The Computer & Video Game Archive physical collection is closed, as is the Duderstadt Center. Our staff won't be answering our phone or returning calls while the building is closed, but feel free to reach out to us via email at video.games@umich.edu with questions or requests for remote consultations related to video game studies. We're happy to help. The gamer community is a tight-knit group, and we're thinking about you during this time of social distancing. We hope you...
The mission of the University of Michigan Library’s Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA) is to preserve and provide access to games for current and future study and research. In a world where digital games are becoming more prevalent than physical games, preserving these digital games can be a challenge. The CVGA recently received special funding from the library to purchase a large number (approx. 180) of games from Limited Run Games, a "publisher of limited run physical games for...
At the beginning of every year, we like to look back at which games were most popular over the course of the previous year. Some games, like the FIFA series and Super Smash Bros., remain relatively constant in popularity over the years, while others are surprise hits. Here are our most popular games for 2019, all of which were played at least 50 times over the course of the year.
The end of the semester is already approaching, as are holiday breaks. Here is what our hours of operation will look like over the next month or so. We'll be closed Wednesday - Friday over Thanksgiving week. For the first two weeks of December, we plan to be open with our normal hours, with our last day open for the semester on Friday, December 13th. Then we'll plan to reopen on the first day of Winter classes: Wednesday, January 8th.
It's that time again to register for Winter classes. Do you find yourself wondering how to work your love of video games into your course selections? Here are some courses that might help you do just that.
It's been a busy year in the CVGA so far, and we thought it was time to look at which games are peaking everyone's interest in 2019 so far. FIFA is being played about 3 times as often as anything else, with Assassin's Creed and Spider-Man next in the running. Then we have some of our usual contenders, with the Mario Kart series dominating much of the list. By comparison, we also show our Top Ten List of All Time. FIFA was most popular in years 2013-15, but the Black Ops series...
Our Atari 7800 stopped working after one of the tabs on the cartridge port broke off, resulting in games that wouldn’t sit properly in the system and were therefore unplayable. We only have one Atari 7800 system, so we were eager to try whatever we could to repair it. So when our student worker Justin found the specs online to 3D-print the replacement part we needed, we were eager to give it a try.
