The Saviour of Video Game History has arrived

The Nonprofit group The Video Game History Foundation have launched a crowdfunding campaign with one goal: to preserve the precious history of the video game industry.

The patron page opens with “My name is Frank, and I’ve spent my entire adult life saving video game history”. It goes on to detail the logistics of just what TVGHF sets out to do – their goal, to make sure that storytellers have exactly what they need to be able to tell the epic historic tale of video games.

It’s evident that the foundation is still in it’s beginning stages – and there is plenty of room for it to grow. Frank even goes on to suggest that there is a possibility of working with a museum and opening a library.

TVGHF have already started to build a digital library of video game history, here are some of the things they state to already be keeping:

• High-resolution, lossless scans of game packaging and documentation.
• Playable binary code that has been verified as clean and untainted.
• Marketing and PR material, including press kits, “preview” screenshots of games, trailers, vintage slides, and advertisements.
• Periodicals, newsletters, and other printed resources.
• Internal documentation, notes, source code and assets, and related materials from game creators and publishers that offer behind-the-scenes insight into how games were made and sold.
• Digitized video, including sales videos that were never before available to the public.

It’s clear from the comments on YouTube that there is a huge support for the foundation – it blows my mind that something like this hasn’t happened before.

Why shouldn’t gaming history be treated the same way as everything else? It not only tells a story of the progression of gaming but also the era we were living in. An old game can bring back memories of a time long gone, and I’ve never been happier that people are trying to preserve it.

Check out The Video Game History Foundation’s social media, and support them on Patreon:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/gamehistoryorg

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gamehistoryorg/