Toronto Game Expo (Spring 2026)

Preservation on the show floor

The Broken Games Collective helped out at the University of Toronto Mississauga Library’s booth at the spring Toronto Game Expo, on March 28 and 29, 2026, at the Enercare Centre in Toronto.

The goal was to showcase some legacy games and hardware, and to give attendees a space to learn some preservation techniques. Over the weekend, more than 1,200 attendees got involved with the booth’s activities:

• Barbie Fashion Designer on the Barbie Computer and Printer, from the Personal Computer Museum Collection. Attendees could run the software and see examples printed on Barbie fabric paper ahead of time.
• Variant copies of Rayman 2 from the Syd Bolton Collection, to compare the differences between versions by playing them.
• Electric Playground episodes from 2001, digitized from the EP Media Ltd. fonds.
• A cartridge cleaning station, with a zine cleaning guide to take home.

We also set up a “What Should We Save?” board, where attendees left ideas on sticky notes. Their answers covered characters, games, consoles, and even disc drives and headphone jacks, along with thoughts about game ownership, licensing, and patents. Continued access to the worlds of games, both virtual and physical, was clearly top of mind!

What should we save?

• Broken Games Collective newsletter recap
• Toronto Game Expo
• UTM Library collections
• Old Games Zine 2026