The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has expanded its digital archive to include more than 5,000 video game magazines, marking another milestone in its ongoing effort to preserve the medium’s history.
The archive project launched in January 2025 with more than 1,500 out-of-print magazines. Eighteen months later, that collection has grown to nearly 600,000 pages, spanning 46 years of video game history from 1981 to 2026. The digital collection has become a valuable resource for historians, journalists, collectors, and enthusiasts looking to explore magazines and deepen their knowledge of gaming.
VGHF library director, Phil Salvador, credits the organization’s community of supporters in helping expand the resource library, sharing, “This milestone would not have been possible without support from community-run scanning projects. With our combined efforts, we’ve turned their magazine scans into a powerful research tool.”
As its English-language collection continues to grow, the Foundation is turning its attention to an equally important area of preservation: Japanese video game magazines. Japanese publications offer a unique perspective on the industry’s history. In addition to documenting the country’s gaming culture, many publications include exclusive interviews with developers, production insights, and coverage rarely available outside Japan.
The Foundation’s first Japanese-language addition is Neo Geo Freak, a monthly magazine published between 1995 and 2000 that covered SNK’s Neo Geo home and arcade platforms. Regarded as an important source on SNK’s history, the publication features developer interviews, artwork, strategy guides, and coverage of one of the most influential periods in the company’s history. Neo Geo Freak represents a major step toward building a broader Japanese-language collection, preserving material that was elusive to gaming enthusiasts.
It’s been a busy year for the non-profit organization. In addition to its magazine archives, it’s also building its Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) collections and digitized recordings of the 1989 Computer Game Developers’ Conference.
Learn more about the Video Game History Foundation.
