It was with great sadness that we learned of Robert Holdstock’s passing on the morning of 29 November.

Rob made a valuable, generous and genuinely unique contribution to National Videogame Archive’s events at GameCity this year, where he joined Ian Bell, David Braben, Mark Bolitho and others to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Elite. Reading excerpts from The Dark Wheel novella he wrote to accompany the game, Rob captivated the audience and it was truly a privilege to witness his performance.

Everybody at the NVA sends their deepest sympathies to his partner Sarah and his family. He will be greatly missed.

The NVA very much enjoyed its time at GameCity this year and we’ve come back with some wonderful new donations for the collection. Masaya Matsuura, creator of Parappa the Rapper, Vib Ribbon and Major Minor’s Majestic Marching Band among others, delivered two fantastic presentations. In his ‘Unforgettable’ BAFTA keynote speech, Matsuura-san discussed his thoughts on poly-personal production and showed some sneak-previews of his upcoming mobile games and treated the audience to three wonderful songs with live motion graphics. In his ‘Mr Matsuura’s Marvellous Marching Band’ session, ably assisted by Dewi Tanner, the maestro talked about his work, inspiration and influences and led the crowd in a mass kazoo rendition of ‘Hey Jude’. Na na na nana on sha!

If mass kazooing, previews of unreleased games and an insight into development methodology wasn’t enough, Matsuura-san notched up another couple of GameCity firsts: A standing ovation. And an encore. I wouldn’t want to be doing next year’s keynote, the stakes are pretty high.

Demonstrating his support for the NVA, Matsuura-san kindly donated a very rare copy of Tunin’Glue. Wondering what it is? Let Matsuura-san describe, ‘There’s no need for instruments to make a band! Just connect sound parts from all sorts of genres and put guitars and vocals to it. Now, you’re the composer!’

This game/music sequencer was created for the Apple Pippin was never released in Europe (like the Pippin) so we’re very honoured to have a copy in the collection. Like everybody who saw the keynote, the NVA is obviously very excited and inspired and we’re all busy experimenting with Logic and making plans to deliver the next NVA presentation as a series of vocoder songs.

In equal measures, fun, informative, enlightening, and inspiring, perhaps Matsuura-san said, or rather sang, it best. Unforgettable.

Many thanks to all of the contributors that made our celebration of 25 years of Elite such a success. After some scene setting to transport the room back to 1984, joining Iain and James on stage were Ian Bell, David Braben, Mark Bolitho, Dominic Prior and Robert Holdstock each of whom talked through their specific contribution to the game and its continued meaning to them a quarter of a century on. We were very keen not to simply tell the same story about the game’s development. Francis Spufford’s excellent book The Backroom Boys makes essential reading and Iain and James’ own 100 Videogames tells some of this background. Instead of focusing on the couple of years leading up to Elite’s release, we wanted instead to focus on the 25 years since. This session was all about emotion impact and the place of the game in people’s lives. As such, and in keeping with the NVA’s interest in telling the stories of players as well as those of games, technologies and development, we were as excited to hear Ian and David’s thoughts on the game’s impact on their subsequent careers as we were hearing how GameCity tech genius Matt had somehow managed to get a day off school to play the game for charity.

One thing that struck us all was the sheer amount of joy that the game still inspires. We played a lengthy clip of the C64 game (which Ian and David converted themselves) from the initial flickering colour bars of its bootup via some space travel, a bit of stargazing taking advantage of the various viewpoints right through to the inevitable (and rather sudden) ‘Game Over’, the crowd sat mesmerised. This was not mere nostalgia, however, and many of the audience members were clearly not old enough to have unwrapped their own copies of Elite in 1984. Rather, there was in these vector graphics and chip tune waltzing, an object lesson in game design. In an age of high definition and photorealism, the simplicity of this representational world comes as a sobering reminder of the power and importance of the player’s imagination and the way in which, through its apparent complexity, a gameworld can provide scaffolding and potential for adventure and excitement without having to beat the player about the head with bells and whistles. Of course, in the case of Elite, that gameworld did not only extend into the screen but spilled over into the paratextual materials that literally filled the game’s box. The importance of these ‘additional’ pieces of the Elite gameworld and their function as prefigurative materials that not only round out but mediate and frame the playing and replaying of the game is difficult to underestimate and it is surprising and not a little saddening that the decision to include them has not been a more widely adopted. In an era of digital downloads, these absence of these kinds of materials seems likely to be even more keenly felt. As a reminder, we had produced a limited edition A3 print of Mark Bolitho’s original ‘lost’ origami designs that had been designed for inclusion in the 1984 pack but were cut due to budgetary constraints. The NVA is proud to have been able to redress this even if we were 25 years late.

