ROMchip
type: channel
description: ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories is a hybrid audience, open-access journal for the advancement of critical historical studies of games
publisher: ROMchip
language: en
publication name: ROMchip
issn: 2573-9794
copyright: Works published in ROMchip are open access in accordance with the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. Authors retain copyright to works published in the journal. This license allows others to copy and redistribute work published in ROMchip, according to the following license terms: Provide Attribution — Redistributed work must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . Redistributors may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. Non-Commercial — Redistributed material may not be used for commercial purposes . No Derivatives — If an individual remixes, transforms, or builds upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material. Author/s retain all other rights to the publication, including rights to republish, audio/visual, film and television, podcast, and all other rights not named herein, and may do so without ROMchip’s permission. Author/s grant ROMchip a nonexclusive, perpetual license to publish their work. Author/s understand they must provide a citation to the original ROMchip publication if/when they publish the Work elsewhere.
items: Actor, Writer, Technology Spirit
items: The Ghost in the Coax
items: Yves Greppin and the Swiss-centered Networks of European Atari Distribution (1981-1984)
items: Yves Greppin et les réseaux helvétiques de la distribution européenne d’Atari (1981-1984)
items: Women at Play
items: Paolo Baerlocher, du Tessin à Paris
items: The Interwoven Threads of Experimental Games
items: Paolo Baerlocher, from Ticino to Paris
items: Contemporary War as Entertainment
items: Des loisirs électroniques à la création de jeux
items: Between Mass Culture and Technological Improvisation
items: Legend 7
items: From Leisure Electronics to Game Creation
items: From Print to Play
items: Designing Adult Mods for The Sims 4
items: Translation of Étienne de Flacourt’s Fifangha Rules (1661)
items: Screenshots or It Didn’t Happen
items: The Procedural Unconscious
items: The Joy of Sticks
items: Atari Adventure
items: Accessible Sport and “Wheelchair Romance”
items: The Multimodal Adaptation of Game Center Arashi
items: Computer Theatre
items: Deep Past, Imaginary Future, and the Interactive Novel
items: Philosophy is an Egyptian Game
items: Selling the First Programmable Game Console
items: “Layers of History”
items: Unexpected Monument
items: Tools of the Trade

Actor, Writer, Technology Spirit
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: Game Development
  topic: keywords
subject: Game Journalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Gamergate
  topic: keywords
subject: Leigh Alexander
  topic: keywords
subject: Narrative Design
  topic: keywords
subject: Nerial
  topic: keywords
subject: Reigns: Her Majesty
  topic: keywords
creator: Laine Nooney
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Laine Nooney http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2026-07-14
publication date: 2026-07-14

The Ghost in the Coax
type: item
subject: Materials
  topic: section
subject: sega channel
  topic: keywords
subject: cable television
  topic: keywords
subject: digital distribution
  topic: keywords
subject: subscription gaming
  topic: keywords
subject: video game preservation
  topic: keywords
subject: lost media
  topic: keywords
subject: sega genesis
  topic: keywords
creator: Skot Thayer
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Skot Thayer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2026-07-14
publication date: 2026-07-14

Yves Greppin and the Swiss-centered Networks of European Atari Distribution (1981-1984)
type: item
subject: Translations
  topic: section
subject: Montreux
  topic: keywords
subject: Switzerland
  topic: keywords
subject: Swiss video games
  topic: keywords
subject: swiss game industry
  topic: keywords
subject: Yves Greppin
  topic: keywords
subject: Claude Nobs
  topic: keywords
subject: Atari
  topic: keywords
subject: Suisse Romande
  topic: keywords
subject: Distribution
  topic: keywords
subject: Tony Bruehl
  topic: keywords
subject: Apple
  topic: keywords
subject: Digital Equipment Corporation
  topic: keywords
creator: Guillaume Guenat
creator: Pierre-Yves Hurel
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Guillaume Guenat, Pierre-Yves Hurel http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2026-07-14
publication date: 2026-07-14

Yves Greppin et les réseaux helvétiques de la distribution européenne d’Atari (1981-1984)
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: Montreux
  topic: keywords
subject: Suisse
  topic: keywords
subject: jeu vidéo suisse
  topic: keywords
subject: Yves Greppin
  topic: keywords
subject: Claude Nobs
  topic: keywords
subject: Atari
  topic: keywords
subject: Distribution
  topic: keywords
subject: Tony Bruehl
  topic: keywords
subject: Apple
  topic: keywords
subject: Digital Equipment Corporation
  topic: keywords
subject: Anton Bruehl
  topic: keywords
creator: Guillaume Guenat
creator: Pierre-Yves Hurel
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Guillaume Guenat, Pierre-Yves Hurel http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2026-07-14
publication date: 2026-07-14

