New Non-Profit Has Plans To Save Gaming’s Past

The Video Game History Foundation officially launched today. A non-profit dedicated to the preservation of video games and video game materials, the foundation is already working on special projects to help keep gaming history alive.

Directed by game historian Frank Cifaldi and a board of founders, The Video Game History Foundation is one of the only non-profit organizations dedicated to game preservation. As time marches on, games degrade and the media around them is lost. The organization hopes to take action against this growing issue.

Chief among these projects is an extensive digital library of games materials including scans of internal documents and press kits, documentation of packaging, and playable binary code for games.

“What I think we’re in the most danger of losing right now is context,” Cifaldi told Kotaku last year. “I think we’re in danger of losing the history around these games as opposed to losing the ability to launch and play them.”

An additional project is the The Nintendo USA NES Launch Collection. This endeavor seeks to document the initial days of the Nintendo Entertainment System. The project is turning up old advertisements, examining prototype units, and even has collected materials as esoteric as the script written for demonstrating the R.O.B aka the “Robotic Operating Buddy.”

The organization may grow in time to include more projects but for now it’s a strong step forward to keeping games alive. After all, we’re all familiar with the old phrase: “One man’s old magazine advert is another man’s treasure.”