Once the queue of eager fans had managed to get their commemorative prints signed by the stellar crew of developers, artists and programmers, we all adjourned outside to to the GameCity tent which had been transformed into a paper universe of origami models each lovingly created by Bolitho and the many visitors to GameCity. Dramatically lit by twinkling starlight, it was to this ethereal and otherworldy backdrop that Robert Holdstock read from his Dark Wheel novella. Punctuated by the Nottingham Trent University choir performing a specially commissioned arrangement of Strauss’ Blue Danube, the event transported the audience into space, back in time to 1984 and signalled the future of the NVA and GameCity. Performance and theatricality are two words rarely associated with videogames – even less so with exhibitions of videogames – but these are, without doubt, watchwords for the NVA as we move forward.

Happy birthday Commander Jameson.

For those of us old enough to remember, it is exciting and not a little bit sobering, to think that the space-opera, shoot-em-up, asteroid-mining, bounty-hunting, piratical, trading game Elite is now over a quarter of a century old.

If you’re now overcome by the warmth of a hazy, nostalgic glow, you will need no reminding that Ian Bell and David Braben’s masterpiece changed the lives – and ruined a good deal of the homework and exam revision – of countless schoolchildren when it was released on 20 September 1984. Perhaps less well-documented but equally importantly, it also provided many, many hours of ‘elicit’ entertainment for parents who switched the BBC B back on once the kids had gone to bed and the coast was clear. For many, Elite was the first taste of gaming. For others, already versed in the pleasures of interactivity, it was the first taste of gaming on a hitherto unimaginably epic scale.

With its revolutionary real-time 3D graphics and emergent gameplay, Elite seemed way ahead of its time when it was released. It turned out that the reason for this was, quite simply, that it was way ahead of its time. The extraordinary ambition and scope of the gameworld, the sense of place and being-in-the-world, the clearly-felt and subtly articulated consequences of one’s action and inaction remain high watermarks in videogaming history. Equally, telling the backstory and locating the gameplay within a complex moral and ethical framework via a wholly different medium in the form of Robert Holdstock’s The Dark Wheel novella is as bold and forward-looking an example of transmedial storytelling as any vogueish contemporary media project.

Obviously, The National Videogame Archive couldn’t let this momentous event in British game development and popular culture go unmmarked and so, in collaboration with GameCity, we are delighted to announce a series of events that not only celebrate the game but also celebrate and recognise the achivements of all the people that made Eilte what it is.

All the people? That’s right. ALL the people. Live. On stage. Surrounded by thousands of origami models of the spacecraft (using the original designs that had been intended for inclusion in the 1980s BBC package and discussed and demonstrated by their creator Mark Bolitho), to the strains of a choir singing an new arrangement of Strauss’ The Blue Danube, Ian Bell, David Braben and a host of others come together to toast the Silver Jubilee of this most cherished of all British videogames.

We will, of course, be documenting proceedings so if you can’t make it along on the day, we have things covered for generations to come. But really, what are you doing that could be more important than this? Be a Fugitive just for once…

You can read more about the event – and download the first origami model – at the GameCity Squared site.

Hello to everybody who saw us at the DiGRA 2009 conference last week (and apologies for not making it through all of our slides in the time!). Tom and James presented some thoughts on the importance of game preservation and some of the issues we’ve faced at the NVA. Also on the panel were Andrew Armstrong who discussed the excellent and important IGDA Game Preservation SIG‘s Before It’s Too Late White Paper, Jo Barwick who spoke on the cultural significance of games in the context of digital preservation, Andreas Lange of the Computer Spiele Museum and Dan Pinchbeck of KEEP.

