National Videogame Museum
+1 972-668-8400

In honor of Halloween, we thought it would be apropos to highlight an under appreciated horror gaming gem: Splatterhouse for the TurboGrafx-16! We dug up a slew of Splatterhouse and TurboGrafx-16 Halloween themed promotional items from back in the day that we’ll be showing off in the lead-up to Halloween. First up are these official Splatterhouse masks, which included elastic strings and could be popped out of the promo pages for a quick and scary Halloween costume. ... For more vintage Splatterhouse Halloween gear, stay tuned over the next few days!

It’s almost a week until Halloween, which means it’s time to start thinking about our upcoming NVM Virtual Halloween Costume Contest! To enter, all you have to do is post a picture of yourself dressed as a video game character or a video game related costume on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, tag us, and use the hashtag #nvmhalloween! Entries must be NEW or CURRENT photos as of October 2020. Three winners will be chosen to receive amazing NVM swag bags filled to the brim with gaming goodies! We’re excited to see the creativity of our NVM Community on display this Halloween, so be sure to give it your all Dracula will be waiting!

Today’s spotlight is one of the often forgotten special edition Nintendo Gamecube systems - the Metal Gear Solid: The Twins Snakes Premium Package. Released exclusively in Japan on March 11, 2004, the Premium Package included a platinum Gamecube featuring the iconic FOXHOUND logo in lieu of the Gamecube logo itself. The package also included a detailed art book, The Twin Snakes game, and a special Gamecube disc containing the original Metal Gear for the NES/Famicom. All of this in combination with stellar art and packaging makes this special edition a Metal Gear and Gamecube collector’s dream. Have any of our savvy collectors managed to come across The Twin Snakes Premium Package? What are you some of your favorite Gamecube special editions? As always, be sure to let us know!

If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to contribute to the National Videogame Museum, look no further than our Amazon Smile link! Amazon’s Prime Days are today and tomorrow, so if you’re taking advantage of some of the many great Amazon deals running during the event, a percentage of your purchase will go towards the National Videogame Museum at no additional cost to you! The process is as easy as clicking this link: smile.amazon.com/ch/27-1175243... The link works year round, so even if you’re not doing Prime Day shopping, you can help out the NVM whenever you’re making a purchase from Amazon! Happy deal hunting!

One of our most popular playable titles in the National Videogame Museum has been Typing of the Dead...so for all of you that can’t get enough of typing your way out of an undead nightmare, check out this featured item from this month’s newsletter! The Typing of the Dead with Keyboard is a 2000 Japanese-exclusive release of the The Typing of the Dead for the Sega Dreamcast. As you might be able to tell from the name, this version of the game included a themed keyboard that offered a more colorful alternative to the standard Dreamcast keyboard available here in the west.

October is here, and so is this month’s edition of the NVM Newsletter! With Halloween on the horizon, you’ll find plenty of frightening favorites featured in the museum this month. Whether you prefer Dracula, Frankenstein, or Diablo, you’ll have your pick of fiendish foes to slay in our lineup of playable games. In lieu of our annual Halloween Costume Contest, we’ll be holding a VIRTUAL COSTUME CONTEST! At any time on Halloween, Saturday October 31st, post a picture of yours...elf dressed as your favorite videogame character, system, etc. on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Entries must be NEW or CURRENT photos as of October 2020 and you must tag @nvmusa and use the hashtag #nvmhalloween to be eligible for entry. Three winners will be chosen to receive amazing NVM swag bags filled to the brim with gaming goodies! You won’t want to miss out on this! The Halloween edition of our Newsletter also includes spotlights on the horrific hidden gem, Ghoul Patrol, our latest NVM Acquisition, Typing of the Dead, and much more! Be sure to check out the FULL Newsletter here if you haven’t already: https://bit.ly/2SDOkoq Happy Haunting!

A hidden gem in the Nintendo 64 library that will delight many anime fans is Neon Genesis Evangelion. Based on the wildly popular anime series of the same name, Neon Genesis Evangelion was released exclusively in Japan in 1999. While many other games in the NGE series follow visual novel format, the Nintendo 64 adaptation of the series is full of action and varied gameplay styles - not to mention its striking box and cartridge art. While the Nintendo 64 might not have the largest of libraries, there are plenty of notable and oddball import games worth adding to your collection.

