Tim Skelly was a counterculture icon.

Could Germany have invented video games? In 1960, a West German aviation company filed for two U.S. patents which portray an electronic screen-based competition played with joysticks. These are the Bölkow Entwicklungen patents. 🧵

Putting out a call: Do you know of early crafting systems in video games? We're looking for examples prior to 1993.

Podcasting is now twenty years old. And that means shows that ran for years are now just a bunch of URLs that resolve to nothing. Sometimes, someone uploads a full set of mp3s to archive.org, and that’s great! But you can’t easily listen the same way as your other podcasts. What if you could? 🧵

Now that it’s set up and working, I can say I’ve procured a copy of World Vending’s Invader Wars! This is a clone of Space Invaders from around 1979. The internet claims it’s the same as World Invaders, which sparked the lawsuit that wound up giving video games copyright protections in Japan!

We've passed 4000 magazines in our digital library! Every issue is cataloged and text-searchable, so it's easier than ever to do historical research with game magazines archive.gamehistory.org/folder/9a193... Here's a few recent highlights... 🧵

I'm starting to get texts about this now so I guess I need to say something: There is a fundraiser going around about a "preservation disaster" raising money right now that I highly advise you to stay very far away from. A particular British tabloid is running with it unquestioningly. Thread:

This week on The Digital Antiquarian: Outcast www.filfre.net/2025/09/outc...

Let's take a look back exactly 100 years ago at what coin machines were being advertised in Billboard, September 19, 1925. Wee Gee by Boyce Coin machine was a penny drop machine with a fortune telling gimmick - and a very funny name.

I paid real money dollars to acquire this—the greatest coin-op magazine cover ever published—so @gamingalexandria.bsky.social could scan it in ridiculously hi-res for the world to share and it was worth every penny.

Not food-related, but important information! The National Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong Museum (in beautiful Rochester, NY) has just announced the 2025 players' choice nominees for induction into the HoF! Thoughts? See link in replies to cast your vote!

Saw Jazz Emu tonight in Chicago! Great improv and some classically funky tunes. He also had an audience member play keys which was an awesome moment.

A post from three years ago: My dissection of the making of the first video game console and why Ralph Baer should not be called the singular inventor of the Odyssey - or even be first on the list. thehistoryofhowweplay.wordpress.com/2022/09/16/t...

"Will Pin Games Last?" From the year 2025: so long as mankind is still alive.

Fumito Ueda entered games through art, not play. Influenced by Flashback and Another World, he created ICO’s hand-holding bonds and Shadow of the Colossus’s haunting battles. His style reshaped design and inspired creators worldwide. ▶ www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgD-...

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, defining games of a new direction for game design. Learn about their visionary director Fumito Ueda - way more than what you'll find on Wikipedia - in the latest episode of @theycreateworlds.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgD-...

Billy Basso is a great, down to earth game dev. It was great to talk with him and hold this special event.

!!NEW VIDEO!! This time I cover Chunsoft’s Sound Novel franchise, a hugely important series in the history of Japanese video games that served as the progenitor to the visual novel genre and was a source of inspiration for all kinds of developers. WATCH - www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9BT...

Second day - second chance to come by!

New blog post! The Sega Master System... Girl? Another variant of Sega's 8-bit console that I haven't looked at before; I hope you enjoy! nicole.express/2025/sega-mi...

Today and tomorrow, Billy Basso of Animal Well fame will be joining us at Chicago Gamespace to talk about the game! www.chicagogamespace.com/exhibitions/... Come by if you're in the area - or if you're at VCF Midwest, Gamespace has a booth there!

We're a little late to tie this to the PlayStation 30th anniversary, but it's still worth looking back on this profile/pseudo oral history on PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi.

"Video Games Stage 3 From 1985 to 1990" and "Rebels, Pirates and Tentacles: The Story of LucasArts" #Kickstarter campaing will be in late october/beginning of November. Subscribe now :) www.kickstarter.com/projects/110...

A reminder that most early video game things don't have nice, clean, specific dates. Except Death Race, which inexplicably came out on April Fools Day 1976.

Nintendo put on their first Famicom/Game Boy Software Show in November of 1989. This annual exhibition was the premiere spot for Nintendo licensees to show off their fothcoming games. The first show was highlighted by Dragon Quest IV.

The second article is about the almost mythical Tolkien-inspired text adventure Ringen. It turns out almost everything previously "known" about this game was wrong. We have the full story, and a playable version of the game.

