The work of a video game archivist is a noble task to take on, especially when they decide to make archived content accessible to the public.
Usually this is done through personal blogs compiling all their findings or through posts on The Internet Archive, which in this day and age is one of the most important tools we have for preserving digital media and making it accessible for future generations.
First reported by Exputer, video game archivist Dom AKA VGDensetsu has been preserving the works of video game artists on his personal blog for a number of years. This archival work has allowed many video game designers to claim their work as their own, something that has been difficult to do due to the messy history of individual game developers/designers not getting enough credit.
On January 2nd, VGDensetsu decided to release an 11GB folder of photos, screenshots, scans of articles, design documents, concept art and videos collected over “a dozen years”. These files include designs for unreleased consoles and games, in-development footage, concept art, and more.
VGDensetsu states that the data was collected from a number of sources, some of which no longer exist:
The vast majority of these documents, screenshots and photos are not mine. For example, the article scans come from sites, communities or individuals such as Abandonware magazines, Gaming Alexandria, Retromags, RetroCDN, Japanese Magazine Scans, as well as countless sites, forums and Twitter accounts (Unseen 64, Lost Levels, Assembler Games, Nintendo Ages, Atari Age , @Akamid83, etc.).
As for the draft documents, some of them were posted on Twitter by accounts that have since been closed.
As for why VGDensetsu bulked up his collection, he states on the Internet Archive’s site that “contrary to what the saying goes, the Internet forgets a lot of things.”
So what’s in this 11GB folder? Well, as someone who decided to download it, I can tell you: there is a many. If you want to go through the whole thing yourself, it’s free to download here. There is far too much to post all here, but here are a few highlights I found in my quick dig:
Leisure Suit Larry for the N-Gage
Moon 2 concept art
American McGee’s Oz development footage and concept art
Half-Life 2: Episode 3 in development builds
Fable Legends concept art
Halo for the PlayStation 2
Streets of Rage remake (Sega Genesis) concept art and gameplay footage
Pac-Man Adventures concept art by Don Bluth
Dragon’s Crown for Wii concept art
Mother for GameCube in development footage
If you’d like to further support VGDensetsu’s work, we have a link to his Patreon where he regularly updates patrons on new finds and archived content. Check it out!
