UT Video Game Archive

If there's two things I believe in, it's historic preservation (kinda jives with photography, right?) and video games. Put those two together, and it sounds like the new UT Video Game Archive at the Center for American History. As a guy who proudly sports a full size Ms Pac-Man in his living room, I could not resist the chance to throw money at this cause celebre, especially if it would get me the chance to attend a party on the sprawling property of Richard Garriott.


I first encountered "Lord British" on the Commodore 64. That's a screen shot of Ultima III, the game that seriously interfered with my third-grade year. So much in fact that it possessed my friend Brennen to create this masterpiece of fan artwork...



In addition to great game play, Ultima III possesses one of the greatest game soundtracks ever. If you haven't already, you should play it now for that reason alone. Software developers keep porting this game to new operating systems after 24 years for good reason. But back to the party...



There was a small tent full of full size arcade and classic console games. These two guys are playing a 1972 prototype Odyssey console, which is the brown box you see on top of the monitor.



Music and auction took place in Garriott's medieval style Curtain Theatre, which is modeled somewhat after the Globe Theatre, or so they say.



This shot was a fun test of pushing the new Canon 1D Mark III to its limits. Taken at ISO 6400, you can still clearly make out raindrops streaking in front of the stage. Nice.



The band featured this guy, known as Fat Man, who wasn't really fat. His trench coat was covered in artwork from tons of different video games, which left me wondering how many of them he worked on.



And just before the live auction, Lord British himself gave a little speech.



A two-man bidding war hit an incredible $5,000 for a plastic tub filled with about a dozen early-run editions of Origin games from Garriott's personal collection. If any one item drove that price, I'm guessing it was the "version 1" copy of Akalabeth, of which Garriott announced that only 20 copies ever existed--so few because this was the famous homemade Ziploc bag version that preceded the fancy commercial distribution. All said, it was an interesting evening, and the Mojitos were damn near flammable.