our collection
The National Videogame Arcade houses a collection that spans the whole history of videogames, from the Magnavox to the most recent, not-even-finished games.
We want our collection to keep growing, and that’s why we gratefully receive donations from our visitors to add to the Arcade’s collection.
Donations to the National Videogame Arcade, unless by special agreement, are usually intended to be handled by the general public. Our focus here is usually on interpretation, rather than preservation.
We want people to touch and experience videogame culture in all its forms - we’re just as interested in your old magazines, player-drawn maps and manuals as we are consoles and controllers.
Your stories
We know the story of videogames is as much about the stories of players. We arrange ‘antiques roadshow’ style events from time to time, when we collect anecdotes and recollections about videogame objects and what they mean to you. You’ll see these advertised on our site and social media. We’d love to hear your stories.
If you have an object you’d like to add to our collection, here’s what you can do -
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Get in touch with us at and tell us what you’d like to donate. We’ll get back to you right away just to confirm that we have space to receive it!
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We’ll arrange a time with you to drop it off (or possibly collect if we can…)
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When you drop it off, we’ll collect as many details about the object as we can from you. Also, we really like to get photos if we can!
From time to time we make special appeals around single exhibition themes, we’ll keep you posted about them on our site.
Thanks for your interest in helping to grow the National Videogame Arcade Collection.