Academics at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) in the UK have joined forces with the National Media Museum to launch the UK's first National Video Game Archive.

The archive has been established to preserve a global industry worth £22bn, and will recognise the contribution video games have made to popular culture since the 1970s. Housed at the museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire, the archive will be managed, steered and researched by the university's Centre for Contemporary Play.

The collection will feature consoles and cartridges, as well as a wider range of industry items, including advertising campaigns, magazine reviews and artwork. Dr James Newman, from NTU's Centre for Contemporary Play, said: "The National Video Game Archive is an important resource for preserving elements of our national cultural heritage.

"We don't just want to create a virtual museum full of code or screenshots that you could see online. The archive will really get to grips with what is a very creative, social and productive culture." Head of collections at the National Media Museum, Paul Goodman, said: "The archiving of these important artifacts presents us with some real challenges, not least in the area of preservation.

"We must balance the necessary conservation requirements of these materials with the need to allow the public to interact with them, both now and in the future." The archive will be launched at this year's GameCity 3 festival in Nottingham, which will be held at the city's Gatecrasher nightclub as well as other venues across the city.