Deep within the maze of computers that forms the Duderstadt Center on North Campus, there’s a secret alcove of video-gaming wonder. Though the room appears neither glorious nor vibrant — it was once used to house photocopiers — a look around its walls will instill glee in anyone who's ever picked up a controller.

The Computer and Video Game Archive — a branch of the Art, Architecture and Engineering Library — is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting video games.

The archive is no bigger than an average classroom. Booths with new televisions and consoles line two of the walls, and a ceiling-high shelf system encompasses the third. On the shelves are games and consoles ranging from the popular to the incredibly obscure. There's also an enormous television standing in front of three comfy armchairs, perfect for plopping down after a stressful day and inflicting virtual wrath. All anyone needs to do is walk in and choose a console and game, and the staff will set it all up at a gaming station.

But the archive, open weekdays from 1 to 8 p.m. on the second floor of the Duderstadt, is more than a great new place to play games. It’s proof that video games are a cultural phenomenon and an expanding field of academic study. The idea for the archive met almost no opposition when it was pitched, garnering full support from the University.

“It’s an idea whose time has come. Video games in the academic world are in the same place film studies were 20 or 25 years ago,” said David Carter, long-time game enthusiast and the archive's founder.

The archive is first and foremost an academic resource, and while most of its student use will be recreational, research is already happening there. The archive plans to work closely with pre-existing University courses in several departments. In one class, Intro Engineering, students are required to create their own video game. Carter hopes the archive will not only help them research games, but also allow the finished products to be played by other University students. The Communications, Psychology and Screen Arts and Cultures departments also offer courses that illustrate and analyze the cultural impact of video games on society.

The archive is trying to understand the future of video game studies.

“We collect stuff now trying to anticipate as best we can what the needs of researchers and students will be down the road,” Carter said. “These elements of pop culture that people tend to look down at are in fact causing us to think in new, interesting and different ways.”

Video games have had an impact on American culture since their inception, and the trend will continue as long as the industry survives. In the days when Pac-Man and Donkey Kong ruled the gaming world, arcades sprung up as social hubs and a way for young people to come together. Carter fondly recalled the arcade atmosphere from his youth: “The greasy food, the cacophony, sensory overload, sights, and sounds and smells.”

The archive attempts to preserve the authentic feeling of its old games by having the original consoles and controllers whenever possible. Playing a game on a single joystick allows for a far more accurate recreation of the original experience than using an Xbox controller.

The list of old consoles is impressively thorough; it includes the Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision, TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Master System, and Carter is always looking for more. For computer games, Carter has some obscure old machines, going as far back as the Commodore Vic-20 and the Tandy Color Computer 3. He’s even searching for ’80s-era televisions on which to display the games. As Carter remembers, a large part of the frustration with gaming in its infancy was “dealing with the fickleness of the technology.” The old equipment has a unique charm to it, especially seeing it all together on the shelves. It’s a comprehensive timeline of gaming’s evolution, all contained in one unassuming little room.