Women at Play
type: item
description: This article traces women’s participation in Chinese gaming between the early 1980s and the post-2010 era, not as a simple move from absence to presence, but through shifting access, visibility, and value. Building on Western feminist media history that asks, per Laine Nooney, not only “Where are women in game history?” but “Why are they there in the way that they are?,” it reconstructs women’s place in Chinese game history while arguing that frameworks centered on liberal inclusion do not fully capture how gender operates in a postsocialist, state-led media system entangled with patriarchy and consumerism. To fill this gap, the article draws on materials such as game magazines, policy documents, online forums, and feminist scholarship, situating game history within Chinese state policy, gender politics, and media infrastructures, to reconstruct four overlapping moments: the arcade–home divide of the early reform era; negotiations over liberal aspiration and “Chineseness” in the late 1990s and first decades of the 2000s; the 2000 to 2010 rise of online games, esports, and beauty marketing; and the 2010 to 2015 platform and mobile boom that drew more women into mobile games, otome/boy love titles, esports, and livestreaming under tightening moral and commercial control. Across these periods, women surface as players, industry practitioners, community leaders, esports champions, and market icons, as well as bearers of national morality and targets of monetization. The post-2010 period sees NGO crackdowns, the so-called masculinity crisis, online misogyny, and stricter game censorship unfold alongside mobile and otome blockbusters, mobile esports, and feminist player communities, which expand but also fragment women’s presence. Under these conditions, industry and the state increasingly depoliticize women as consumer-citizens. Women players and creators, however, keep testing how far games can push back against these limits. Taken together, these histories show the val…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Chinese game history
  topic: keywords
subject: feminist game studies
  topic: keywords
subject: postsocialist gender politics
  topic: keywords
subject: state-led neoliberalism
  topic: keywords
subject: media infrastructure
  topic: keywords
creator: Mayshu (Meixu) Zhan
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Mayshu (Meixu) Zhan http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2026-07-14
publication date: 2026-07-14

Paolo Baerlocher, du Tessin à Paris
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: tessin
  topic: keywords
subject: Suisse
  topic: keywords
subject: jeu video suisse
  topic: keywords
subject: portage
  topic: keywords
subject: Scene demo
  topic: keywords
subject: Acorn Archimedes
  topic: keywords
subject: Baerlocher
  topic: keywords
subject: France
  topic: keywords
subject: Poizone
  topic: keywords
subject: Aldebaran
  topic: keywords
subject: Arc Angels
  topic: keywords
subject: Visiware
  topic: keywords
subject: Neko Entertainment
  topic: keywords
creator: Pierre-Yves Hurel
creator: Adrian Demleitner
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Logan Brown; Pierre-Yves Hurel, Adrian Demleitner http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29

Actor, Writer, Technology Spirit
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: blogging
  topic: keywords
subject: Destructoid
  topic: keywords
subject: Gamasutra
  topic: keywords
subject: Game Development
  topic: keywords
subject: Game Journalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Journalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Kotaku
  topic: keywords
subject: Leigh Alexander
  topic: keywords
subject: New Games Journalism
  topic: keywords
creator: Laine Nooney
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Laine Nooney http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29

The Interwoven Threads of Experimental Games
type: item
subject: Translations
  topic: section
subject: experimental games
  topic: keywords
subject: art history
  topic: keywords
subject: media theory
  topic: keywords
subject: Sunset Sway
  topic: keywords
subject: China
  topic: keywords
subject: independent games
  topic: keywords
creator: Gurn Group
creator: Yanqin Gao
creator: Zitao Ye
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Gurn Group http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2026-07-14
publication date: 2026-07-14

Paolo Baerlocher, from Ticino to Paris
type: item
subject: Translations
  topic: section
subject: Ticino
  topic: keywords
subject: Switzerland
  topic: keywords
subject: Demoscene
  topic: keywords
subject: Porting
  topic: keywords
subject: Archimedes
  topic: keywords
subject: swiss game industry
  topic: keywords
subject: Game Engines
  topic: keywords
subject: Acorn
  topic: keywords
subject: Paolo Baerlocher
  topic: keywords
subject: France
  topic: keywords
subject: Poizone
  topic: keywords
subject: Aldebaran
  topic: keywords
subject: Arc Angels
  topic: keywords
subject: Visiware
  topic: keywords
subject: Neko Entertainment
  topic: keywords
creator: Pierre-Yves Hurel
creator: Adrian Demleitner
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Pierre-Yves Hurel, Adrian Demleitner http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29

