video game: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder

Westwood Studios co-founder Lou Castle donated a comprehensive collection of games and related artifacts developed by Westwood Studios. The donation includes approximately 500 items, consisting mostly of games and artwork but also including other artifacts such as costumes that actors used for game production. The collection provides an overview of Westwood's catalog, from their early days producing items for machines such as the Amiga and Commodore 64 to Westwood releases through 2003, when Electronic Arts, who had acquired Westwood, moved the company to Los Angeles. Most of the games are related to Westwood's core strategy series such as Command & Conquer and Dune, but the collection also includes early games such as Westwood's Dungeons and Dragons games and mass market games such as Monopoly and Lion King. Westwood is most important for having created and popularized the real-time strategy game (RTS), in which players must try and defeat an opponent by making their moves while the play of the game continues (unlike a turn-based game like Civilization or Chess). Westwood's Dune II is usually acknowledged as the first RTS, and Castle coined the term "Real Time Strategy Game" specifically for it, and it later became an industry standard term. Westwood's later RTS series, Command & Conquer, became probably their most successful franchise and spawned a large number of sequels. This collection includes not only Westwood's U.S. titles but also Westwood titles that were sold throughout the world. The collection will be used both for research purposes as well as for display in eGameRevolution. To date, this is the most comprehensive collection we have of one video game studio's output.