Jan 30, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

Jay Peters is a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has launched a digital library with more than 30,000 files of “industry ephemera” from the VGHF’s physical collection. The library, which is launching in early access, includes things like “more than 1,500 full-text searchable out-of-print video game magazines, never-before-seen game development assets, artwork, promotional materials, and more gaming relics,” according to a press release.

Library director Phil Salvador says in a video that this is just the “first wave of open access content” in the library and that VGHF will keep building the library “over the coming years.” I’d recommend watching this video to get an overview of the work involved to make things available; the details about scanning old video game magazines were particularly cool.

I really look forward to seeing what people discover from the library, but it will be hard to top my colleague Tristan Cooper’s great discovery of GamePro history regarding Garfield.