Contemporary War as Entertainment
type: item
subject: Materials
  topic: section
subject: board games
  topic: keywords
subject: Finnish Civil War
  topic: keywords
subject: War Games
  topic: keywords
subject: Historical Games
  topic: keywords
subject: War as Entertainment
  topic: keywords
creator: Niklas Nylund
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Niklas Nylund http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29

Des loisirs électroniques à la création de jeux
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: Daniel Roux
  topic: keywords
subject: Smaky
  topic: keywords
subject: Blupi
  topic: keywords
subject: Toto
  topic: keywords
subject: Eggbert
  topic: keywords
subject: Epsitec
  topic: keywords
subject: Suisse Romande
  topic: keywords
subject: Loisirs électroniques
  topic: keywords
creator: Pierre-Yves Hurel
creator: Sophie Bemelmans
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Pierre-Yves Hurel, Sophie Bemelmans http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-30
publication date: 2025-06-30

Between Mass Culture and Technological Improvisation
type: item
subject: Materials
  topic: section
subject: Brazil
  topic: keywords
subject: censorship
  topic: keywords
subject: mass media
  topic: keywords
subject: mass culture
  topic: keywords
subject: computer games
  topic: keywords
subject: CasseCasseta & Planeta: Noite Animal
  topic: keywords
subject: ATR Multimídia
  topic: keywords
subject: television
  topic: keywords
creator: Henrique Sampaio
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Henrique Sampaio http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-30
publication date: 2025-06-30

Legend 7
type: item
subject: Translations
  topic: section
subject: doujinshi
  topic: keywords
subject: dojinshi
  topic: keywords
subject: Hiromasa Iwasaki
  topic: keywords
subject: platformers
  topic: keywords
subject: Japan
  topic: keywords
subject: Japanese game industry
  topic: keywords
subject: Hudson Soft
  topic: keywords
subject: Lode Runner
  topic: keywords
subject: Mega Man
  topic: keywords
creator: Heidi Kemps
creator: Brian Clark
creator: Hiromasa Iwasaki
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Heidi Kemps, Brian Clark; Hiromasa Iwasaki http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-30
publication date: 2025-06-30

From Leisure Electronics to Game Creation
type: item
subject: Translations
  topic: section
subject: Daniel Roux
  topic: keywords
subject: Smaky
  topic: keywords
subject: Blupi
  topic: keywords
subject: Toto
  topic: keywords
subject: Eggbert
  topic: keywords
subject: Epsitec
  topic: keywords
subject: Suisse Romande
  topic: keywords
subject: swiss game industry
  topic: keywords
subject: hobbyist electronics
  topic: keywords
creator: Pierre-Yves Hurel
creator: Sophie Bemelmans
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Pierre-Yves Hurel, Sophie Bemelmans http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-30
publication date: 2025-06-30

From Print to Play
type: item
description: Swelling inventories of obsolete arcade equipment prompted businesses to offload items into Japan’s secondhand electronics market during the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, surplus arcade game PCBs (printed circuit boards) found their way into the hands of home tinkerers, who built compact devices to play these games on televisions and computer monitors. This development marked the emergence of what is now recognized as the supergun hobby. Magazines fostered the early success of the hobby by facilitating the exchange of information and nurturing a sense of community among enthusiasts. The supergun hobby garnered considerable media attention during the height of its popularity; nevertheless, it has remained overlooked in academic discourse. Examining the supergun phenomenon from its do-it-yourself (DIY) origins offers a fresh perspective on Japan’s video game culture. Employing a heterodox approach, this article establishes a chronology of the supergun hobby by examining period print materials and, for the sake of comparison, the internal components of commercial hardware. Additionally, to recreate the DIY hobbyist experience, multiple supergun devices were built using only published build guides for instruction. The combination of textual and hands-on research illuminates a neglected yet noteworthy episode in the annals of electronic entertainment.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: arcade
  topic: keywords
subject: supergun
  topic: keywords
subject: japan
  topic: keywords
subject: DIY
  topic: keywords
subject: video game
  topic: keywords
creator: Hanae Kramer
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Hanae Kramer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-12-29
publication date: 2025-12-29