There was/is so much to discuss and so much work to do – not only to do the work of preserving games and the ephemera of gaming cultures but also to work out what the strategies should be, what we should preserve, who should decide, how we go about preserving and perhaps even whether we can preserve the materials at all. As both Dan and Jo rightly pointed out in their talks, it is both encouraging and amazing that 2009 sees the first formal panel convened at DiGRA on game preservation. The first of many, we all hope…and the beginning of what we hope will be some very fruitful partnerships and collaborations.

You can find copies of the papers at the IGDA Preservation SIG’s wiki.

Revered videogames news channel GamesIndustry.biz has just published an interview with Iain and James about the work of the NVA. As well as running through some of the backstory of the Archive and how and why it came to be, we talk a little about some of the forthcoming projects that we have planned – in particular, the ‘Director Commentaries’. Those of you at last year’s GameCity Three festival will have an idea what these are all about – brilliant and interesting people talking about their brilliant and interesting games while playing them and showing you all the brilliant and interesting things that you might have missed or could never have known. Want to hear how Goldeneye 007’s built environment wouldn’t pass current disability legislation for accessibility, or in which level you can find Martin and Dave’s virtual offices, or perhaps just sit back and enjoy the multiplayer gaming masterclass and find out whether Martin Hollis can beat Dave Doak…? All this and more, will be revealed soon. We’re busy editing and filming more Director Commentaries right now (in fact, we’ll be at a secret location in the North West next week…). Watch this space.

But for now, head over to GI.biz and read all about it.

Ian Bogost has an interesting piece on emulating the Atari VCS that highlights another of the issues surrounding emulators as archival tools. However, here the concern is not about the integrity of the emulation or the hacks, tricks and tweaks that potential undermine the authenticity of the running of the original code. Rather, Bogost draws attention to the impact of the fundamental differences in the way games look (and I would argue also, sound) on modern displays versus the kinds of monitors/TVs of yesteryear. As Ian notes,

In today’s world of huge, sharp LCD monitors, it’s hard to remember what a videogame image looked like on an ordinary television of the late 1970s. Emulators like Stella make it possible to play Atari games on modern computers, serving the function of archival tool, development platform, and player for these original games. But unfortunately, they also give an inaccurate impression of what Atari games looked like on a television.

Given that it was designed to live in a world of smudgy, smeary CRTs rather than pin-sharp LCDs, we could well agree that the VCS should be seen through the gauze of noise, colour-bleeding, and ghostly afterimages. Certainly, that’s how things would have looked in the 1970s and 1980s where there was little or no alternative. But, we could similarly argue that these technical limitations were not ones of the VCS game-designer’s making and that ‘their game’ – the game that they conceieved and that is capable of being displayed if the self-same code is run on a device connected to a different display – looked pinsharp and was devoid of such ‘characteristics’.

This debate puts one in mind of the thorny issue of remastering audio. Should we take advantage of contemporary studio tools and techniques to create the much-rumoured new versions of The Beatles catalogue that are ‘more respectful’ to the original recordings – or, perhaps more pertinently, that conform to our contemporary sense of audio integrity and archival standards (e.g. no over-limited ‘loudness war’ processing, mono versus stereo etc.)?

Just as with the emulation of videogames, there are technical, aesthetic, political and ethical questions to be addressed here. The NVA’s focus on the contexts of games and gameplay means that we have to consider these issues seriously as the decisions we take profoundly affect the experience of our audiences and the ability of the game to communicate.

Of course, we are fortunate that the National Media Museum already has a peerless collection of TV sets and display technologies, though if we are going to go all the way with emulating the domestic contexts of gameplay, we’re going to need to collect some brown corduroy sofas and hire the set designer for Abigail’s Party.

This 9-10 May, GameCity and the NVA will be quite literally driving two junctions down the M1 to do some ‘things’ at the National Space Centre as part of their awesome ‘Space Invaders’ weekend. James and Iain will be saving some videogames, playing some LEGO Star Wars, giving out some prizes and repeatedly staring up into the stars thinking surely there must be some greater reason for all of this…

For those of you who have been to Save the Videogame events before, here’s a chance to see one tailored for the family audience. Also happening that weekend is the brilliant EA Hub, gaming on a HUGE scale, characters from Star Wars (that’s the actual characters, not people in costume you understand) and all set against the backdrop of the UK’s best-loved National Space Centre.

