Video Game History Foundation’s Massive Digital Library Is Now Open To The Public

After a brief tease last week, the Video Game History Foundation has officially thrown the virtual doors open to its massive digital library. Designed to be a free-to-access resource for researchers, historians, and video game fans, the VGHF Digital Library currently offers more than 30,000 curated files spanning 50 years of video game history. Demand is already pretty high, so at the time of writing, you might struggle to access the library.

The non-profit group says that visitors will find out-of-print video game magazines, never-before-seen game development assets, artwork, promotional materials, and more gaming relics here, with more than 1,500 of them being full-text searchable.

“We’ve been working on this project since we founded the Video Game History Foundation in 2017, so we’re extremely proud to start providing access to our digital library and continue our mission to make video game history accessible to anyone,” VGHF founder Frank Cifaldi said in a statement. “We believe that with the right tools, anyone can be a video game historian, and we can’t wait to see what new stories our archive inspires. We also hope this inspires those in the video game industry to consider the importance of preserving their work and contributing to initiatives like ours.”

To make things easier, the library will have several search tools to make use of. These include the option to search by author, specific games, publishers, and other categories. Some of the magazines that can be read include Game Informer, PlayStation Magazine, and GamePro, and other highlights include E3 event maps from the first 12 years of the trade show, over 100 hours of footage from the production of the Myst series, and an extensive international collection of From Software promotional materials from archivist Kris Urquhart’s collection.

It’s worth mentioning that the VGHF relies partly on funding from the public to operate, so if you feel like donating to a worthy cause, you can click this link to help support the group across several of its ventures that are dedicated to preserving video game history and making it more accessible.