Rather than be a jerk and talk about why there are so few references to the text and early graphics games from the 60s and 70s, maybe I'll have to pitch the VGHF people on a blog post and book and software collection focused on the 60s-70s era of computer gaming.
I was introduced to computers (and computer gaming) in the mid-70s, just immediately before the "trinity" microcomputers hit the market in '77. Our school district in North Texas had access to an HP mainframe (HP-2000?) to teach advanced kids BASIC. Part of my early education involved tearing apart the text-oriented BASIC versions of Hammurabi, Hunt the Wumpus and Star Trek. They would hardly be called "games" today. My dad had business contacts at UIUC and they were infamous for giving ANYONE a PLATO account, so I learned about the friendly orange glow and social computing in "the data center in the corn field." Anyone who played rogue or PLATO/EMPIRE could see where the industry was going by 1980.
And the sad bit is we've lost most of the people who developed these games in the 60s and 70s. I think I'll pitch the idea of a small collection of David Ahl books, DECUS games tapes and an interview or two with a few of the remaining coders.
Give me a +1 if you're hip to the old text based games, often coded in BASIC and played on microcomputers.
This is a great project. Phil Salvador and Travis Brown, who were working on this, and founder Frank Cifaldi, are all great people. They have a podcast, the Video Game History Hour, where they discuss topics related to video game preservation (recently back after a roughly year long hiatus), if you want to here the people who work there talk about what they do and some of the challenges they face. This has been a long time coming, and the work they did with Cyan on the Myst collection in particular is nothing short of incredible. They had access to basically everything, and it was a huge effort to digitize all of the documents and VHS recordings to (hopefully) archive them long-term. This website is freely accessible, but the VGHF is a non-profit, so kick them a donation if you can and want to see more work like this!
I think it’s both funny and fitting that a video game library opens in ‘early access’. Apart from adding more games over time, I don’t see the distinction between early access and an actual release.
The website is operational and usable, and will have more content added to it over time. Much like early access games. I wonder what the actual distinction is.
This is really cool. It's a wonderful goal to preserve stuff like this.
That said, it is of course bizarre that we've gotten to a place where a video game history museum can't have video games for legal reasons. Imagine a museum of paleontology that can show you photos of paleontologists digging but can't show you any dinosaur bones.
OhMeadhbh ·13 days ago
Rather than be a jerk and talk about why there are so few references to the text and early graphics games from the 60s and 70s, maybe I'll have to pitch the VGHF people on a blog post and book and software collection focused on the 60s-70s era of computer gaming.
I was introduced to computers (and computer gaming) in the mid-70s, just immediately before the "trinity" microcomputers hit the market in '77. Our school district in North Texas had access to an HP mainframe (HP-2000?) to teach advanced kids BASIC. Part of my early education involved tearing apart the text-oriented BASIC versions of Hammurabi, Hunt the Wumpus and Star Trek. They would hardly be called "games" today. My dad had business contacts at UIUC and they were infamous for giving ANYONE a PLATO account, so I learned about the friendly orange glow and social computing in "the data center in the corn field." Anyone who played rogue or PLATO/EMPIRE could see where the industry was going by 1980.
And the sad bit is we've lost most of the people who developed these games in the 60s and 70s. I think I'll pitch the idea of a small collection of David Ahl books, DECUS games tapes and an interview or two with a few of the remaining coders.
Give me a +1 if you're hip to the old text based games, often coded in BASIC and played on microcomputers.
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brendoelfrendo ·13 days ago
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pindab0ter ·12 days ago
The website is operational and usable, and will have more content added to it over time. Much like early access games. I wonder what the actual distinction is.
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hirako2000 ·13 days ago
Edit: it's here: https://archive.gamehistory.org/explore
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CobrastanJorji ·12 days ago
That said, it is of course bizarre that we've gotten to a place where a video game history museum can't have video games for legal reasons. Imagine a museum of paleontology that can show you photos of paleontologists digging but can't show you any dinosaur bones.