Games and comics in Special Collections!

The Special Collections Research Center joins other archives and libraries across the state in celebrating North Carolina Archives Week, October 20-26, 2008. As part of the celebration, the Learning Commons and Special Collections have teamed up to provide a simulated classic gaming experience.

Play classic Atari games like Asteroids, Pong, Centipede, Missile Command and Combat on the Atari Flashback Classic Game Console now available in the Learning Commons. Revisit the 1980's using retro-style joysticks and 2-D graphics, blocky animation and lo-fi soundscapes. If you're nostalgic for those good, old fashioned console games of a quarter century ago that left more to the imagination than those hi-def games those kids are playing today, stop by and see if you've still got it when it comes to Outlaw and Pitfall!

This classic gaming experience highlights one of the Special Collections Research Center's latest acquisitions, the John V. Matthews Classic Game Collection. The Matthews Collection provides insight into the history of computing and computer game development and supports a growing strength of the NC State curriculum. Portions of the Matthews Collection are on display in the Special Collections Reading Room.

Also on display in the Reading Room are examples of another recent acquisition, the Scott Green Collections. The Green Collections contain comics-related publications and speculative fiction which support the study of the history of graphic works and science fiction. Finding aids for the Green Collections can be found at /findingaids/rbc00007/ and /findingaids/rbc00008/

North Carolina Archives Week's theme this year is "Memories of Sports and Leisure", so we hope the classic game experience and these displays help you flashback to your own memories of leisure time!

More information about NC Archives Week is available here: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/libraries.php?p=6941&more=1
and here:
http://www.ncarchivists.org/archives_week/index.htm

Happy Archives Week!