Interview: Andrew Borman (Strong Museum of Play, PtoPOnline)

The Strong Museum of Play's digital games curator Andrew Borman describes his deep passion for uncovering and preserving cancelled, unreleased, and prototype games. This is so much more than a vocation for him, and here you get to hear all the stories and insights he shared with me when I interviewed him for the season 4 finale, The Ghosts of Games That Never Were.Highlights include the stories behind cancelled Halo and Elder Scrolls games, an unreleased version of Until Dawn, an early version of Resident Evil 2, and some in-depth discussion about the significance of finding and sharing these stories. We also talk a bit about Andrew's work at The Strong and the amazing power and value of institutional backing in games preservation.Interview conducted January 14th, 2021.Links (many of these go to YouTube):I can't find a surviving archive of Andrew's Resident Evil 1.5 post, but here's a great Eurogamer article about the game and the community quest to preserve itThe Strong Museum of PlayResearch fellowships at The StrongThis page on The Tomb of Ash has info, screenshots, and download links for Core Design's cancelled Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary EditionEpisode 31 of this show also included a segment on said 10th Anniversary EditionTomb Raider's video game hall of fame entryAndrew has multiple videos on the Haggar Xbox demo build for a Halo Mega Bloks game. Here's the most recent one. And here's the first one.A video Andrew made about the Sonic Extreme skateboarding/hoverboarding game that turned into the Sonic Extreme we actually gotElder Scrolls Oblivion cancelled PSP gameAndrew's Star Wars Battlefront 3 unseen PC footage videoAndrew's video on Until Dawn's unreleased PS3 versionVICE Gaming/Waypoint has an excellent Halo 1 oral historyManse was mentioned four times in Ambrosia Software's newsletter before its quiet cancellationHere's the Wikipedia page on Captain ComicAndrew's Stargate SG1: The Alliance hub page from his old website has both articles and videos<a...