When Future Publishing's game magazines were shredded in the 1990s, no one thought twice about destroying what would become invaluable historical documents. Now, remaining copies of these defunct gaming periodicals are commanding premium prices on eBay and being digitally preserved by archivists who recognize them as irreplaceable windows into gaming's cultural evolution. The Video Game History Foundation is spearheading this preservation effort, launching a digital archive of 1,500 out-of-print gaming magazines on January 30.
These vintage publications do more than just trigger nostalgia — they provide a unique window into how the gaming industry evolved. Before the internet, magazines like Crash, Mega, and GamesMaster were the only connection between gamers and the industry, serving as vital sources of news, reviews, and community discussion through their letters pages.
"Video game magazines are often representative of people's relationships to video games – they accompany that journey," explains John O'Shea, creative director of the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, as quoted in The Guardian. The magazines capture not just what games were popular, but also reveal telling cultural blind spots — like the fact that in 2011 PC gaming magazines featured as many panda protagonists as female ones.
These periodicals also challenge the notion that successful gaming platforms were obviously destined for greatness. Contemporary coverage of now-iconic consoles like the PlayStation and Nintendo Wii shows considerable uncertainty about their prospects at launch. As O'Shea notes, "Video game magazines provide a lot of resistance to that very linear idea of history."
The VGHF's digital archive will be fully searchable, allowing researchers and enthusiasts to track the first mentions of influential games, developers, and gaming concepts. As VGHF librarian Phil Salvador explains in the article: "We wanted to make something that's going to be useful and easy for anyone studying video game history, whether you're an academic writing a book or a creator making a YouTube video, or you're just a curious person."
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