About the AGPI Archives Game Catalog

Home / About the AGPI Archives Game Catalog

The Game Catalog has been an official publication of the AGPI since 1989. The Game Catalog aims to be the most current and comprehensive listing of all indoor games published in the Latin alphabet from around 1800 through 1960. (Games before and after these dates may also be included.) Since additional games and variants are likely to be discovered, this Game Catalog will never be truly complete.

As you discover games not listed in this catalog, or have additional information regarding games or game publishers, or you find errors in the listings, please Contact the AGPI Archives Game Catalog, with documentation and information on your discoveries.

Mission

The mission of the AGPI Archives Game Catalog and GameCatalog.org is to:

  • Provide accurate and detailed information about games and game publishers from around the world
  • Include evidence supporting the provided information about games and game publishers
  • Be a world-renowned resource for game collectors, researchers, and designers, supported by expert contributors

History of The Game Catalog

The Game Catalog was initially prepared by the American Game Collectors Association (AGCA, now the Association for Games & Puzzles International, AGPI) in the late 1980s as an extension to the AGCA Archives, which at the time was also collecting instructions for games, histories of game companies, and trade catalogs from those companies.

Bill Alexander was the original AGCA Archivist and editor of the Game Catalog, publishing the first edition in 1989 with around 400 games. Anne Williams became the AGCA Archivist in the 1990s and compiled the 5th through 7th editions, all published in 1997, raising the game count to 7400. The original scope of The Game Catalog focused on United States games published through 1950, though it has since moved way beyond that.

The 8th printed edition of The Game Catalog was compiled by Rick Tucker, and contained information on about 8400 games, mostly games produced in the United States through 1950. A PDF of the 8th edition is available online.

In 2008, the AGPC (as we were known at the time) donated extensive materials from our Archives to The Strong Museum’s Museum of Play and its Brian Sutton-Smith Library, including a substantial number of trade catalogs (many since scanned and available online) and game instructions (many available online at GameCatalog.org).

Since 1998, Rick Tucker continued to add game publishers and games to the Game Catalog database (GC DB) and GameCatalog.org website based on available online and in-person information resources.

On a separate front, the 9th printed edition of the Game Catalog was produced in 2016 by AGPI members Sy Epstein and Charlie Gross, including American games before 1951, with added and revised content based on the original printed 8th edition. They also produced the 10th edition in July 2018, extending the scope to include American games through 1960. More than 11,900 games from 2600 manufacturers were listed the 10th printed edition, compared to the 9000 games in the 9th printed edition. 1400+ games were added from 1951 through 1960, and an additional 1400+ games were added from 1800 through 1950 in the 10th edition.

Subsequently, Charlie Gross produced an 11th edition of the Game Catalog document, extending the coverage of earlier editions to include games produced through 1960 and in countries around the world using the Latin alphabet. An estimated 13,500 U.S. games were listed in the 11th edition from approximatetely 2750 manufacturers along with approximately 11,000 non-U.S. games from 45 countries. Given the numerous pages and game entries included in the GC11 document, it was not printed but instead was posted to the AGPI website in 2024.

The Game Catalog document and database are now on a trajectory to converge into a single integrated resource available to all interested parties.

Scope of The Game Catalog

Determining what is and what is not an indoor game (what to include in the Game Catalog and what to exclude) is subjective. Since the Game Catalog has evolved over the years, some inconsistencies may be evident. Some of the rules of thumb regarding what should be and what should not be in the Game Catalog are:

  • Published indoor games that can be scored or have winners are included.
  • Bagatelle games are included.
  • Party games are included.
  • Fortune-telling games are included.
  • Tangram type games were included in the 8th Edition and were carried forward.
  • Table tennis sets are included as they were originally pictured as being played on dining room tables.
  • Generic domino games are excluded but games such as Picture Dominos or Zoo Dominos are included.
  • Dexterity puzzles for the most part are excluded. Exceptions are Pigs in Clover and similar early games.
  • Blocks and jigsaw puzzles are excluded unless there is competition involved. However, early “sliced” and “dissected” puzzles, such as Sliced Birds, are included from the 8th and earlier editions of the Catalog.
  • Generic playing cards – poker, skat, bezique, canasta are excluded. Exceptions include games such as the Hopalong Cassidy Canasta card game.
  • Generic chess and backgammon games are excluded. Exceptions include those examples that existed in the 8th Edition of the AGPI Game Catalog and earlier. Chess and backgammon games in combination with other games are included as well as specialty chess games such as Military Chess.
  • Most generic games with no information about the manufacturers are excluded. Examples include Happy Families, games of Goose, Authors and Old Maid card games, Mah-Jongg, etc. Games with unique titles but without manufacturer’s information are included in the Unknown sections of each country.
  • Mosaic games, craft sets, punch boards, paper dolls, play sets, and construction sets are excluded.
  • Large (non-table-top) billiards and pool table games are excluded.
  • Coin activated games are excluded.
  • Pinball machines are excluded. See the Internet Pinball Database for comprehensive coverage of pinball games.
  • Games that are exclusively outdoor games are excluded.