Designing Adult Mods for The Sims 4
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: The Sims
  topic: keywords
subject: adult mod
  topic: keywords
subject: pornography
  topic: keywords
subject: porn games
  topic: keywords
subject: simulation games
  topic: keywords
subject: TURBODRIVER
  topic: keywords
subject: modding
  topic: keywords
subject: design ethics
  topic: keywords
subject: WickedWhims
  topic: keywords
creator: Aurélie Petit
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Aurélie Petit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-12-13
publication date: 2024-12-13

Translation of Étienne de Flacourt’s Fifangha Rules (1661)
type: item
subject: Translations
  topic: section
subject: African games
  topic: keywords
subject: Étienne de Flacourt
  topic: keywords
subject: fifangha
  topic: keywords
subject: game rules
  topic: keywords
subject: Madagascar
  topic: keywords
subject: mancala
  topic: keywords
creator: Alex de Voogt
creator: Lisa Rougetet
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Alex de Voogt, Lisa Rougetet http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-07-05
publication date: 2024-07-05

Screenshots or It Didn’t Happen
type: item
description: Screenshots are one of the most ubiquitous visual forms of the twenty-first century. Each day billions of screenshots are created on smart phones and personal computers to document the mundane and spectacular interactions of users with their computational machines. Perhaps the most publicly visible use for screenshots today is as proof of action with or through a computer—that is, as evidence of interaction. We use screenshots to document the microworld of the computer as a space of personal identification and individual expression. In this article I argue that this practice has its origins in the video game cultures of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this period, game publishers and magazines used screenshots to document the visual appearance of games for advertisements and publications. However, quite quickly users began to document and photograph their own experiences of play through photographs of personal achievements such as high scores and end screens. Game companies like Activision and magazines like Nintendo Power encouraged this practice, offering rewards and publishing scores to foster participation. These vernacular practices marked a shift in how users related to computational systems—not merely as tools but as expressive environments where actions were documented and identified with. Over time, these practices evolved into a broader visual culture of play, encompassing screen selfies, player portraits, and early cultures of competitive play such as speedrunning. Far from trivial ephemera, these images indexed the rise of a new computational personhood, where users saw themselves reflected in their screen interactions. In situating this history within this broader discourse, I suggest that unprofessional, everyday practices of gaming and its visual documentation reveal the social and personal dimensions of digital life. Screenshots become not only technical artifacts but also records of self, community, and computational experience.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: screenshots
  topic: keywords
subject: Nintendo Power
  topic: keywords
subject: Atari
  topic: keywords
subject: Activision
  topic: keywords
subject: Vernacular Computing
  topic: keywords
subject: Photography
  topic: keywords
creator: Jacob Gaboury
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Jacob Gaboury http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2025-06-30
publication date: 2025-06-30

The Procedural Unconscious
type: item
description: Video games are an art form that saw early experiments in the mainframe computing era, emerged fully in the personal computing era, and has proliferated amid the ubiquitous computing era. This new media form introduced an expanded sensorium through aesthetics that include mechanics, kinesthetics, proprioception, networked interrelations among players, and haptics. An exemplary element of video game aesthetics is proceduralism, a concept first theorized by media scholars such as Janet Murray, Ian Bogost, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. In this essay, we approach the expanded field of media aesthetics via video game proceduralism and its computational foundations, but with particular attention to traces and absences that gesture toward the unconscious. Instead of the individual unconscious, we are most interested in something more akin to Fredric Jameson’s “political unconscious,” which is historical and collective, though still nonrepresentational. Our inquiry focuses on how game aesthetics feel out connections among terms that might otherwise seem distinct, including computational abstractions, speculative finance, and racial capitalism. To explore this point, we turn to American designer Lucas Pope’s 2018 Return of the Obra Dinn, an independent puzzle game that asks the player to explore a merchant ship that disappears and returns several years later in 1807. This game is unusual, even singular, but it also stages more generalizable ways that proceduralism accesses history. In place of the game's own logic-driven murder mystery, we substitute a media aesthetic mystery: why would a late 2010s video game use a contemporary perspective and a 1980s graphical style to explore a narrative about early 1800s marine insurance? By making sense of Obra Dinn’s medium-specific operations within the context of political hermeneutics, we seek to theorize what we call the procedural unconscious. Though human beings lack direct access to the opacity of contemporary computation, algorithms,…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Black studies
  topic: keywords
subject: insurance
  topic: keywords
subject: proceduralism
  topic: keywords
subject: racial capitalism
  topic: keywords
subject: Return of the Obra Dinn
  topic: keywords
subject: speculative finance
  topic: keywords
subject: media aesthetics
  topic: keywords
subject: unconscious
  topic: keywords
subject: Black games
  topic: keywords
subject: independent games
  topic: keywords
creator: Patrick Jagoda
creator: Ashlyn Sparrow
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Patrick Jagoda, Ashlyn Sparrow http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-12-13
publication date: 2024-12-13

