For eight years, we’ve been building a world-class collection of game history materials. Now we’re turning that into a research tool that anyone can use to study video game history.
The Video Game History Foundation Library is the long-term home to our collections of video game history research materials: behind-the-scenes documents, press kits, game magazines, promo materials, artwork, and more. Ever since we started in 2017, the Video Game History Foundation has been building a digital library to help the study of video game history. We’ve been collecting development documents, behind-the-scenes content, rare video game publications and catalogs, magazines, memorabilia, ephemera, and more.
After years of cataloging, processing, and digitizing our collections, we’re ready to open our (virtual) doors to the public for the first time. VGHF works with the game development community to preserve design documents, artwork, video footage, correspondence, and other unique items from behind the scenes of game production. Now we’re opening these resources for you, and you can discover for yourself how games were made and sold.
Our digital library system makes it easier than ever to explore video game history. We’ve spent years creating rich, extensive metadata for our collections and figuring out how to share our library materials with you. What we’ve built is more than just a bunch of files: This is a powerful tool for video game research with best-in-class discovery features.
Our library is powered by ArchivesSpace and Preservica, two archival management platforms that we use to catalog, preserve, and share our materials. Using the power of these professional-grade archive tools, you can search and filter our collections in deep detail and view digital items directly in-browser.
Our first wave of archival content
Early access to the VGHF Library includes digital access to some of our unique history research materials, including…
- Hundreds of behind-the-scenes documents from the career of game producer Mark Flitman.
- 100+ hours of footage from the making of the Myst series.
- A massive collection of FromSoftware promotional items.
- 1500+ full-text searchable out-of-print game magazines.
- Rare video game flyers and press kits.
- And more!
This is just the beginning. Follow the Video Game History Foundation for updates on new collections coming to our library platform in the future!
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