Founded by Frank Cifaldi in 2017, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to “preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games.” On January 30, VGHF library director Phil Salvador announced the “early access” launch of the organization’s new digital library. According to Salvador, the searchable online platform features a “curated selection” of materials from VGHF’s physical archive, including over 1,500 out-of-print video game magazines, directories and maps from the first 12 years of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the personal papers of retired video game producer Mark Flitman.

Only about 13 percent of video games published in the United States prior to 2010 remain commercially available today, according to a study published on July 10 by the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF). Phil Salvador, the VGHF’s library director, authored the landmark study, which examined 4,000 classic video games first released on the Commodore 64, Nintendo Game Boy family, and Sony PlayStation 2. Overall, Salvador concluded that legal access to historical titles was “dire” across all software ecosystems and represented a “crisis for the entire medium of video games.”