GDC 2013: Videogame History Museum Highlights

All photos in this interview were courtesy of our friend John Celentano of Unwinnable.com, be sure to check their coverage of GDC too!

ideo game historians and Classic Gaming Expo founders John Hardie, Sean Kelly and Joe Santulli started collecting videogames and related memorabilia before it was cool.

No, seriously. They’ve been at this since the 1980s, way before the thought of “collecting” these products occurred to anyone else. These and other individuals like them searched for every obscure product they could find. No eBay stores. No Craigslist. Just patience, timing, and a constant interest in finding something neat and ever so obscure. Think thrift shop hunting even, only with a few more closed environments and “garbage” nobody wanted anymore. Hell, in once case, another person’s trash became everyone else’s most coveted prototype console: the Sega Neptune.

As a result of maintaining greater collections and running a successful Expo in the Las Vegas area over the years, the three later assembled The Videogame History Museum, a non-profit organization devoted to the sharing and preservation behind the rich history of the medium.

Prototypes, unreleased ROMs, and other items of interest filled tables and cases at their setup during this year’s GDC. However, this was only a fraction of the entire collection.

“The classic gaming expo we do in Las Vegas is the only time we have a bulk of our collection on display,” Hardie said. “Anytime we do E3, GDC, D.I.C.E. or PAX, you’re only getting a small piece of it.”

The Videogame History Museum officially received crowdsourced funding in July 2011 by using Kickstarter. Hardie mentioned how the actual funding process started slow, and then skyrocketed after an article on Gamasutra featured an article on the three’s attempts to assemble the official organization. Since then, the Videogame History Museum has continued their focus on sharing timeless relics of gaming’s past with the rest of the world.

After all, like film and literature, video games matter too.

Each of the three founders has a penchant for certain classic gaming companies. For instance, Hardie considers himself a master of the Atari world. Kelly, though also multifaceted in what he collects, has one of the largest collections of Intellivision games. Santulli, who was unfortunately able to attend, considers himself more of a Sega enthusiast.

Sega Power

Sega themes dominate the overall GDC display, which feature a playable Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis, Game Gear, and even a Nomad. Yes, even Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker sat on a table with a playable Genesis model 3. The exhibit also features miscellaneous Sega items, including the fabled Neptune prototype that never saw much daylight. As for acquiring the item, Sega didn’t seem to care. They simply parted with it. As Hardie and Kelly said, obtaining many of these items simply involved being at the right place at the right time.

Another key feature of the Sega display features a table full of old Sega Visions magazines and a TV playing commercials for various Sega consoles. Overall, it’s a heavenly experience for any Sega fan.

Couching for Atari

When one visits Hardie’s biography, they’ll notice how he once sold his Atari 2600 for the newly released 5200. And though the 5200 itself receives some heat, Hardie was still amazed with the overall improvement of graphics and sound. These new 5200 games did a greater job of emulating authentic arcade experiences, a highly innovative change back then. Even now when comparing the two systems, one can’t deny the fact that the 5200 definitely was, at first glance, a super system indeed.

Parts of Hardie’s collection also feature a prototype design for the 2600, a classic atari Game Brain unit, and one charming keystone any Atari would appreciate: An Atari 2600 on a table with games connected to some crappy TV from the 70s, all experienced from a flowery, battle-hardened couch.

Growing History

Video gaming’s rich history lives on through organizations like these. The fact that they showcase old generations of electronic entertainment to new and curious audiences is nothing short of spectacular. It’s an excellent merger of past, present, and future generations. Even now, the museum’s advisory board includes game historian Frank Cifaldi, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, and Ralph Baer, the creator of the world’s first home video game console.

Hardie and Kelly hope to see the traveling showcase reach more cities as time progresses. Since they can only display so many games at events like GDC, the founders hope to someday display more additions of their collections at retro events like Portland’s Retro Gaming Expo and

“What we put out here is cool. Everybody comes in and they enjoy it,” said Kelly. “But what we put out at our Classic Games Expo is 10-to-20 times as much and, in our opinion, 10-to-20 times as cool.”

Here’s to the expansion of an already rich history in the world's most interactive electronic medium.