"They preserve them as best they can, perhaps without even knowing that’s what they’re doing, but in the understanding that no archives may be kept, no histories written, and that what sustains their digital lives is the lived-out, written-down, spoken word." Reminds me of the "what five pages would you print out" conundrum, and the end of Fahrenheit 451; walking the woods, chanting entries from Encyclopedia Dramatica

"...with that sad note from Sarinee Achavanuntakul, one of the most enduring (if illegal) tributes to gaming history came to an end." Home of the Underdogs is no more; just gone, like that. It wasn't that it had the best games or the worst games, or that they were illegal, or free; it was history, and childhood, and the smell of cardboard and boot disks, all wrapped up in one giant cathedral to Good Old Games. Most things I played on my old DOS machine were there. A shame; I hope they're elsewhere. This is why we need proper game archives.

Eric Kaltman is blogging the Cabrinety Collection, and he's doing a great job so far.

"The Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing at Stanford University consists of several thousands of pieces of computer hardware and software. Dating primarily from the 1980s and 1990s, the collection chronicles the formative era of personal computing, specifically computer gaming." Amazing.

"We need a National Videogame Archive. Luckily, we've just started one. We're going to preserve videogames for the nation. For better or worse. Forever. It's going to be brilliant..." Oh, that it is. Jonathan Smith on *every single bloody thing* that's perfect about Micro Machines 2 on the Mega Drive is a highlight so far.

"I’m excited to pass along the news that a team of dedicated Wing Commander fans and Origin Museum curator Joe Garrity, recently completed their 7-day archiving grind of almost 1 Terabyte of data at Mythic Studios." A remarkable slice of gaming history, and great to know that Mythic want to preserve all this stuff. More like this, please.

Building your own version of Higinbotham's oscilloscope tennis game, to work on a real oscilloscope.

"...visiting [Lego's] secret vault guarding almost every Lego set ever manufactured—touched me in a way I didn't expect. This wasn't amazement or simple awe... these were tickets to ride a time portal to emotions and simpler days long forgotten."

Awesome, rich post by Dan Hill on his favourite music of the year. Lots to sink one's teeth into later, especially his wonderful selections from the YouTube archive