As someone nostalgic and of a certain age, I recently bought a VHS recorder just for the retro thrill of it. Then I won a 32-inch CRT television at an auction in Shepton Mallet. Partly, this was to play some old videos I found in my loft, including one of me on a 1990s youth TV show discussing sexism and Tomb Raider. (For the record, I was against the sexism.) But it was also because I wanted a new way to spend my money on fragile video-game nostalgia.
The rise of the games industry in the 1980s and ’90s coincided with the home-video boom, and the two crossed paths in many interesting ways. There are obvious treasures I want to get my hands on: VHS copies of Street Fighter: The Movie and the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, of course, along with early game-inspired hits like The Last Starfighter, The Wizard, and WarGames. I rented most of these from my local video shop in the ’80s—which, like many others, also sold computer games from the budget publisher Mastertronic, another crossover between these two formats that fascinates me.
There are rarer videos I’m hoping to track down, too. That era saw a wave of tie-in cartoons as TV channels began to grasp the medium’s huge appeal. There are VHS tapes compiling episodes of the notoriously bad Pac-Man and Pole Position cartoons from the early ’80s, and later, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, a U.S. series that blended animation and live-action.
I’m also bidding on a VHS tape of the wonderfully awful Captain N: The Game Master, a cartoon about a boy transported into a video game world through his TV, forced to battle for survival in familiar Nintendo settings. There are even some genuinely good game cartoons on VHS, like the anime versions of Street Fighter and Tekken.
Before the internet, videotapes were valuable promotional tools for game publishers. Arcade companies like Konami and Irem produced promo tapes of their newest machines for distributors and arcade owners. In the ’90s, Capcom ran a Japanese fanclub that sent out videotapes to members featuring trailers and developer interviews, alongside a magazine and later a newsletter. Many of these gems can still be found on eBay and Japanese auction sites (I use the excellent Doorzo app for this).
U.K. gaming magazines often included cover-mounted VHS tapes filled with demos, trailers, and tips. When I worked on the Dreamcast magazine DC-UK in 1999, our first issue came with a demo video featuring clips of various launch titles—and it was an absolute nightmare to put together. I asked on BlueSky for memories of similar tapes. Author Mike Diver mentioned Mean Machines magazine’s classic Sega Preview Tape featuring Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and, as he recalls, “the worst Greendog footage you ever did see.” Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude! was a terrible scrolling platformer I’d have forgotten entirely if not for that tape. The footage is indeed bad—you can watch the whole thing online.
Gen Z teenagers, tired of being fed content through smartphones and subscriptions, seem to be embracing physical media. Vinyl was the Trojan horse that opened the gates—now kids are buying old-school digital cameras and building DVD collections. The growing interest in VHS and even Betamax tapes is partly due to nostalgia for the old rituals of renting, playing, and kindly rewinding these arcane objects. But for video game fans, there’s another dimension: videotapes are chunky, come in big boxes with lovely artwork, and feel like tangible pieces of history.Just like old video game cartridges, the images they generate are glitchy and low-resolution, with the patina of another era.
I know I’ll end up ordering a videotape mold remover from the wonderful fansite VHS is Life. It’s worth the expense and effort to rescue some sadly infected treasures, like my copy of the first Pokémon movie from 1998. They reveal an emerging medium making tentative connections with other screen cultures. Since the game industry has been terrible at archiving its own history, anyone who buys and cares for these fragile objects is performing a vital act of preservation and curation.
You may find many of these video demos and cartoons on YouTube, but the primary artifact itself—its packaging, smell, quirks, and frailties—is always part of the experience of understanding and appreciating history. That’s what I tell myself, anyway, each time I quietly increase my bid on a Japanese rental copy of the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie I’ve just found on eBay. If I don’t buy it and care for it, it might be lost forever, right? I can’t risk that.
What to Play
While we’re on a retro trip, I’ve just started a 1990s football management career with Nutmeg!, a nostalgic footie sim crossed with a deck-building card game launching later this week on PC. Using real player names from the era, you can build a squad, train your players, select formations, and then take part in card-battle-based matches. There are a lot of systems to learn, but you pick it up quickly, and the presentation is wonderful. It uses recognizable relics from the 1980s and 1990s, including old PCs, cork boards, and a league table resembling those free charts offered with football magazines at the start of every season. Fans of old titles like Kevin Toms Football Star Manager or Championship Manager will relish every moment.
