Hi folks! Frank is starting the prototype stream right now as we speak! We have about 125 loose ROM chips that we believe are from Taito, mostly unlabeled, and we're going to recover data from them and start looking through them live on stream!
2025-06-04 19:53:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Phil Salvador chats with Brian Clark, author of Gameplay Harmonies, and Kevin Bunch, owner of Atari Archive, about the history of video game house bands. We cover the rise of bands like Sega Sound Team (SST) and Zuntata, the fall of house bands in the mid-90’s, and some modern examples of game music bands include Lotus Juice and The Primals.
Panel Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYYqtgwE8oQ
This episode is excl...
2025-06-03 10:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostFrank Cifaldi and Phil Salvador host a discussion with Jez San, Jason Smith, and Mike Arkin from Argonaut Games about the development and remastering of the 1997 game Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. We touch on what went into the original game - incorporating 3D technology and character design influences from traditional animation - as well as enhancements for the remaster, improved controls and a virtual museum of bonus content showcasing the game's history and development process. The team’s discussion centers on the challenges and ...
2025-05-27 10:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Back in 2023, we announced we were working with Cyan, the developers of the Myst series, to preserve their video archives. The Cyan collection was one of the highlights of our library when we launched it back in January, and we figured it was time to dig in and share some of the unique, exciting, unusual things we found buried in the Cyan Vault.
Working directly with an active developer to preserve their history like this rarely happens in the game industry. We're grateful that Cyan opened their doors to us, and we hope it can...
2025-05-22 15:05:01 +0000 UTC View Post
We're LIVE unpacking the mail! As we teased yesterday, we were donated HALF A TON of video game magazines, which we're opening live on stream. Will we find some unpreserved rarities? Is it going to be the game magazine version of Al Capone's vault? We'll see!
This stream supports our mystery box fundraiser, where you can subscribe to get a random retro game magazine from our duplicate inventory. Many of the magazines we're unpacking today will be going into our mystery box inventory! You can order one at 2025-05-20 19:55:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Tomorrow at 1pm PDT, we're opening HALF A TON of video game magazines, live on stream!
Earlier this year, an especially generous collector donated their entire game magazine collection to us. That's nearly 1400 magazines across 50 boxes. We really have no idea what to expect from these. So we're gonna figure it out together!
Are we going to find a bunch of common magazines like GamePro and EGM? Probably! Are we going to find weird, rare magazines that only the hardcore collectors kept track of? We sure hope so! Anything we don't ...
2025-05-19 19:10:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Hosts Frank Cifaldi and Phil Salvador chat with Mark and Michelle Flitman, a father-daughter duo, about Mark’s career, his donated collection at the VGHF, and his autobiography: "It’s Not All Fun and Games." As a semi-retired video game and toy producer, Mark shares his career highlights as a publisher producer throughout the 90’s and into the early 2000’s at Konami, Acclaim, Mindscape, Midway, and later, Atari. Most of his titles were licensed properties including The Simpsons (Bart's Nightmare, Virtual Bart 2025-05-13 10:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
We're wrapping up our work on a collection from Craig Stitt, an artist who worked for Sega Technical Institute and Insomniac Games. The last piece we're working on is his collection of VHS tapes that contains samples of his artwork.
Craig uploaded these to YouTube a while back, but we're going back through the tapes using the extreme-quality VHS capture system we used for the Sonic 2 video in 2023. This method (using a piece of hardware called the Domesday Duplicator) gets a raw read off the magnetic tape, then processes it digitally r...
2025-05-09 00:04:11 +0000 UTC View Post
The Video Game History Foundation team members share their experiences at GDC 2025: our exhibit on unreleased NES games, showcasing 552 titles; Frank Cifaldi's lecture on game preservation; a talk on spreadsheets; Cheesecake Factory menu choices; and how we're still recovering from whatever germs we caught at the show.
Video Game History Foundation:
Email: podcast@gamehistory.org
Website: 2025-04-29 10:01:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Phil Salvador hosts Polygon’s Clayton Ashley and Simone de Rochefort to discuss a documentary they produced last year called The Great Game: The Making of Spycraft | Full Polygon Documentary about the 1996 FMV CD-ROM game, Spycraft.
Blog post mentioned in show: https://www.filfre.net/2023/03/spycraft-the-great-game-part-1-or-pa...
2025-04-29 10:00:40 +0000 UTC View PostPhil Salvador and Robin Kunimune chat with Chlo
2025-04-15 10:00:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Phil here again! Now that we're recovered from GDC, we're back to processing materials for our digital library. The day after we all got back from GDC, we laid everything out on a whiteboard, and we were shocked just how much we have coming up in the next month or two. So we wanted to give you a teaser of what we're working on right now!
First, some things we teased last year...
We digitized the art and design portfolios from Craig Stitt, who worked at Sega Technical Institute and Insomni...
