Polytheistic religions often have an ungodly amount of deities, ones for every little specific thing you can imagine. Iris was the Greek Goddess of rainbows, Cardea was the Roman Goddess of door hinges and if we had our own American pantheon of deities, then Jeremy Parish would be the God of video game history.

Parish is a former games journalist, turned games historian. He currently runs the websites: Game Boy Works and NES Works where he chronologizes Nintendo and Gameboy games. He meticulously scans the original box art of these games, then writing an analytical video or blurb for each one. The websites’ content has slowly been printed into books as well; the idea being that future generations can have an idea of how every one of these games looked/played.

 

He was one of the first games journalists to start emphasizing the importance of video game preservation and I have so much respect for him and his work. Early film history has many gaps, and there are so many lost works of ancient literature, the hope of Parish and others like him is to keep this from happening to video games.

Getting back to the sites themselves, they are so fun to just scroll through and look at all the game art. The images pop right out at you, making the website simple to navigate. I have found so many really interesting NES and Gameboy games from these sites that I would not have otherwise.

It is also worth noting that Parish has a retro-gaming podcast called Retronauts along with a very active youtube channel. In the show, he and other rotating guests will analyze retro video games, and interview game creators.

I am excited to see the Nes Works and Game Boy Works chronology continue to grow, and hopefully Parish will be able to fill it out with every one of the systems’ games.