The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. houses an incredible collection of knowledge, with a total inventory of over 167 million items. Books, audio recordings, photographs, maps; the Library has almost every scrap of information ever committed to media. The Library of Congress has a collection of video games that was originally limited to 10 games, one of which was Super Mario Bros. 3. It seems that the Library also holds some relics of the past in the form of video game strategy guides.
Once the only way to learn the secrets of a video game, the strategy guide was a valuable tool for gamers. Before the internet made it easy to search for that last red coin on a stage in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, a strategy guide was seen as an essential item if a player got stuck. Now, if someone would like to know where all the green stars are in World 2-2 of Super Mario 3D World, it’s as simple as clicking a link.
Efforts to preserve video game history have taken larger, more important steps in recent years with organizations like the Video Game History Foundation’s efforts to preserve classic games’ source code. The Library of Congress has been preserving game media across a range of platforms for years now. While the bulk of the collection is made up of video games, there are a strange scattershot of strategy guides included in the collection. A BradyGames Megaman X8 guide can be found at the Library of Congress alongside a Prima Games guide for Level-5’s Action RPG Rogue Galaxy.
The list is nowhere near close to the number of strategy guides that have been printed since the dawn of video games. Almost every major release had a strategy guide attached to it, either in an official or unofficial capacity. But the collection at least helps establish the history behind strategy guides. In video games’ earlier days, it was quite common for historians and others in charge of determining something’s cultural value to look their nose down at video games. Now books about the industry are seen as having worth. Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom the book from the legendary Nintendo CEO will likely find a place in the Library of Congress sooner rather than later.
The Library of Congress admits to not having an extensive collection of hardware to match the game library, and grabbing a Nintendo PlayStation prototype would do a lot to fix that. It is great to see all facets of gaming culture being preserved for future generations to study, especially if those future gamers can’t find a way to perform a Shoryuken in Street Fighter II on an ancient Super Nintendo.
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