National Film & Sound Archive To Add Australian Games To Its Collection
September 26, 2019
Written by Jamie Galea
The National Film & Sound Archive has announced they will be adding Australian video games into its archive for preseveration purposes. The announcement comes as the Game Masters exhibition, originally created by the Australian Center for the Moving Image in 2012, returns to Australia for a six month tour at The National Film & Sound Archive in Canberra.
The NFSA have announced that eight games will make up the initial additions to its archive, spanning over 30 years of Australian game development. The NFSA will also attempte to preserve any additional and available archival materials, such as storyboards, artwork, soundtracks and publicity materials. The games include:
- The Hobbit (Beam Software, 1982)
- Halloween Harry (Interactive Binary Illusions / Sub Zero Software, 1985/1993)
- Shadowrun (Beam Software, 1993)
- L.A. Noire (Team Bondi, 2011)
- Submerged (Uppercut Games, 2015)
- Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017)
- Florence (Mountains, 2018)
- Espire 1: VR Operative (Digital Lode, 2019)
“Today we welcome video games into our collection of more than 3 million items” says Jan Müller, CEO of the NFS. “The collection represents the cultural diversity and breadth of experience of all Australians, and it is constantly evolving just like our creative industries.”
Speaking further on this is Ron Curry, CEO of the International Games & Entertainment Association: “It’s very exciting to see a national collecting institution acknowledging the increasingly important role of video games in the life of all Australians. Games are a major part of contemporary popular culture; an artistic, storytelling and technological achievement, as well as an industry that contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to the Australian economy. We look forward to working with the NFSA as they start adding games to their vast collection.”
Game Masters is running at the NSFA from 27 September 2019 – 09 March 2020 at the National Film & Sound Archive, more information is available at this link.