2025-04-07 17:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
The discussion with Kendra Albert and the copyright ruling continue with a handful of our Discord-submitted listener questions. Phil and Kendra touch on topics of the political landscape of copyright reform, the importance of the 1201 exemption process, legitimizing video game studies, preserving online games, and generative AI.
See more from Kendra Albert:
Bluesky: @kendraserra.bsky.social
Mastodon: 2025-04-01 10:01:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Phil Salvador and Kendra Albert, a partner at A
2025-04-01 10:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostIn this episode of Video Game History Hour, Mic
2025-03-18 10:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Thanks for all your support for the launch of our digital library a little over a month ago. After what felt like years of buildup, we've taken the last month to shift our gears back down and work on some bigger collections and longer-term projects, which we'll be sharing more about in the future.
But that doesn't mean we're going anywhere! In less than two weeks, we'll be at the 2025 Game Developers Conference! There's a couple different places you'll be able to find us...
First off, we're back running our Game History G...
2025-03-07 21:22:23 +0000 UTC View PostGail Tilden, Nintendo of America’s marketing mastermind, takes Frank Cifaldi on a trip down memory lane in a panel at the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, reminiscing about everything from the early days of NES branding to the explosive rise of Pokémon. She shares behind-the-scenes stories about marketing mishaps (hello, Zelda Rap), strategic pivots like the iconic "Nintendo Seal of Quality," and how a quirky Game Boy RPG took over the world. From robotic flops to Pikachu-branded cars parachuting into Topeka, her journey is a testam...
2025-03-04 11:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Laine Nooney, an associate professor at NYU and
2025-02-18 11:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
We kept the recording going a little longer to answer some more questions from you lovely Patreon members in our Discord server, discuss additional behind-the-scenes considerations of this massive endeavor, talk about our technical challenges and subsequent custom solutions/tools, and to just hang out a little longer.
Digital Archive: archive.gamehistory.org
Library Catalog: library.g...
2025-02-04 11:01:02 +0000 UTC View Post
It’s finally arrived: our digital library archi
2025-02-04 11:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Today, the Video Game History Foundation launches early access to its digital archive of video game history research materials, available now at library.gamehistory.org.
Ever since we started in 2017, the Video Game History Foundation has been building a digital library to help the study of video game history. We've been collecting development documents, behind-the-scenes content, rare video game publications and catalogs, magazines, memorabilia, ephemera, and more...
2025-01-30 16:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey, library director Phil Salvador here again! We just announced that we're launching our digital library on January 30! This years-in-the-making project would never have been possible without your support.
You might remember that we originally wanted to open the library in 2024. However, we decided to hold it back a little longer to deal with some outstanding tech issues and improve the user experience. We didn't want to launch the library until we were confident that we were delivering the best version we could...
2025-01-23 19:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Guests Katrin Auch and Dan Amrich, formerly of
2025-01-21 11:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
We're joined by Director of Digital Preservation at The Strong National Museum of Play Andrew Borman to recap the events of the first ever Save the Games Symposium put on by the museum in August 2024, a conference dedicated to digital preservation and advancing the field of video game preservation.
Chris Arneil, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia report: International Video Game Pres...
2025-01-07 11:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post
In this field report from Mead, Washington, Cya
2024-12-24 11:00:15 +0000 UTC View Post
In our very first episode of season two, university professor José Zagal and video game historian Benj Edwards, co-authors of Seeing Red: Ni
In our very first episode of season two, university professor José Zagal and video game historian Benj Edwards, co-authors of Seeing Red: Nintendo's Virtual Boy, join host Frank Cifaldi to educate us all on N...
2024-12-12 01:28:13 +0000 UTC View Post
We're thrilled to announce season two of the Video Game History Hour is finally here! We've been toiling away behind the scenes putting together a fun and interesting new line-up of guests and we can't wait to share them all with you. Keep an eye on your feed for our re-launch episode coming up next.
You can listen to the Video Game History Hour every other Tuesday here on Patreon, one day early, or every other Wednesday on 2024-12-12 00:49:07 +0000 UTC
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Frank is joined by our show's producer, Robin, historian Chris Kohler, and special guest Amanda Cifaldi to recap all that went on at Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2024. Back in late September we, along with some amazing volunteers in our community, ran our annual museum inside PRGE. Come listen to our wild antics, fun finds, lessons learned, and nostalgic memories of years past.
This week, we kicked off our annual winter fundraiser, with exclusive merchandise, auctions, and other ways to support us. It's been a jam-packed year, and we want to show you the impact your ongoing support had for us in 2024. Plus, a preview of what's coming next in 2025!
If you've been following Patreon updates this year, you might've seen some of this news already, but we think it's pretty impressive seeing it all in one place!
Hi everyone! Tomorrow we're launching our annual winter fundraiser. We'll have more to share tomorrow about what's coming up next for VGHF, but we wanted to tip you off early about some limited-time merchandise we're debuting for the fundraiser.
This year, we're selling exclusive prints from our friends at Atari and Mossmouth!
First up: Mossmouth has designed 2024-12-02 22:17:49 +0000 UTC View Post