Available on: PC
Estimated playtime: 90 minutes, plus many, many hours of extra time
What to Read
Fortnite creator Epic Games announced it is laying off more than 1,000 staff. CEO Tim Sweeney blamed difficult industry conditions and a downturn in player engagement with Fortnite. The global games industry has seen tens of thousands of layoffs in the past three years. Rising game development costs, combined with intense competition from other digital entertainment like social media and streaming TV, are putting huge pressure on publishers.
Another day, another developer realizing they accidentally left some AI-generated art in their game. This time it’s Crimson Desert creator Pearl Abyss, which released a statement explaining that visual props created by generative AI unintentionally made it into the final release instead of being replaced by human-created art. A similar curious accident befell 11 Bit Studios, which apologized for leaving AI-generated assets in The Alters, and Sandfall Interactive, which was stripped of its Indie game awards after experimental AI art was found in the finished release (it was patched out five days later).
If ever there was a game crying out for its own theme park, it was Minecraft—and thankfully, the gods of brand extension were listening. Minecraft World is coming to Chessington World of Adventures in 2027. I look forward to gangs of teenagers running through the carefully styled biomes, throwing popcorn, and yelling “Chicken Jockey!”
I’m a big fan of books that collect video game essays, and a lovely new example has just been published: CTRL: Essays on Video Games from the Lil…The Input Press is a collection of engaging, humorous, and insightful writing about games from novelists like Lisa McInerney, as well as game creators such as the legendary Brenda Romero.
What to read next:
– Resident Evil at 30: how Capcom’s horror masterpiece has survived and thrived
– In the cutthroat world of online gaming, there are no hits anymore—just survivors
– Subnautica 2 publisher’s CEO used ChatGPT in a failed attempt to avoid paying a $250 million bonus to the head of its own studio, court hears
– The Mortuary Assistant – a game-inspired horror title that simulates morgue work with conviction | ★★☆☆☆
Question Block
Staying on our retro theme, this question came from Howard via email:
“I’m sure I remember a quiz show from the 1980s where contestants played video games against each other in several rounds, but I can’t remember what it was called or which games were featured. Did this really happen, or did I imagine it?”
You didn’t imagine it! I believe you’re thinking of the BBC children’s quiz show First Class, which started as a one-off pilot from BBC Wales in 1984 before becoming a regular teatime program from 1986 to 1988. The show featured two teams of three children answering trivia questions about movies, music, and general knowledge, mixed with gaming rounds. Games included Paperboy, Hyper Sports, and the skateboarding simulation 720°, and presenter Debbie Greenwood even used a computer to keep score.
However, it wasn’t the first TV quiz show to include video game rounds. Starcade aired in the U.S. from 1982 and featured dozens of games like Donkey Kong, Crystal Castles, and BurgerTime. Later, in 1991, another U.S. show called Video Power arrived, co-hosted by Terry Lee Torok, who also provided commentary for the Nintendo World Championships esports events.
But the peak of the format was the UK’s GamesMaster, which aired on Channel 4 from 1992 and was brilliantly hosted by Guardian games columnist Dominik Diamond. This is surely a concept that deserves a revival for the 2020s—perhaps by blending the 2000s game show 1 vs. 100 with Fortnite?
If you have a question for Question Block—or anything else to say about the newsletter—email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about the mission to save the gaming culture of the VHS era one eBay bid at a time
Beginner General Questions
Q What exactly do you mean by gaming culture of the VHS era
A It refers to the unique world of video games from the late 1970s through the early 1990s when games were often promoted reviewed and shared through VHS tapes This includes video rental store promos mailorder game previews TV commercials recorded gameplay from friends and early strategy guides on tape
Q Why is this worth saving Cant we just watch old game footage on YouTube
A While modern archives are great the original VHS tapes are physical artifacts They capture the raw unfiltered experiencecommercials for products that no longer exist a friends handwritten label or the static and tracking lines from a wellworn tape Its about preserving the tangible history and the specific feel of that time
Q What kind of VHS tapes are you looking for on eBay
A Anything gamerelated This includes
Official promo tapes from companies like Nintendo or Sega
Recorded episodes of TV shows about games
Homerecorded gameplay with commentary
Instructional or cheat tapes
TV commercials recorded offair
Rare video game mailorder catalogs on tape
Q Isnt this just hoarding old junk
A Not at all Its curation and digital preservation The goal is to rescue these tapes from landfills digitize them to prevent degradation and organize the content so it can be studied and enjoyed by future generations much like a museum archivist would
Advanced Collector Questions
Q Whats the biggest challenge in preserving these tapes
A Magnetic decay and stickyshed syndrome VHS tapes degrade over time The binder that holds the magnetic particles to the tape can break down causing the tape to become sticky and shed oxide which can ruin both the tape and the VCR used to play it Time is running out to digitize them properly
