, I thought I'd send along some screenshots to whet your appetite.

You're actually the first people to EVER see direct emulator screenshots of this game!

As you...

Special Hangout Tomorrow for $25+ Backers!

Hi everyone!

All of the $25+ backers should know this by now, as I've emailed them separately, but I wanted everyone else to know that we're going to have a special year-end Google Hangout tomorrow at 5pm Pacific with special guests. We do one of these every month, but this one is double-length and meant to be sort of a year-in-review celebration, and a discussion about what next year should bring.

If you're not already backing at that level but would like to start, it's...

Artist Spotlight: Nina Stanley

Hi patrons! I'm really happy to debut the first in a new series that has come from our Writing Fund: an ongoing spotlight on the contributions of women throughout video game history, written by freelance journalist Lisette Voytko. We're starting off by examining the artwork of Nina Stanley:

https://gamehistory.org/nina-stanley-profile/ 

There are three aspects of this article that really excite me,...

Patreon's Policy Changes and the VGHF

Hi everyone,

As most of you have probably heard by now, Patreon had a recent policy change. For the specifics, I refer you to byuu's ...

How to be a video game historian!

Hi all! The latest result of our Writing Fund is here, and it's the first in a series of tutorials on researching video game history:

https://gamehistory.org/video-game-research-tips-searching-the-internet-archive/ 

This is an important step for us in terms of shaping the VGHF story. Everything we do is meant to encourage the study of video game history by using c...

Review Roundup: Was E.T. Really the "Worst Game Ever"?

Here's the latest entry from our recently launched Writing Fund: The first in a continuing series of Review Roundups.

The premise here is pretty simple: Using our reference library - as well as digital resources for things we don't have - we're going to dig up every contemporary review of a game that we can find to see how critics felt about it at the time. Doing this, hopefully we'll gain some new insight into how we think about an older game.

In this particular case, E.T. has taken on ...

Come see us at Portland Retro Gaming Expo this weekend!

Come hang out with The Video Game History Foundation this weekend at Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

We're attending (in an official capacity) for the second year in a row. And this time we're bringing merch!

We've got four main things going on this year:

1. The Museum

This year we're happy to be the official sponsor of PRGE's museum! What this means is that we've helped to design the layout, will be volunteering time to show people around, and have contributed a...

Recovering Lost Data from Aladdin's Source Code

Hi everyone! I'm really proud to publish the first result from our Writing Fund today - a totally comprehensive deep dive into the source code for Disney's Aladdin on the Sega Genesis, including an attempt to restore cut content (like the prisoner enemy in the video above)! The article is live on our website here:

https://gamehistory.org...

Look at this beautiful new toy you bought us!!!

Thanks to your generous donations, the VGHF now has this MASSIVE BEAST of a flatbed scanner. This is the Epson 10000XL, which does A3 scans (11.7" x 16.5"), which is double the size of our prior bed. We can do fun stuff now, like scan the entire two-page spread of a flattened magazine (illustrated above with VideoGames & Computer Entertainment #1). 

We can also now scan oversized images witho...

Why is today "National Video Games Day"?

It's being widely-circulated that today is National Video Games Day. It's so widespread that as I write this, #VideoGamesDay is trending on Twitter. Game, one of the UK's largest video game retailers, is basing a sale around it (despite its "national" origin...

Introducing the VGHF Writing Fund!

When we launched the Video Game History Foundation back in February, our goal was to make sure that researchers had access to the materials they would need to tell the stories of our past.

We believe that given the right tools, we can not only reconstruct history that might otherwise be lost, but gain new insights into how and why we play games today. Now we want to prove that concept out by actually ...

A little note about money

Hi again. I thought I'd do a little backer-only post showing you where your generous donations to the VGHF have gone!

After fees, we've taken home an amazing $9,964.23 since launching at the end of February, which is...kind of overwhelming looking at it now. You all have donated nearly TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to help us save video game history. You're amazing.

Here's a pretty basic rundown of how that money has been spent:

$5,872.25: The Game Informer Project. I know that sounds like ...

