The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) launches its digital archive, offering unprecedented access to rare video game development materials, publications, and memorabilia.
This resource represents a significant step in the organization’s efforts to preserve gaming history. Since its founding in 2017, VGHF has focused on recovering, restoring, and archiving materials from the gaming industry. Digitizing the physical library expands access to these materials, making them more broadly available to researchers, historians, educators, and others.
The work of the VGHF is strengthened by gaming historians, collectors, and archivists who have contributed materials, including magazine scans, tradeshow and event guidebooks, promotional items, catalogues, production footage, and other materials. The VGHF library includes:
- never-before-seen game development materials
- artwork, press kits, and promotional content from iconic titles
- 1,500+ full-text searchable out-of-print video game magazines
- exclusive archival content from private collectors
The centrepiece of the launch collection is the Mark Flitman Papers. A former game producer, Flitman worked with companies such as Midway, Konami, Acclaim, Mindscape, and Atari in the 1990s and 2000s. His contributions include marketing plans, budgets, memos, licensing guides, and other documents that provide insight into game production.
Library director Phil Salvador shared his thoughts about the foundation’s ongoing work, “This is just the beginning. Our digital library is the long-term home for our collections, and over the coming years, we’re going to keep building the library and adding new material. We have a whole storage room full of stuff we have to keep processing, so there is plenty to come. We’ve been building towards this for a long time and we think this is going to change how people study video game history.”
The VGHF plays a vital role in bringing awareness to the vulnerability in the work to conserve classic video games. A study in partnership with the Software Preservation Network revealed that just 13 percent of classic video games released in the United States are present in the current marketplace, underscoring the urgency of capturing a complete history before it’s too late.
Explore the library and learn more about the non-profit organization’s work to protect the history of gaming.