The Joy of Sticks
type: item
subject: Materials
  topic: section
subject: Atari
  topic: keywords
subject: Atari standard
  topic: keywords
subject: 1980s
  topic: keywords
subject: joysticks
  topic: keywords
subject: history of the everyday
  topic: keywords
subject: object research
  topic: keywords
subject: plastics
  topic: keywords
subject: museum
  topic: keywords
subject: Finnish Museum of Games
  topic: keywords
subject: exhibition
  topic: keywords
subject: Joy of Sticks
  topic: keywords
subject: game controller
  topic: keywords
subject: Consumer electronics
  topic: keywords
subject: Bodily technique
  topic: keywords
creator: Mikko Heinonen
creator: Niklas Nylund
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Mikko Heinonen, Niklas Nylund http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-12-13
publication date: 2024-12-13

Atari Adventure
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: Atari
  topic: keywords
subject: Atari Adventure
  topic: keywords
subject: Industrial Design
  topic: keywords
subject: Videogame Arcades
  topic: keywords
subject: Peter Takaichi
  topic: keywords
subject: Ken Hata
  topic: keywords
subject: Michael Jang
  topic: keywords
creator: Henry Lowood
creator: Raiford Guins
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Henry Lowood http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-07-05
publication date: 2024-07-05

Accessible Sport and “Wheelchair Romance”
type: item
subject: Materials
  topic: section
subject: tournament
  topic: keywords
subject: pinball
  topic: keywords
subject: arcade
  topic: keywords
subject: accessibility
  topic: keywords
subject: disability
  topic: keywords
creator: Matt Knutson
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Matt Knutson http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-07-05
publication date: 2024-07-05

The Multimodal Adaptation of Game Center Arashi
type: item
subject: Materials
  topic: section
subject: board games
  topic: keywords
subject: Japanese games
  topic: keywords
subject: adaptation
  topic: keywords
subject: Game Center Arashi
  topic: keywords
subject: arcade games
  topic: keywords
subject: anime
  topic: keywords
creator: Nathan Altice
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Nathan Altice http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-07-05
publication date: 2024-07-05

Computer Theatre
type: item
description: Computer Theatre is an unreleased game prototype commissioned by Activision in the mid-1980s. Through interviews and a large collection of physical and digital artifacts, we present and contextualize this never-before-seen prototype from disparate disciplinary points of view: game history, computer science, anthropology, and archaeology. Specifically, we argue that Computer Theatre is an early entry in what we would now call the visual novel genre. This multifaceted genre focuses on both social interactions and on the playful exploration of branching paths; it also exhibits first steps toward hypertext and multiform games. Due to the people involved and the time period, we are additionally able to enhance the knowledge of contributions from women in the early game industry and document some of the human ramifications of the 1983 (predominantly North American) video game crash.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: visual novel
  topic: keywords
subject: prototype
  topic: keywords
subject: Activision
  topic: keywords
subject: Commodore 64
  topic: keywords
subject: game development
  topic: keywords
subject: computer theatre
  topic: keywords
creator: Katie Biittner
creator: Carl Therrien
creator: John Aycock
creator: Dona Bailey
creator: Paul Allen Newell
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Dona Bailey, Paul Allen Newell, Katie Biittner, Carl Therrien, John Aycock http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-12-13
publication date: 2024-12-13

Deep Past, Imaginary Future, and the Interactive Novel
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: interactive novel
  topic: keywords
subject: hypertext
  topic: keywords
subject: L.A. Crackdown
  topic: keywords
subject: Murder on the Mississipi
  topic: keywords
subject: Portal
  topic: keywords
subject: Robert Swigart
  topic: keywords
creator: Soraya Murray
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Soraya Murray http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2023-12-27
publication date: 2023-12-27

