Some of the classic games that you can play in this section of the exhibition were made back in the 1980s and 90s. Unless you have the hardware and consoles from the era, like this Amiga 500, it’d be pretty hard to experience them. But thanks to capture devices like the Retro Programmer-Dumper and Kryoflux High-definition Flux Sampler, we can play these vintage games on modern machines through a process called emulation.
Since 2011, we’ve partnered with university researchers to capture the history of local videogames and explore how to preserve Australian-made titles. Funded by the Australian Research Council, the Play it Again project started with 50 games written for microcomputers in the 1980s. While preservation often focuses on the game itself, hardware is equally important, as you can see with these specialist devices that keep these vintage games playable and able to be enjoyed today.
Curator notes
Play it Again is a research project that aims to document, preserve, and exhibit the history of the Australian videogame industry during the 1990s.
Videogames are complex digital artefacts and they are at risk. This project is a collaboration between university researchers at Swinburne and RMIT universities, ACMI and AARNet, aiming to preserve a selection of locally made games and recover their history for future generations. We are doing this by locating copies of the games, creating disk images and emulating the games, and gathering other relevant material such as interviewing developers and players of these games.
The project builds on the original Play it Again project which focused on curating a collection of Australian and New Zealand games of the 1980s. The 1980s collection addressed the emergence of videogames as central to the cultures of home computing. Collecting games for microcomputers, it critically addressed both the emergence of Australia’s early videogame design industry and the importance of hobbyist game design in this era. The 1990s iteration of Play It Again addresses a time when the videogames industry became more formalised and games and other software became more complex. How people played games was also changing with an increased focus on online and multiplayer experiences.
Games are not just artefacts, they are also experiences. Collecting information about people’s experiences with games is a key part of the project, and to this end we are conducting participatory research with the public. Please visit our Popular Memory Archive to read others’ memories of playing games in the period and contribute your own, upload your photos and share other ephemera.
The challenges of preserving and accessing complex digital cultural heritage are not unique to games. Many collecting institutions worldwide are facing similar challenges. As such, a key part of the project is evaluating the open-source platform Emulation as a Service (EaaS), developed by a team of researchers at the University of Freiburg. Getting first-hand experience of the EaaS platform is very valuable. It means that as well as safeguarding the outputs of Australia’s game industry, the project is generating new knowledge needed to inform future strategy and infrastructure investment aimed at making a range of born-digital artefacts accessible in the future.
Credits: Melanie Swalwell (Swinburne University), Helen Stuckey (RMIT), Cynde Moya (Swinburne University). This research was funded partially by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.
Related works
Content notification
Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.
Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.
Collection
Not in ACMI's collection
Previously on display
10 August 2023
ACMI: Gallery 1
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
188467
Curatorial section
The Story of the Moving Image → Games Lab → GL-04. Collector's Case → GL-04-C01