Ancient Web: 20th Century Video Games Catalogued the Machines Between the Consoles

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A museum of video games is easy to imagine until somebody remembers the electronic chess sets, obscure Pong clones, tiny LCD watches, and television games operated with a videotape.

Explore 20th Century Video Games.

This independent catalogue goes well beyond the usual parade of famous Nintendo, Sega, and Atari consoles. Its index divides the collection into handhelds, Pong machines, computers, home consoles, and handheld consoles, then wanders into categories such as barcode games, keychains, VHS video games, famiclones, kiosks, prototypes, virtual pets, and watch games.

The handheld catalogue is particularly revealing. Alongside expected manufacturers, it lists individual electronic games from companies such as Bambino, Epoch, Entex, Nelsonic, Tiger Electronics, and obscure imitators. A small LCD football game gets a place in the record rather than being dismissed as a toy that never earned a cartridge slot.

The catalogue is the preservation

The homepage provides several counts, including more than a thousand system categories or models in its reporting scheme and thousands of associated model entries. These are the site's own evolving catalogue figures, not a verified census of every device ever produced.

Browse deeper and the emphasis becomes clearer: manufacturer, model, country, date where known, and photographic documentation. Some entries are meticulous; others leave blanks. The gaps are honest evidence of how difficult it is to reconstruct the history of cheap, short-lived consumer electronics.

The site also offers chronological timelines and sections on hardware phenomena that normally end up scattered across auction listings. Its copyright line dates the present project to 2017, so this is not itself a surviving 1990s homepage. It qualifies as a specialist preservation effort built around twentieth-century material, not by pretending to be older than it is.

That distinction matters. A contemporary hobbyist can produce an invaluable historical resource by collecting the products, names, photographs, and classifications that manufacturers no longer maintain.

A mainstream console history tells you which machines won.

This catalogue is interested in everything else that got manufactured.

Explore the hardware lists and unusual categories.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.