{"id":15295,"date":"2025-09-20T17:37:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T00:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15295"},"modified":"2025-09-19T17:43:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T00:43:25","slug":"go-to-the-video-game-history-library-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15295","title":{"rendered":"Go to the Video Game History library for free"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/gamehistory.org\/vghf-library-launch\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Video Game History Foundation<\/a>\u00a0(VHGF)&#8217;s digital archive of video game research has launched its first round of online early access to it&#8217;s library. It&#8217;s free to access anywhere in the world and intended for &#8220;anyone who wants to study video game history.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do they have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Never-before-seen game development materials.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Artwork, press kits, and promotional materials from iconic video games.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Over 1500 full-text searchable\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.gamehistory.org\/folder\/205c628c-5d0a-4de8-a5a5-782f31706ac0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">out-of-print video game magazines<\/a>\u2014including game industry trade magazines rarely available to the public.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The first 100 CDs from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.gamehistory.org\/folder\/a5823d80-320b-41c9-9e3c-4dc28f79f2a2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the art and press release archives of\u00a0<em>GamePro<\/em>\u00a0magazine<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.gamehistory.org\/folder\/1c21011a-6e22-4c3e-9298-c2f71470e1de\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Guidebooks and ephemera from video game events<\/a>, including searchable directories and maps from the first 12 years of the Electronic Entertainment Expo.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.gamehistory.org\/folder\/22cf9aa2-812b-4f39-b42e-e87a3c153b8c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Over 100 hours of footage from the production of the\u00a0<em>Myst<\/em>\u00a0series<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/library.gamehistory.org\/repositories\/2\/resources\/84\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the Mark Flitman papers<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>There are some caveats: There are no playable games in the archive due to copyright restrictions and VGHF said it &#8220;cannot give express permission&#8221; for users to reproduce materials in the library unless explicitly stated otherwise though researchers may be exempt under fair use cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6Tysm_Wf60Q?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0Video Game History Foundation\u00a0(VHGF)&#8217;s digital archive of video game research has launched its first round of online early access to it&#8217;s library. It&#8217;s free to access anywhere in the world and intended for &#8220;anyone who wants to study video game history.&#8221; What do they have? There are some caveats: There are no playable games in the archive due to copyright restrictions and VGHF said it &#8220;cannot give express permission&#8221; for users to reproduce materials in the library unless explicitly stated&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15295\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,9,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artdesign","category-cool","category-retro-computing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-3YH","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15295"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15298,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295\/revisions\/15298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}