Sources of, and Contributors to The Game Catalog

The compilers of the AGPI’s Game Catalog  have used many sources of information for the Game Catalog, and acknowledge them gratefully. Special thanks are due to past AGPI archivists, Nancy Boyea, Erika Wilson, and Anne Williams, for their contributions.

In the early development of the Game Catalog, books including the following were quite valuable: Warman’s Antique American Games 1840 to 1940 by Lee Dennis; Games: American Boxed Games and Their Makers 1822-1992 by Bruce Whitehill; Baseball Games by Mark Cooper, and Antique Trader’s Guide to Games & Puzzles by Harry Rinker.

Game company publications including trade catalogs, brochures, and advertisements contain a wealth of information about games and game publishers that are regularly harvested for information to include in the Game Catalog.

Internet sources regularly monitored for games and game publisher informaiton include auction and sale catalogs and websites (notably, eBay and WorthPoint).

Extensive examination of advertisements in trade journals (Playthings, etc.) has uncovered many games and companies. Articles in AGPI publications since our founding as the AGCA in 1985 also contain valuable information about games and game publishers.

Early contributors to the Game Catalog when it was a print publication included Joe Angiolillo, Bill & Betty Barnard, Sy Epstein, David Galt, Margery Griffith, Steve & Lea Horvath, Debby Krim, Bob LaFerriere, Alex Malloy, Jack Matthews, Pat McFarland, Bill Nutting, Elizabeth Overstad, Edward Ryan, Herb Siegel, John & Mildred Spear, Susan Stock and Dave Oglesby, Bill Trent, Lindy Van Fleet, Bruce Whitehill, and Blair Whitton, among many others.

Inputs to the Game Catalog in recent years have come from David Beffa-Negrini, Lisa Bloome, Steve Horvath, Tony Nardo, Phil Orbanes, Nic Ricketts (formerly of the Strong Museum), Rod Schar, Fred Sissan, John Spear, Debby Leo, Dave Thomen, Rick Tucker, Bruce Whitehill, Anne Williams, Indiana University’s Lilly Library, Debby Leo, David Stewart-Patterson, and others.

Quality Assurance and Validation of Information

The best assurance of correct information in the Game Catalog is from the games themselves. Much of the existing game information in the Game Catalog is continually reviewed and compared to a variety of game resources on and off the Internet, including museums, other games databases, collectors, auctions, and other materials. Updates, deletions (e.g., for duplicates), and additions to the Game Catalog are made based on these reviews.

Website History

The GameCatalog.org website was launched in June 1999 by Rick Tucker on behalf of the AGPI.  The original objective was to host the online version of the Game Catalog.

In June 2003, the site introduced the ability to search through game information in the Game Catalog database.

In 2006, the site added game information contained in Bill Trent’s handwritten listings of games from 1950 through the 1990s. This information was turned into Bill Trent’s Big Book of Games, 1950 to 1990, with assistance by Rick Tucker and Dave Beffa-Negrini.

In May 2008, the site added game information from the Spear’s Archives and Anki Toner’s Cycling Board Games site, with their permission.

In March 2009, the site added results on game copyrights, patents, and trademarks, and displayed nearly all fields, include descriptions of covers and authors/designers where known. The site added links to game rules and instructions; the entire AGPC (as we were known at the time) Archives (maintained by Anne Williams, AGPC Archivist at the time) of paper rules and instructions were scanned by Bill Alexander and assembled by Rick Tucker into PDFs prior to being donated by the AGPC to The Strong National Museum of Play. The website also added the ability to search the text of game rules, including scanned ones.

In February 2014, the layout and general content management of GameCatalog.org was converted from custom HTML to WordPress. The database was converted to MariaDB (a version of MySQL) from Microsoft Access, though it is hosted using MySQL. Web page generation using database queries was converted to PHP from Microsoft ASP. This version of the website is now adapts to various screen sizes available on smart phones, tablets, laptops, and big screen computers.

In November 2017, the site was moved to a new web hosting provider, Hostgator.