Game Archive Project (ゲームアーカイブ・プロジェクト)
Game Archive Project, also known as GAP, was inaugurated in 1998, by Kyoto Prefecture as a leasing body and other organizations.
The project advocates 'an establishment of video games archive for human resource development and utilization of the archive.'
Its objective is to collect information on computer games and to compile a database of computer games, which is a collaborative effort among industry, government and academia. Incidentally, the project is barely related to 'Game Archives' by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., which distributes Playstation software in Playstation stores although their names are similar and confusing.
Summary
The project started as Kyoto Research Park Corp. entrusted the research to Ritsumeikan University in April, 1998 under the coordination of Kyoto Prefecture. In addition, Ritsumeikan University is closely related to game industry since they have welcomed Masayuki UEMURA, former Nintendo engineer, and Akihiro SAITO, known for his GAME-NICS theory, as professors. From the game industry, Nintendo and Sega Enterprises, Ltd. (present-day SEGA) have cooperated in the project by offering a large amount of hardware and software information. Moreover, it is linked to the Digital Archives Project.
All the video games are subject to inclusion in the database. The purpose of this project is to collect data, such as titles, abbreviated names, brands or makers, release dates, prices, copyright notices and models (but no data of details of game software per se), and to store the product of research on video games, making the contents open.
Moreover, the project gropes for relevance among game, society and education, and holds symposiums.