Over on the @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social Discord we've been showing off and playing with our work-in-progress digital library (soon!), this is going to be such a great resource. I just asked it to show me every video game magazine in our collection in chronological order that says "Metroidvania." - ThreadSky

frankcifaldi.bsky.social • 31 days ago

Over on the @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social Discord we've been showing off and playing with our work-in-progress digital library (soon!), this is going to be such a great resource. I just asked it to show me every video game magazine in our collection in chronological order that says "Metroidvania."

Comments

plusultraninja.bsky.social•31 days ago

I'm looking forward to the digital library. I'll have to share it with one of my professors I had years ago. I learned about game studies from her.

cunninglinguist69.bsky.social•27 days ago

I’m so excited for this!!

adamgothelf.bsky.social•31 days ago

I wonder if this could finally debunk or prove the urban legend that Scott Sharkey coined the original moniker. 🧐

hkt3030.bsky.social•31 days ago

As you can probably imagine, I am extremely excited about this.

topherbot9000.bsky.social•30 days ago

So good. Can't wait to meticulously read every reference to Ristar from the last 30 years.

fror.net•30 days ago

wow that's awesome! looking forward to it :)

ryamoureux.bsky.social•31 days ago

This is really, really cool!

kbabz.bsky.social•31 days ago

I've been curious: search double jump! I've always wondered what the earliest example is!

cosmo0.fr•31 days ago

Amazing! Is it simply OCR or more than that?

hadess.net•31 days ago

Is this something that you would need physically backed material to provide, or could it be extended to cover other geos/lamguages if there were existing troves of data?

frankcifaldi.bsky.social•31 days ago

I don't know what I expected but yeah I guess "gamers" goes all the way back to literally the first video game magazine

murlin.bsky.social•31 days ago

This is actually an interesting one to know, there’s a line I hear pretty commonly that “it was a marketing term invented by EA and nobody ever said it before then”

kyleor.land•31 days ago

Does it reach further back past that?

frankcifaldi.bsky.social•31 days ago

Physically yes but not yet digitally. We have 70s mags that cover games like video enthusiast stuff, coin-op trade etc. and the occasional weird wild card, like a 1950s science magazine discussing theoretical chess AI.

katewillaert.bsky.social•31 days ago

However, if @kyleor.land was asking whether the word “gamer” went further back, the answer is “yes, by roughly a few centuries.”

frankcifaldi.bsky.social•31 days ago

oh, right, you probably meant the term and not the library...

kyleor.land•31 days ago

I did mean the term, but your answer was also interesting!

roto13.bsky.social•31 days ago

Maybe people can stop complaining about it now.

earth-64.com•31 days ago

that then 15 year old, the First Gamer...

donpetals.bsky.social•29 days ago

How "international" is this library expected to be? Is it primarily English-language stuff or will there be representation from other countries (e.g., Brazil)?

ort.bsky.social•31 days ago

i wonder if it goes back even further in like, wargaming-type zines of the 70s

majora1987.bsky.social•20 days ago

Amazing! Looking forward to the release.

yoshimanix.bsky.social•31 days ago

I was wondering, do you have any plans on archiving gaming related media from outside North America? There's a treasure trove of stuff from Europe alone that's worth preserving!

landofobscusion.bsky.social•31 days ago

So... who has the earliest recorded usage of it?

bro3256.com•31 days ago

Soon I will see how many results there will be for "Famicon" because people often misspelled it back then.

live.from.roys.house•31 days ago

tbh i don't know if i'd call it a "misspelling" per se, Famicon is what you get if you apply the usual romanization rules to the Japanese name (without taking into account that it comes from Family Computer, anyway). Japanese doesn't distinguish between n/m in this situation!

bro3256.com•31 days ago

Only reason I'm considering it a misspelling is officially its "Famicom" which is what you'll see in places such as Nintendo Switch Online and other official Nintendo channels and sources.

live.from.roys.house•31 days ago

i guess i'd be interested in knowing if that was even established back in the day. the official English name was Nintendo Entertainment System, after all.

but yeah, to type ファミコン i type "famikonn"... tbh i'd probably render パソコン as "pasokon" too, though it comes from "personal computer"

bro3256.com•31 days ago

Nintendo spelled it "Famicom" in English when they used the abbreviation in Japan, although they mostly opted with the full "Family Computer" name. By the time the successor released, they used "Famicom" for the Super Famicom. So its pretty clear that Nintendo knew back then.

reverendcrush.com•31 days ago

Seems like they tried to established the "M" unofficially, though you'll see the occasional "Famicon" dropped on a copyright protection screen of a SNES/SFC game.

rawkshark.bsky.social•28 days ago

This is the exact kind of thing that excites me. I can't wait to look at all of the beautiful images :))) What amazing work - thank you!

mattcaulder.com•31 days ago

yeah, this is gonna rule

kyleor.land•31 days ago

Not for nothing but I’d love to get in on this discord demo

laserschwert.bsky.social•31 days ago

Woah, wait, your scans are all OCRed as well?

frankcifaldi.bsky.social•31 days ago

yes, we spent a lot of time tweaking it so that it works on barfy video game magazine layouts. we had to create a tool that extracts text using AWS's OCR and puts it back into the PDF

laserschwert.bsky.social•31 days ago

That's so cool!

drew.rw•31 days ago

Librarians are sooooo cool and have awesome powers!

cognacmccarthy.bsky.social•29 days ago

Hey this is neat. What repository platform does it use?

nindb.net•31 days ago

I'm excited to get my hands on this. You guys are doing incredible work.

slowlyrotatingps.bsky.social•28 days ago

I have a box of old magazines in my loft it would be great to see what you have on record and send any you might be missing.

rachelhelps.bsky.social•31 days ago

😍😍😍

afevis.sheppy.gay•31 days ago

Oooo, this is gonna be a great resource :o

hernique.bsky.social•31 days ago

@renantomazini.pessoas.dev

renantomazini.pessoas.dev•31 days ago

Que mina de ouro!

joerybicki.com•31 days ago

Delighted to discover OPM was print patient zero for @jparish.bsky.social’s contagion

jparish.bsky.social•31 days ago

On the VGHF Discord, there's a screenshot someone dug up of an earlier mentions of the word in EGM, so I am now going to blame @shanewatch.bsky.social for all of this unless someone can prove otherwise

mikewasson.net•31 days ago

Finally, you and Sharkey are free of this horrible burden

jparish.bsky.social•31 days ago

The only good thing to come out of 2025 so far

gamescan.bsky.social•31 days ago

And now we know that @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social hasn't indexed the Hardcore Gamer issues yet. I used Metroidvania in the Castlevania feature in issue 2 (July 2005 cover date). 😉

@katewillaert.bsky.social was researching the origin of the term both online and in print awhile back.

frankcifaldi.bsky.social•31 days ago

That's correct, we haven't yet!

shanewatch.bsky.social•31 days ago

wait, did I somehow invent Metroidvania?
a brief glimmer of hope appears in this bleak landscape

lohtangclan.bsky.social•31 days ago

It makes me cringe every time I hear a podcaster pretend to dislike the name. Whoever invented it - thank you!

jparish.bsky.social•31 days ago

You'll change your tune once the weirdly aggressive haters and gatekeepers of the word catch wind of this

shanewatch.bsky.social•31 days ago

I also owe Soma an apology; it was a different time

benjedwards.com•31 days ago

Which issue is this from?

vaguebiscuit.bsky.social•31 days ago

That it originated as a name for SotN makes me feel so much better for some reason. Just slightly annoyed me that the genre name included a game that was like a decade late to the party