The Video Game History Foundation is a nonprofit organization started by Frank Cifaldi. Its main goal is to collect, keep safe, and share historical materials related to video games.
History
At the 2016 Game Developers Conference, Cifaldi talked about the importance of preserving video games. He noted that many movies made before 1950 are now lost and cannot be recovered. He worried that early video games might face the same problem. He compared the way films are preserved to how games are preserved and said the games industry is not doing a good job of keeping its history safe. He mentioned that The Film Foundation, a group that helps save movies, inspired the creation of the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF).
Before VGHF was formed, some of its founders had worked with and donated to organizations like the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Videogame Museum, and the Strong National Museum of Play.
VGHF officially started in February 2017. This event included a live online broadcast with the video game news website IGN.
In January 2022, Phil Salvador joined VGHF as Library Director to lead several projects related to preserving games. In October 2023, Kelsey Lewin left the organization after serving as co-director.
Activities
The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) aims to record, convert into digital formats, and protect the history of video games. The foundation preserves a wide range of materials, including video games, source code, design documents, press kits, posters, video tapes, newspapers, and photographs. Special care is taken to save promotional materials created when games were first released, as these items are often not preserved as thoroughly as the games themselves. Cifaldi has noted that these materials are very valuable to historians, stating, "The greatest discoveries we may find are in items people do not realize are important."
The foundation helps museums and archives by donating preserved materials after they are saved. Many items in the foundation's collection are temporary and are given to permanent locations after being digitized and archived.
A digital library was started by the VGHF shortly after its founding. Cifaldi estimated this project would take several years due to its size and complexity. As a temporary solution, the foundation occasionally selects items from its "backend library" to upload online. Public access to the digital library began in January 2025. The library includes over 30,000 files and an index of gaming media, such as text archives, video game magazines, and development materials. The VGHF also holds unprocessed physical media, which will later be converted into digital formats for broader access.
In August 2025, the VGHF acquired the early video game newsletter Computer Entertainer, which it released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The newsletter provided coverage of North American video games during the early to mid-1980s, including reviews and release dates.
The VGHF has partnered with Wata Games, which evaluates and rates sealed video games for collectors before sales or auctions. Wata has shared details about any prototype games it has reviewed with the VGHF to add to its database.
The foundation launched the Video Game Source Project in October 2020 to collect original source code and other materials for classic video games. These items are stored in the foundation's archives and made available to researchers. The first games added to the project include The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, and Power Up Baseball, an arcade game developed by Midway in the 1990s but canceled due to poor testing. The foundation also obtained the source code and intellectual property rights to Xcavator, an unreleased NES game created by Chris Oberth, with plans to release a completed version in 2026 to fund its operations.
In July 2023, the VGHF worked with the Software Preservation Network to study the commercial availability of video games released in the United States before 2010. The study found that only 13.27% of classic games were available for purchase, while 87% were described as "critically endangered." The study examined games for multiple consoles, including the Game Boy family of handhelds, of which only 5.8% were available for digital purchase. The VGHF acknowledged that many games are preserved by libraries and archives, but access is often limited due to copyright laws.
The VGHF also collaborated with the Software Preservation Network to request an exemption to section 1201 of the DMCA. This exemption would have allowed libraries and archives to share digital copies of out-of-print games. Work on the request began in 2021, and it was submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office in October 2024. The proposed exemption was denied.