ICHEG Museum Buys Adol's Massive Import Game Collection

[portnoyd]

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/RochesterArts/2013/10/11/the-strongs-icheg-acquires-massive-japanese-video-game-collection/2967601/

Where was the Videogame History Museum on this?!

[Kitsune Sniper]

Would they even have one million dollars to give him?

[Bojay1997]

Would they even have one million dollars to give him?

I don't think the Strong actually paid anywhere close to his asking price from what I understand. Having said that, I don't think the Videogame History Museum missed out on much by not getting that collection as the vast majority of it was commercially released stuff and frankly, if you had a good size budget and a dedicated collection curator, you could probably put something together very similar in a pretty reasonable period of time between Ebay, Yahoo.JP auctions and private collectors and perhaps by going to the companies that still exist and requesting donations of archive copies.

On the other hand, the Strong has been very aggressive in getting a lot of one of a kind stuff like original artwork, design documents, prototypes and other items that the Videogame History Museum has now completely missed out on by not having a permanent facility and a sizeable endowment like the Strong has. Frankly, it might be too little too late if the Videogame History Museum ever tries to get to that next level as the Strong now has a pretty solid reputation, a great facility and frankly, a huge endowment and fundraising operation. The fact that no progress has been reported at all since the Kickstarter fundraiser beyond just continuing to attend the same gaming expos they have been attending for almost a decade now is pretty disappointing. I supported the Kickstarter and I continue to wish them luck, but unless I'm missing something, I have seen no real evidence of any progress at all in that direction and as such, you're going to see more and more stories in the future of really unique items being given to the Strong versus the Videogame History Museum.

[Dangerboy]

I don't think the Strong actually paid anywhere close to his asking price from what I understand. Having said that, I don't think the Videogame History Museum missed out on much by not getting that collection as the vast majority of it was commercially released stuff and frankly, if you had a good size budget and a dedicated collection curator, you could probably put something together very similar in a pretty reasonable period of time between Ebay, Yahoo.JP auctions and private collectors and perhaps by going to the companies that still exist and requesting donations of archive copies.

On the other hand, the Strong has been very aggressive in getting a lot of one of a kind stuff like original artwork, design documents, prototypes and other items that the Videogame History Museum has now completely missed out on by not having a permanent facility and a sizeable endowment like the Strong has. Frankly, it might be too little too late if the Videogame History Museum ever tries to get to that next level as the Strong now has a pretty solid reputation, a great facility and frankly, a huge endowment and fundraising operation. The fact that no progress has been reported at all since the Kickstarter fundraiser beyond just continuing to attend the same gaming expos they have been attending for almost a decade now is pretty disappointing. I supported the Kickstarter and I continue to wish them luck, but unless I'm missing something, I have seen no real evidence of any progress at all in that direction and as such, you're going to see more and more stories in the future of really unique items being given to the Strong versus the Videogame History Museum.

Bojay's support of Port's comment is fairly interesting. As someone who didn't back the kickstarter for the VGHM...I would think those who did would be a lot more concerned for such reasons that Bojay pointed out.

[FrankSerpico]

What's up with the awful cropping on the article? Am I supposed to be reading this on a kindle, or perhaps my Dreamcast?

[Greg2600]

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/RochesterArts/2013/10/11/the-strongs-icheg-acquires-massive-japanese-video-game-collection/2967601/

Where was the Videogame History Museum on this?!

You need a psychiatrist, and let it go. The venomous grudge is ridiculous.

[badinsults]

The Strong Museum is definitely the way to go if you want to donate any rare video game items. I am donating all my SNES prototypes to them after I am finished with them. It is excellent they were able to get Adol's large Japanese set, which probably saved them thousands of hours if they were trying to get the items individually.

[Bojay1997]

Bojay's support of Port's comment is fairly interesting. As someone who didn't back the kickstarter for the VGHM...I would think those who did would be a lot more concerned for such reasons that Bojay pointed out.

Support is not really the right word. I don't think either the Strong or the VGHM really needed that collection. On the other hand, I do agree that there has been nothing in the way of public progress or development of the permanent VGHM and therefore a continuing loss of tremendous opportunities to obtain one-of-a-kind historical artifacts over the past few years. For example, the Strong got a bunch of Will Wright's original design documents and sketch/design logbooks for pivotal titles such as SimCity and the Sims a couple of years ago directly from Mr. Wright. They also more recently received a donation from Ralph Baer of many of his original design and engineering documents and notes spanning most of his video game related career. They also just acquired Videotopia and that exhibit and the artifacts contained therein are now part of their permanent collection. While it's not a competition by any means, when you're not even in the race in any meaningful way, it becomes pretty tough to make a compelling argument to donate rare items to what is essentially a private collection without any real plan or viable means of becoming a true museum and permanent repository.

[Rickstilwell1]

At the same time, if a natural disaster occurs maybe it's not a bad thing that everything is not in one place.

[badinsults]

At the same time, if a natural disaster occurs maybe it's not a bad thing that everything is not in one place.


With the proliferation of the Internet, it is very key to have electronic copies of everything in a museum collection. With video games, the art is no necessarily a physical object but rather the game itself, which is just a computer program. If there are electronic backups, then not all is lost if there is a disaster.

[Ed Oscuro]

Wow that article is terribly formatted, and what's up with a local paper running a press release?

In terms of "eggs all in the same basket," I'll put my money with an organization that has an endowment and donor-friendly mission and rules to treat the organization like a museum. I don't know about the other museum, but from the standpoint of administration, you don't want a single person to have personal ownership of a collection - they could sell it, or fall on hard times and have it become a liability they can't sustain, to the detriment of the collection. Both are bad possibilities that the institutional organization prevents from happening.

Worrying about natural disasters in the Rochester, NY area is pretty laughable. As long as they're climate-controlled against damn and humidity, the collection items will be fine.

Just looking at the websites for each group, it's astonishing how big the difference between the two is: The Strong makes it easy to find lots of information that makes you like them and donate them. It's a roughly 45-year-old institution with ties to other major collections and academia, and the website is resplendent (yes! that word!) with information about education efforts and other goals. While The Strong's website isn't exactly cutting-edge, it's competent and professional in content and design, and they are happy to feature one of their recent staffers on the front page.

The Videogame History Museum's website, to put it bluntly, doesn't impress, with a bargain-basement template design, strange design elements, and one orange photo of some guys at a convention playing arcade games. There is no "hook" on the main page or even the "About" page other than a blurb about their "vision" of having a pleasant little thing going in San Jose, which raises the question of what research and reference benefit the museum actually offers right now (this is at least as important as having a space where people can wander through - imagine the big natural history museums without archaeologists or paleontologists). In fact the website looks a tad shady with a PayPal logo smack-dab in the center of the main page.

I've got no beef with the VHM but I think we need to be pushing all parties to be more professional and to accomplish more. The VHM is not making the case very strongly that they will be the best steward of your contributions.