News Story

The Media School Video Game Periodical Collection, containing more than 4,300 gaming catalogs and magazines, is now available at the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive at the IU Wells Library.

The collection – comprised of two gifts to IU by Stony Brook University Libraries and The Strong National Museum of Play – was brought to IU with assistance from Media School professor Raiford Guins, who is an expert on video game history and preservation. Years later, the materials are now archived and available to researchers.

Guins played a pivotal role in the original curation and preservation of the William A. Higinbotham Game Studies Collection, which was the Stony Brook University Libraries gift, while he was teaching at the university. Developed by Guins and Kristen J. Nyitray, director of Special Collections and University Archives at Stony Brook, the Higinbotham collection was housed at Stony Brook University from 2010 until 2016.

Due to Guins’ consultancy work for the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, and his general support of its International Center for the History of Electronic Games in his various writings on game history, the institute donated 72 boxes of video game magazines to help support new collections development at IU Wells Library.

The Media School Video Game Periodical Collection provides crucial historical context for students and scholars in game studies. The archived items cover a range of topics related to analog and video gaming, computing, and technology with specific emphasis on home computing software and hardware, microcomputing, and PC and console games and gaming systems.

Notable items in the collection include publications from Antic: The Atari Resource, Amiga World, DieHard GameFan, EGM2, Game Developer, GamePro, Next Generation, Nintendo Power, and the Official U.S. Playstation Magazine.

Researchers can access the materials by providing advance notice to the IULMIA.