The National Videogame Museum is filled with all kinds of gaming literature...including the Nintendo Adventure BookS series! The Nintendo Adventure Books were published in the early 90’s and featured both Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda stories. These books were popular for being the choose your adventure" stories wherein you read a page/pages and then follow the instructions at the end of passage (ex: To go up the ladder turn to page 32. If you choose to go down the ma...nhole, turn to page 54.) These books also featured a scoring system, as during your adventures you could collect certain amounts of coins which when calculated at the end of the story would assign you a particular rank. That’s right, leave it to Nintendo to publish books that you could get a high score in! Featured below is a pair of books starring none other than Luigi, who was getting some early spotlight on the covers!

You’ve seen dozens and dozens of 90’s NBA video games, but here’s one you might not initially recognize: NBA Hardwood Heroes by Midway. Intended for release on both Playstation 1 and Nintendo 64, NBA Hardwood Heroes would instead be released in 1997 as NBA Fastbreak ‘98 exclusively for Playstation 1. The planned Nintendo 64 version of Fastbreak was scrapped along with the original name. Curiously, the game also has a third name, NBA Action ‘98, which was used when the game was brought to the Sega Saturn. Included is a rare 2 page catalog entry featuring the game’s original title of NBA Hardwood Heroes and its planned release, as well as a press release by Midway from E3 1997.

As much as we love showing off our archive of priceless gaming artifacts, we can’t help but show some love to the more peculiar side of our museum. Today’s spotlight? Rare gaming drinkware. Featured here is a SoulStorm bottle opener, a promotional item from 1998’s Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus as well as a bottle of genuine promotional Atari Water from E3 circa 2002. The most interesting item we’re showing today is a pair of Inscape glasses. Inscape, in the likely scenario you haven’t heard of them, was a short-lived game company from the 90’s and these glasses are an interesting keepsake of their legacy. Inscape were the creators of obscure PC games such as Bad Day on the Midway and Drowned God.

NTX Giving Day ends tonight, so it’s your last chance to help give back to the National Videogame Museum. If you're a fan of the work we do, please consider giving today. Even just a few dollars helps to fund our work! You can donate to the NVM through NTX Giving Day here: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/national-videogame-muse... Thank you so much for your generosity!

The National Videogame Museum needs your help! The NVM relies on your donations to support our mission - not just to continue finding and displaying incredible historical gaming artifacts, but to offer education and opportunities for the next generation. Our annual NTX Giving Day Fundraiser supports our educational, scholarship and outreach programs and is going on RIGHT NOW! Choose from multiple donation levels will you be an Outlaw, Space Invader, Missile Commander or ...maybe even a Dungeon Master? If you’ve ever visited the museum or just believe in the work that we do, please consider making a donation of any size. Every penny helps to bring gaming history to the forefront and to provide annual scholarships including a Women in Tech category to help enable tomorrow's future leaders to achieve their dreams. Click the link here on Weds. Sept. 16 or Thurs. Sept. 17 to help our cause: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/national-videogame-muse Thank you in advance from the entire NVM family!

Happy #NationalVideoGamesDay! Whether you’re celebrating gaming with us here at the National Videogame Museum, or virtually with us in our custom Doom 2 level, we hope you can find some time to enjoy our favorite hobby! What games do you plan on kicking back with for National Video Games Day? Let us know!

Behold the TOOL PlayStation 2 development system! You may remember us spotlighting the similar PlayStation 2 TEST debugging unit a while back, and the full fledged TOOL development kit is another piece of our expansive archive of development hardware. These TOOL systems were manufactured by Sony for use only by PlayStation development partners...which makes finding them in the wild all but impossible. While the appearance of the TOOL is very similar to the original PlayStation 2 model, it’s actually almost twice as large! You can find the TOOL PlayStation 2 and tons of other rare pieces of development hardware from Atari, to Nintendo, to Xbox on display here at the National Videogame Museum.