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  • Will Wright gifts design docs and personal papers to Museum of Play

    by 
    Ben Gilbert
    Ben Gilbert
    10.01.2010

    We already knew that Super Fun Club's Will Wright was a swell guy, but his recent donation of "personal papers and design documents" to the Strong National Museum of Play places him firmly is really swell guy territory. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) -- an institution within the museum -- has collected nine notebooks from Wright, featuring "original drawings, sketches, and notes for four of his SimCity, The Sims, and Spore games." Some of his donation will be on display this coming November as part of the "eGameRevolution" exhibit on the museum's second floor, for those interested in taking a peek. ICHEG director Jon-Paul Dyson spoke of the donation in a statement (via 1UP), "These papers document the creative process behind some of the most important games of our time. They have transformed our society, and we are pleased to preserve this record of how Wright created them." Wright lavished the ICHEG with equal praise, saying, "I know of no other institution that is covering the topic as comprehensively as they are." Wright's work will otherwise be housed alongside an enormous arcade collection -- what the ICHEG deems "the most significant games ever manufactured -- from Computer Space (1971) and Pong (1972) to Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980) to Donkey Kong (1981) and Tetris (1988)" -- as well as an over 10,000-strong console game library. In other news, we totally know we're going when the Zombie Apocalypse goes down.