We have two major stories on Spillhistorie.no today, both available in English. The first is about SVHA Adventure, a unique version of Colossal Cave developed on a Norsk Data minicomputer in Norway in 1979. Lost and completely unknown until this year. We have the story & a playable version.

The OG version when Budge published through his own company. Trip Hawkins wrangled Budge to join in EA's first wave of games and republished it with sick album cover-esque art. It became one of the most influential computer tools of the 1980s, inspiring countless game-creation tools.

Looking back at the time we dug deep into Street Fighter 3 for a Polygon oral history.

One of Peo's tabletop all-win "spiral games" - Barnyard Golf! What's it got to do with golf? Beats me. But it's a glorious day to spin a ball through the lanes, so why not?

I'm seeing more and more news sites using Alinea Analytics estimates as if they were exact sales figures, when in fact they are only estimates (and sometimes way off the mark). By the way, do yourself a favor and stop using VGChartz, especially if you're a historian or journalist.

Satoshi Tajiri, Shikanosuke Ochi, and Yochi Maekawa pose as part of Sega's 81 "TV Game Idea Award" contest. Tajiri pitched the idea Spring Stranger, while Maekawa pitched Super Locomotive, the first Sega System 1 game. Ochi was head of engineering for Sega; one of their most crucial game creators.

One of our shared game history pet peeves @gamingalexandria.bsky.social is the proper pronunciation of Yamauchi. It's a very minor thing, but it's actually Ya-MOW-chi. I learned that from @onionsoft.net So far we've managed to correct @rerez.net ; hopefully more to come!

My presentation from Replaying Japan 2025 on eremeka is now online. earlyarcadesjapan.blogspot.com/2025/09/repl... I do not have the Q&A from the live portion, but hope to go back and add that eventually. #retroarcade #eremeka #japan #arcade

Our stream from last night is up! Rating the game flyers of 1979 - and a few from 1980. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROP0...

This week on The Digital Antiquarian: Choose Your Own Adventure www.filfre.net/2025/09/choo...

We'll be getting going on Flyer rating soon! We look at the best and worst of video game advertising for the arcade (and elsewhere). www.twitch.tv/play_history Join us for thrills, laughs, and more.

Cigarette vendors - not the sexiest coin-op machine, but a vital part of the industry after World War II. When games, with jukeboxes, became primarily stationed in bars and taverns, amusement operators kept operating cigarette vending machines - largely splitting it from traditional vending.

We have no good anniversary or excuse to repost the Polygon Final Fantasy 7 oral history, but that's never stopped us before.

In the latest Video Game HIstory Hour podcast, we're joined by pioneer game historian Leonard Herman, author of the first comprehensive book chronicling the history of the videogame industry, Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames, and its subsequent series: gamehistory.org/episode-139-...

We will tentatively be doing a fun stream tomorrow. I'm currently dealing with a major issue with my living space so it's pending that problem being fixed. All according to plan, we'll start at 2PM CST on my Twitch. www.twitch.tv/play_history

Numbered console generations were made up by a random Wikipedia user in 2004 in an attempt to standardize the "__ era game console" articles, and nobody ever corrected it. It's nonsense that no actual historian uses and you have permission to ignore it

Alex and Jeffery @theycreateworlds.bsky.social tackle the fascinating subject of Europe's console market in the 70s and early 80s! (Yes, it existed) www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzvU... Also, there's someone familiar at the end.

New blog post! The Unique High-Tech Computer... all this time and I've never taken a look at a *proper* famiclone, let's fix that now. nicole.express/2025/a-compu...

In 1980, Nichibutsu put out a brochure which advertised their company, including an extensive look inside their offices. A very rare peak at the extensive inner workings of even a small Japanese coin-op company. www.flyercade.com/nichibutsu-v...

If you are at DragonCon our presentation is at 4:00 Eastern! The History of the NES l.core-apps.com/dragoncon25/... See you there!

Need a distraction today? Check out this new release from JComX, who has been doing progressively more and more ambitious video game history vids. And maybe give him a follow on here.

If I were to refer to “it happening,” there’s a small chance I’d be talking about a Digital Eclipse Gold Master collection of Exidy + Ramtek; but more likely than not, I’m definitely talking about the thing.

Initially teased as a name celebrating the imminent end of America's WWII in 1944, Victory Derby was a bingo-style pinball that came out in 1946. The ending of manufacturing restrictions proved to be only a gentle boom for the coin-op industry as many arcades closed post-War.

This weekend is Street Fighter’s 38th anniversary, and if that’s not a good reason to look back on Polygon’s Street Fighter 1 oral history, I don’t know what is.