We should be proud of our heritage. As an Australian, I am truly proud of our video gaming pedigree. From well known development and publishing houses like Beam Software, Melbourne House and Armchair Entertainment just to name a few, to well known and much loved games like Way Of The Exploding Fist and Hungry Horace. Pioneers like Alfred Milgrom should be lauded, as he put Australia on the map when it came to video games development. Luckily for us, there is now the Play It Again project.
Play It Again is a game history and preservation project focusing on locally (Australian and New Zealand) created digital games from the 1980s. The site aims to collect documentation in order to remember early games through popular memory. The project is a collaboration between researchers at several universities in Australia and New Zealand, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the New Zealand Film Archive and the Berlin Computerspiele Museum.
The Popular Memory Archive aims to showcase some of the significant local games of the 1980s. It features information on a curated selection of 50 games. In November, the Popular Memory Archive is focusing on Australia’s Videogame Pioneers, looking at the stories of some of Australia’s earliest game designers – how they got started, how they went about inventing an industry and making the games they created.
You can contribute as well by sharing your memories of playing games that were created in Australia and New Zealand. What are you waiting for, go and document your own piece of gaming history.