Making history
Games designer Brenda Romero on her unique collection of curios
We feel safe in declaring that while it’s a long way from the largest we’ve featured, there hasn’t quite been a collection quite like Brenda romero’s in these pages. In her unique position, as both a games designer of note herself, plus married to some chap who designed a fairly popular game that kickstarted an entire genre, Brenda’s collection boasts items of such rarity that actually only one of them often exist. Much of it, in fact, is pure history, hence Brenda and John’s efforts in opening a museum in their hometown of Galway. “We decided to open a museum focusing on game design,” she explains, “as we were in a unique position to show the full design path of the first-person shooter, from concept to execution.” Much of the material for the museum is what Brenda affectionately calls “stuff John kept”. “And he kept everything. I noticed a few holes, though, and I set about trying to fill them.”
While John hoarded multiple versions of Doom and his other games, he often didn’t keep compilations or related items. “So I got those too,” declares Brenda, “and then it was localised versions of the early games. Then it was games that the early games influenced. You can see what kind of fun disaster this has turned out to be!” Having spoken to many collectors, we know very well how these things work. With one particular collection completed, fresh branches always appear. “And I try to have two of everything so that I can have one open, and one sealed,” reveals Brenda. The rarity of the items in the Romero collection make a valuation almost impossible, and Brenda admits she has no idea how much it is all worth. “Some of our stuff is one-ofa-kind – like the original disk that led to the founding of id Software, the actual Doom bible. And the actual Apple II that the first three Final Fantasy games were made on. And all of Silas Warner’s notes for Castle Wolfenstein. It is simultaneously valuable and worthless, since we won’t get rid of it.”
Work on Brenda and John’s museum continues, as she fills in the blanks of the collection, before creating more blanks to fill. Their objective is to open the museum to the public in the autumn of 2019. “John’s collection is primarily very early Seventies and Eighties Apple II games,” says Brenda. “And the stuff I kept from my career fits very nicely into his collection.” As a games designer herself, Brenda has also “kept things, as you do when you are a games designer”, and when the pair were able to recently extract their collections from storage for the first time in ten years, the extent of their gatherings became clear.
“As a games designer, I know that there is a powerful pull on players to complete something. I never expected that I would be the one playing what feels like an endless collection quest!”