ABSTRACT
Fan-created videogame websites often document the histories of specific games and consoles by drawing on the vernacular practices of fans and collectors. This chapter analyses the way that gaming history is curated in the digital contexts, by focusing specifically on fan sites dedicated to the Sega Saturn platform, an obsolete home console that has, since its release in 1994, gained something of a cult status. In article 'Hearing Ordinary Voices', Burgess situates the concept 'vernacular creativity' in relation to ongoing debates within Media Studies about the democratisation of cultural production in contemporary society. Fan sites have grappled with similar problems in their efforts to document videogame history, yet their solutions to these problems differ somewhat from the aforementioned examples. Sites like "Hardcore Gaming 101" are experienced as dream spaces relates to their capacity to function not only as repositories of information about the Saturn's history, but also of more vernacular forms of storytelling.
