‘Total art’: Inside France’s vast video game archive

This photograph taken on August 4, 2022 shows the video game Tomb Raider II belonging to the Charles Cros collection exposed at the Francois-Mitterrand National Library of France in Paris. — AFP

PARIS: In the bowels of an imposing modernist tower in Paris, Laurent Duplouy carefully handles a pristine copy of Tomb Raider before slotting it back on the shelf alongside thousands of other classic video games.

Duplouy oversees a huge archive of games at France’s National Library (BNF), one of the longest-running efforts to preserve a part of global heritage that is often overlooked by cultural institutions.