Big Big Minneapolis Update

Hi everyone! Thanks to your donations, our tech director Travis and I are sitting at an Airbnb in Minneapolis tonight, with a giant wall of vintage PlayStation review code separating us. As you might have guessed, we're here continuing work on the Game Informer project I outlined a bit back in May.

I never really gave a post-mortem of that first trip, but basically: that time was spent scoping the project and getting a grip on just what GI has, which let me go home and do my homework to figure...

Game Informer trip, day two

Hi again! Quick update tonight, as I try to catch some sleep and get back to work early in the morning. My hotel room has a mysterious phantom dripping sound coming from somewhere in the general bathroom area but, luckily, I don't hear it if I crank the fan up.

Today was all about sorting. It's hard to appreciate the magnitude of material that is sent to a magazine over 26 years...especially a magazine that has never had to downsize in a meaningful way, and whose editor-in-chief has not only b...

Knee-deep in ROMs (Game Informer trip, day one)

Greetings from Minneapolis! Or more specifically Plymouth, where the hotels are way cheaper.

Today marks the first day of a long overdue trip for us. About a year ago I started talking to Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara about how to archive the magazine's collection of, well, stuff. You may have seen the vault, a beautifully organized library of mostly-retail games going all the way back to the mag...

Our $25+ monthly Google Hangout is TONIGHT

Our second ever Town Hall-style monthly Google Hangout  will be happening tonight at 5pm Pacific time! This is an exclusive perk for our $25-and-over donors, though I'm sending this reminder out to everyone just in case this is something you'd planned on upgrading for but hadn't gotten around to yet.

If you attended last month, I'm looking forward to seeing you again! If you didn't: this is a pretty casual peek into the work we've been doing behind-the-scenes, with some discussion about t...

Google Hangout This Monday!

Hi all! It's monthly Hangout time!

Please mark your calendars for this Monday, April 24th, at 5pm Pacific for our second Town Hall Google Hangout chat.  If you didn't go to the last one, it's a pretty casual and candid atmosphere. I'll spend some time explaining what we've been up to the last month, talk about our upcoming plans, and we'll have a little group chat and Q&A about YOUR concerns. 

I specifically do this because, frankly, we NEED outside input on th...

Sneak Peek: Just some of the amazing art we've rescued recently

Hi everyone! We've been full steam ahead since launching The Video Game Media Assets Collection  earlier this month. You should go read up on that if you haven't, but the short version is: we've rescued over 400 physical pieces of media that contain digital assets sent to the media between 1995 and approximately 2011. 

This is a really important, ongoing project for us. Media assets tell us ...

Our biggest project yet.

Thanks to your help these past couple months, we've finally been able to start our largest ongoing project to date: The Video Game Media Assets Collection.  We're archiving a collection of 400+ physical materials that contain digital assets that were sent to the video game media between 1996 and approximately 2011.  Learn more about it over on the public blog:

https://gamehistory.org/media-assets/

I w...

With Dooly Bravo Land, nearly every commercial NES game has been archived

Thanks to a very generous donor from Korea, we were recently given the very, very exciting opportunity to digitally archive Dooly Bravo Land, a 1992 game for the Nintendo Entertainment System released exclusively in Korea. You can learn a little more about the game itself in our blog post here:

https://gamehistory.org/dooly-bravo-land/ 

I like to get a little more personal with our Patreon posts here, ...

Pics from Our GDC Booth

First of all, before we get started, THANK YOU SO MUCH! The donation response we saw last week has, I'm happy to say, met our internal goals for starting to build this dream into a full-fledged company. We've still got a million ways to grow, and I'm excited to have you all on board while we do that, but for now we've proven out the concept: there's obviously enough interest in our idea to make it a reality, and we're comfortable enough now that I have the bandwidth to work on this more-or-less ...

Watch our debut livestream, hosted at IGN!

Our friends at IGN are being super gracious and hosting us for an extended stream starting at 12 PM Pacific on February 27th (our launch day). We'll be showing off some weird unreleased games and talking about the challenges of preservation. At the end of it we'll be playing an unreleased NES game that nobody's seen before! Except me, I guess.