HomeGamesLaunch of the Play it Again Popular Memory Archive

Launch of the Play it Again Popular Memory Archive

This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series Play It Again

Please visit the new rebooted Play It Again Popular Memory Archive. This post celebrates the original launch but, like so many academic research projects, it has evolved. New institutions are involved and new people. But the same project is ongoing.

Digital History

Digital games make a significant but little known chapter in the history of the moving image in Australia and New Zealand.

This site aims to exhibit some of the significant local games of the 1980s era, and collect documentation in order to remember early games through popular memory.

In November 2013 the Popular Memory Archive focused on Australia’s Videogame Pioneers, looking at the stories of some of Australia’s earliest game designers. How they got started, how they went about inventing an industry and making the games they created.

Way of the Exploding Fist: a screenshot of the game intro

Some of the stories Play It Again collected

Do you remember the famous tape loading scream on The Way of the Exploding Fist?

Australian Pioneers: Shocking Tape Loading Stories…

What are your thoughts on the role that Britain’s bad weather had on the popularity of Melbourne Houses books for ROM disassembly and machine coding for the Spectrum?

Australian Pioneers: Did Britain’s bad weather breed a culture of tinkerers and crackers? Play It Again has thoughts.

Run5 from Play It Again

Did you play wargames by Strategic Studies Group? Did you know they are Australian? Australian Pioneers: SSG’s American Strategy

See video posted by Roger Keating of SSG on Good Morning Australia in 1985 featuring the newly minted Commodore 128. No one at the TV station could get the computer working, few people ever having used a home computer. Roger managed to get it set-up just as the interview started, his backside hitting the couch cushion as the camera rolled. SSG Interview on “Good Morning Australia” August 1985

Find Play It Again

To talk to the Play It Again People, go to the platform formerly known as Twitter @AgainPlay or Meta Facebook.

Republished with permission and updated in 2023 to reflect their new website and mend broken links.

DMZ reported on PIA’s Run5 project.

Series Navigation<< Play it again: What do Dragon, White Dwarf and The General have in common?Play it again: John Passfield, Australian game developer >>
Nalini
Nalinihttps://www.darkmatterzine.com
Nalini is an award-winning writer and artist as well as managing editor of Dark Matter Zine.

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