I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember. My dad bought an Odyssey 2 when I was only two. Some of my first spoken words came from games like, P.T. Barnum’s Acrobats! Our family got a Tandy IBM/PC compatible computer in 1987 or 88 when I was eight. Along with some financing software and print shop my dad also picked up Sierra On-line’s Space Quest. A year later my brother and I got a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas… I could go on, but the point is that I’m hard pressed to think of a time when PC or console gaming didn’t play a role in my life. Outside of Family,after Church, and Scouting, video gaming might be the most influential force in my life. I learned how to use DOS, script, program in BASIC, and edit autoexec.bat and config.sys files in order to play games. I spent my summer work money in order to play Final Fantasy VII…
What I’m trying to say is that they’ve been a pretty big deal. My father had horses and the Arizona wilds, my grandfather had trains. I had video games.
But, this stuff takes space: mental and physical. For awhile I could keep my computer and consoles game boxes at my parents’ but at some point they not only want you to move out but to take all your stuff with you to. I didn’t have room for all of it a few years back and no one was interested in taking it off my hands, and I didn’t have the time to try to sell it all on Ebay… So, it went to the municipal dump or the recycling center. I kept discs and manuals but the boxes, the “feelies,” and the installation guides all went. This last year I’ve moved three times and each time less stuff came with me. It gets harder and harder to justify carrying file cabinets and tupperware bins of old games around with you. Especially when sites like Desura, Gamersgate, GOG, and Steam can provide games and manuals that take up no physical space.
But, I didn’t just want to throw this all away. The PC or console game manual is extinct today. You’r lucky to get a folded insert with a button layout. Gone are the days of 100 pages manuals with charts and indexes. This is history and it should be preserved. Luckily, museums are springing up to do just that, one of them is just down the road from where I live. The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment‘s (the Made), in Oakland, CA , mission is to preserve PC and console gaming history, I contacted them and let them know that I had a stack of PC game manuals from the mid and late nineties and that they could have them if they wanted. They did. And, so last weekend I mailed off a 30+ pound box of manuals to them.
I feel better knowing that the flowchart to Civilization II or Alpha Centauri will be put to good use by some adult or child in the future to understand early video gaming culture and not rotting in a dump… The tax write off won’t hurt either.
Anyway, if you’re thinking of downsizing your collection, instead of Ebay or the dump, give a thought to preserving and sharing the hobby that has given you so much enjoyment.
Oh, and if you’re ever in Oakland on a weekend stop by the Made and play some classic PC or console games. Who knows, if you find yourself flipping through and old manual to a Sierra On-line game it might have been mine.
