Here at Guilty Gamer, we’re passionate about video games, especially retro gaming. Lately, I’ve been thumbing through more than a few back issues of GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly, thanks to my Boox Tab X C that offers a huge E Ink screen perfect for reading PDFs of magazines. What started as a fun little project to see how rose-tinted my glasses were, I have since fallen in love with reading through classic gaming mags, not only for inspiration for this very site, but simply out of my love of gaming.
So, imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that the Video Game History Foundation sells a blind-box subscription for physical vintage gaming magazines. It appears that in its attempt to collect and scan every gaming mag it can get its hands on, the organization has created a stockpile, which it then sells to the public through a subscription model to help fund its preservation of gaming history.
You can subscribe to old gaming magazines while helping a charity
It says it right on the landing page of the website, the “Video Game History Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit,” i.e., it’s a charity for preserving gaming history, including magazines. Since 2017, the organization has been building a digital library to support the study of video game history, providing a resource for the public to learn more about how games are created. It’s a worthwhile endeavor in my opinion, one that is certainly worth supporting.
You have three separate subscription options, and there’s a gift subscription for friends
Source: Video Game History Foundation
Since the Video Game History Foundation has collected so many video game magazines from several generations, you have a few options to pick from to dial in your subscription. You can choose the Surprise Me option, which mixes mags from the 1980s all the way to the 2000s, for $20 a month. If you prefer the older mags from the 1980s and 1990s, that’s $23 a month. If you opt for newer mags from the 2000s, that’ll be $15 per issue, which is the cheapest option.
However, if you are looking to gift the sub to a friend or family member, you can pay in advance for 3, 6, or 12 months, and the latter two offer discounts of 10%–15%. Every magazine ships in a mylar bag with a certificate of authenticity, although extra pack-ins like the free CDs and DVDs that came with some of these magazines will be missing.
Overall, $20 per magazine may sound expensive, but you do have to remember you’re also supporting the Video Game History Foundation in its efforts to preserve gaming history, all the while you get a slice of that history for your monetary support. It’s a win-win situation in my book, where this charity can help fund itself through deaccessioning its scanned magazines by selling them to fans of the project.
So, if you’d like to thumb through some gaming history by subscribing to a monthly delivery of a random gaming magazine, the Video Game History Foundation is certainly the first place you should look to get your gaming nostalgia fix. It’s a great way to take a trip down memory lane while ensuring future generations can enjoy the same.
Vintage Video Game Magazines