Philosophy is an Egyptian Game
type: item
description: Using a mixture of media archaeology and discourse analysis, I argue that the two most popular board games in ancient Greece, Five Lines (Pente Grammai) and City-State (Polis), had direct precursors in dynastic Egypt. I note that Plato's two speculative city-building dialogues—the Republic and the Laws—both engage in a "serious game" (in Plato's words) of imagining an ideal city, and each one mentions a different game as their referent (City-State is referenced in the Republic, and Pente Grammai is mentioned in the Laws). Through this comparison and references to other Greek literature modeled on games, I describe the central importance of games as models in early Greece. I argue that this understanding of games as models necessitates a reappraisal of game origins and patterns of transformation and that it reaffirms the necessity of game studies across disciplines.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: board game history
  topic: keywords
subject: media archaeology
  topic: keywords
subject: history of ideas
  topic: keywords
subject: ancient Greek games
  topic: keywords
subject: Egyptian games
  topic: keywords
subject: Plato
  topic: keywords
subject: Republic
  topic: keywords
subject: Laws
  topic: keywords
subject: Senet
  topic: keywords
subject: Five Lines
  topic: keywords
subject: Polis
  topic: keywords
subject: City-State
  topic: keywords
creator: Samuel Pizelo
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Samuel Pizelo http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2023-12-27
publication date: 2023-12-27

Selling the First Programmable Game Console
type: item
subject: Interviews
  topic: section
subject: John Donatoni
  topic: keywords
subject: Fairchild
  topic: keywords
subject: Channel F
  topic: keywords
subject: Home Consoles
  topic: keywords
subject: Marketing
  topic: keywords
subject: Sales
  topic: keywords
subject: Digital watches
  topic: keywords
subject: Jerry Lawson
  topic: keywords
subject: Greg Reyes
  topic: keywords
creator: Kevin Bunch
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Kevin Bunch http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2023-12-27
publication date: 2023-12-27

“Layers of History”
type: item
description: This article makes an intervention into the growing body of literature concerned with historical video game paratexts, with a focus on Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment (2022). The game is remarkable for its ludonarrative and paratextual engagement with the complexities of history, particularly mediating the role of power and memory, and the consequences of the limited evidence of the past left behind. Focussing namely on various paratextual materials that accompanied and preceded Pentiment’s release, this article explores the “layered” approach to deploying historical discourses in the game’s promotion and critical reception. It does so by categorising different elements of this discourse into three conceptual categories – history of, history around, and history in – noting where and why they intersect, and to what effect. It also explores Pentiment’s comparative novelty as a mainstream game which takes a more critical approach to remediating historical knowledge, yet attempts were still made to construct a sense of the game’s “authenticity”. Ultimately, this article sustains the argument that we should take video game paratexts seriously, incorporating them as a vital part of our consideration of historical video games to arrive at more nuanced understandings of the way they represent and negotiate memory and knowledge of the past.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: paratexts
  topic: keywords
subject: Obsidian Entertainment
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subject: historical game studies
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subject: historical authenticity
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subject: Pentiment
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creator: Esther Wright
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Esther Wright http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2024-07-05
publication date: 2024-07-05

Unexpected Monument
type: item
description: This article is a contextual historical study focused on the restoration process of a Finnish educational PC game, Promille (Tietotoimisto, 1990). In 2017, a floppy disk containing the previously unknown (to historians and hobbyists) game was found by chance in the city woods of Tampere, Finland. These unusual circumstances and the following repair efforts, undertaken as a collaboration between the local retrogaming circles and the Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere, attracted national media attention. This paper aims at reconstructing and contextualizing these events while at the same time reflecting on the cultural practices of maintenance and repair at public and private memory institutions in Finland, and how the case of Promille has affected the local heritage community. The study contributes to the theoretical discussions around the heritagization of games and revisits Alois Riegl’s concept of unintentional monuments in relation to game cultures.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
subject: Finnish video games
  topic: keywords
subject: repair
  topic: keywords
subject: maintenance
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subject: heritage
  topic: keywords
subject: Alois Riegl
  topic: keywords
subject: unintentional monument
  topic: keywords
subject: Promille
  topic: keywords
subject: Finland
  topic: keywords
subject: computer games
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creator: Maria B. Garda
creator: Niklas Nylund
creator: Jaakko Suominen
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Maria B. Garda, Niklas Nylund, Jaakko Suominen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2023-07-28
publication date: 2023-07-28

Tools of the Trade
type: item
subject: Materials
  topic: section
subject: labor
  topic: keywords
subject: arcade
  topic: keywords
subject: CRT
  topic: keywords
subject: cathode ray tube
  topic: keywords
subject: repair
  topic: keywords
subject: television
  topic: keywords
subject: rejuvenator
  topic: keywords
creator: Scott Stilphen
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Scott Stilphen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
date: 2023-07-28
publication date: 2023-07-28