Eaten by a Grue

Here are the top games played in the archive for the month of August. Brawl is ahead of Melee, but I'm sure that will change now that students are returning. And people have been playing a couple of older favorites while the archive has been relatively quiet. Should be interesting to see what the Fall brings!

The CVGA will be featured on next week's special episode of Double Jump about Gaming & Libraries. Double Jump is "Michigan's only local game show," and "explores gaming as a legitimate and mainstream form of art and entertainment." They've posted a Sneak Peak to next week's episode on YouTube, which contains our segment.

Julia Lange, a doctoral student who has been making occasional use of the CVGA for her research, was at E3 earlier this summer, and shared with us a few photos she snapped with her cellphone: Thanks Julia!

Authored by Joanna Price: Your friendly CVGA intern, here, to tell you about a new and exciting group. The Computer and Video Game Archive is proud to host a Girls' Gaming Group, the 2nd and 4th Thursday evenings of every month, from 6-9 PM at the archive. Beginners welcome! If you're interested, please join our Facebook group.

The organizers of the annual Classic Gaming Expo - John Hardie, Sean Kelly, and Joe Santulli - have a mission. They want to start a physical museum that collects everything about classic games - every version of every game, design & developer notes, promotional materials, backups of unreleased games, etc.  The exact location is yet to be determined, but San Jose, CA is their stated goal.

We recently had the opportunity to host a social event for the A2 GeekTour, whose aim is to create "a chance for geeks to get together and explore a physical space that has some claim to geekdom." Highlights included the group experiencing moments of nostalgia as they checked out our Atari games and some of the older equipment, as well as an opportunity for them to rock out with a few Rock Band songs, complete with the string guitar controller.

For those who are interested in working at the archive, now is the time to apply! Go to the Student Employment website and apply using the online system (Job ID 21972).

Here are our top games from last month. A class project involving Okami and a fan of the Jak & Daxter series have brought some new names to the list.

The Hand Eye Society will be running two game incubators in Toronto over the next several months, both of which focus on making it easier for women to get involved in creating video games. The group aims to get more underrepresented groups involved in game creation, and is working to dispel certain myths about game development that prevent people from trying it out, such as the assumption that developers have to be experienced in programming and mathematics. According to their article in the Torontoist, anyone who has "completed a project in a creative medium" is eligible to participate.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda series, our colleague Joe Dresch has put together an informative display for the archive that celebrates its legacy. Each smaller section shares a piece of the Legend of Zelda story.