You really should come along. It’s going to be a blast (off). etc. Ahem. Sorry.

Simon Parkin has a review of the fascinating Retro Game Challenge over at Eurogamer.

Retro Game Challenge is an intriguing title that, in part at least, trades in 8-bit nostalgia and retro chic as it presents a raft of 1980s-style NES mini-games. The game is actually based on a Japanese TV series of the same name and makes some references to some of the challenges faced on the silver screen in the kind of transmedial way that we’re used to a new media audiences.

As the official RGC (UK) site explains, the game’s backstory isn’t hugely inspiring…

Thrown back in time to the 1980s, you are turned into a young boy and forced to play video games by an evil self-proclaimed ‘Game Master’. Game Master Arino will test your gaming skills by throwing various challenges at you in a wide variety of retro games including shooters, racing, action and even an epic role-playing game. To escape you must defeat him in every retro game challenge he throws at you.

But, as it transpires, the actuality of RGC is far more interesting. This is no repackaged Famicom-collection or retro-chic marketing opportunity. Rather, RGC concocts a variety of pastiches of recognisable classic titles from the period and challenges the modern player to undertake a series of tasks ranging from gaining high scores to performing specific special moves. Successfully completing the tasks unlocks the next challenge and eventually the next title. So far, so traditionally sequential and linear.

However, there is more to this than a series of loosely-connected mini-games. What is really interesting about RGC is found not so much its perfect emulation of imaginary historical games but in its simulation of the broader videogame culture in which these games exist. Central to RGC‘s game world and narrative structure is GameFan, the equally imaginary but equally plausible in-game magazine that drip-feeds information about forthcoming releases and dishes out cheatcodes, hints and tips. As Parkin points out, the writing style and format of this magazine will be immediately recognisable to those of us who grew up with titles like Zzap! 64 in the 1980s*. Twenty-something years ago, these magazines were the best – and really the only source – of information for the excited and excitable gamer. This was pre-Internet, don’t forget. Far more so than today where uninterrupted, raw footage of in-development games is broadcast in glorious high-definition is commonplace, magazines built up a loyal following and set the agenda for gamers’ anticipatory excitement as well as giving them new ways to play their existing games with cheats, hints, tips and high score challenges. By simulating GameFan and building at least part of the game’s structure around the magazine’s release schedule, RGC shows us that it isn’t really a game about games at all – whether retro or otherwise. Instead, it’s a game about being a gamer.

The game perfectly captures the sense of build/release excitement felt by the young consumer. The young Arino’s anticipation for newly announced titles is infectious. He palpitates at the mere whisper of a new game, trading techniques and secrets for his current favourites with friends in the school playground (relaying them to you breathlessly each day) and following the exploits of professional gamers through GameFan’s pages. [from Eurogamer]

As you can see from our mission statement, the NVA is not only concerned with documenting and preserving videogames because videogames on their own tell only part of the story. We’re interested in the cultures of play and playfulness that support games – the things gamers do with games, the ways they play them, the materials that surround them like magazines, instructions manuals, ads…Retro Game Challenge captures our interests pretty neatly and turns them into a playable experience.

Being able to play through the narrative of being a 1980s gamer – that’s a good idea for an exhibition, right…?

* footnote: the Def Guide to Zzap! 64, like the High Voltage SID Collection, is an excellent example of the kind of archival resource that gamers have created over the years. The sheer amount of work and attention to detail that goes into these projects – the clear demonstration that this stuff matters – is one of the reasons we formed the NVA.

The first details of this year’s GameCity have been announced. The festival will take place on 27 – 31 October, 2009 and it will be free. Well, the events will be free – you still have to buy your own food and drink. In fact, to show your appreciation, you could buy us all some food and drink as well. We’re bound to be hungry and thirsty by October ; )

Just like last year where we presented the first of our ‘Director’s Commentaries’ on the N64 classic Goldeneye 007 with the help of the splendid Martin Hollis and Dave Doak, the NVA will be out in force at GameCity Squared. We have a bunch of brilliant events lined up so keep your eyes glued to the sites and Twitter feed over the next few days, weeks and months for more information.

Look forward to seeing you all there.