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Frank Cifaldi @ GDC Profile picture
Frank Cifaldi @ GDC
@frankcifaldi
Founder, director and noisemaker @GameHistoryOrg. Former ink-stained wretch. He/him.
Jul 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Nine out of ten classic video games are no longer available to consumers, and that number is unlikely to get any better. It's practically guaranteed that something you grew up with is gone, forever. Most of us in the community knew it was this bad, but it wasn't until we conducted the world's first study on game availability that we could put a number on it.

87 percent.

You can no longer buy 87 percent of video games sold in the U.S. prior to 2010.
Apr 3, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
On my way home from Milwaukee yesterday I did a triple take when I saw an ancient used book store, IN THE AIRPORT!!! I felt like I walked through a portal to a world where everything was a little bit cooler. 🧵 I was so enthralled I went up to the register and was like "hey, I'm fascinated by this place, can we chat?" A man with an orange hat, orange glasses, and an orange shirt pushed aside his laptop and said "oh, heavens yes." His name is Orange Mike, and he's worked here since 1979.
Nov 30, 2022 • 47 tweets • 15 min read
Hi! I just wrote a blog post explaining five of the core ways we preserve the history of games at @GameHistoryOrg. You can read it here, but I'll expand on it here in this 🧵 gamehistory.org/five-ways-youv… @GameHistoryOrg Before we start though:

🚨WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUNDRAISER DRIVE

If you're able to give, we have sponsors that are straight up doubling your financial contributions! I can't stress enough how important it is we hit our goal, it's literally a salary: gamehistory.org/donate/
Sep 17, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Ten years after a successful Kickstarter campaign, SpaceVenture is finally out today and it is a FASCINATING mess.

I have never played a game before that not only comes with a laundry list walkthrough, but is so broken that even following the walkthrough I can't get anywhere. I have now encountered a softlock from a unique and obvious bug for the third time playing this game, and I have only seen three screens. Oh and every one of those times I was doing an action instructed in the walkthrough.
Sep 16, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Return to Monkey Island (the game) sees two of the original creators return to Monkey Island (the franchise), to make a game is about returning to Monkey Island (the island) and seeing how much has changed over the years. It's incredibly meta and I'm so excited I took Monday off. No offense to those who worked on later entries in the series but I liked those original games because they were a little weird and auteur and had something to say, and the series hasn't been that for thirty years. It was something else entirely without Ron at the wheel imo.
Apr 17, 2022 • 34 tweets • 7 min read
Okay! Now that some emotions are cooled, I want to talk about this, because I think a lot of people are either not understanding the situation or are refusing to acknowledge reality. I am doing a very positive and productive thing here and I'd like to put doubts to rest. I have been navigating the space between high end video game collectors and online citizen archivists/ROM dumpers for over twenty years. This is not an exaggeration. In 2002 I was striking deals with collectors to let me digitize their one-of-a-kind games and put them online.
Apr 15, 2022 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
Something a lot of people don't know is that every prototype game that gets submitted to WATA since late 2020 has gone through me first. As part of the process I digitize the game and write up analysis, which I'm allowed to share- starting now! (thread) ImageImageImageImage For obvious reasons I can't share playable game data, but we worked out some good compromises. I have detailed reports, images, and even hashes for the game files, to make sure the public is as educated as possible. Here's a PDF with all 125 I've done: drive.google.com/file/d/1tB5HfX…
Apr 8, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Throwing this out there in case anyone wants to throw down:

There is a mysterious game up for auction that appears to be an unreleased (or INCREDIBLY obscure) Konami title for the Famicom. It's from 1986, and may be educational? buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auc… ImageImageImageImage We don't know anything about it, but those PCBs appear to be Famicom, and the documentation does not match any known games. It's $2500 and we cannot bid on this because we, uh, are five figures in the hole on prototypes over the past three weeks.
Oct 6, 2021 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
We've been representing the Game Boy incorrectly IMO. Our traditional grayscale palette has pure white on one end and pure black on the other, but a real Game Boy has a low amount of contrast. Here's the palette Nintendo used internally. Black and white is too high contrast. ImageImageImage Traditional black and white palette on the left, with some better grayscale alternatives: desaturate the real palette, desaturate but target pure black. That low contrast look makes the art more coherent imo and is truer to how a Game boy actually looks. ImageImageImage
May 3, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Okay everyone, I've got a video game preservation tragedy here, make sure you're sitting down.

We were recently gifted a pile of loose EPROMs for video game console games from the 90s. I spent a lot of last week identifying and connecting them. Here's the results. (1/?) At first blush these look okay, right? Complete sets, 1-3!

Except, in literally every case, we're missing ROM 0, the first ROM in the set. All of these games are missing 25% of their data.
Apr 30, 2021 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
Back at my terrible ROM puzzle tonight, making some progress by identifying chunks of games! Ufouria NES would be very exciting, except we're missing 1/3 of the game ImageImage Most of this pile is pretty much garbage (only half a game etc.) so it was relieving to actually get something both playable AND interesting just now Image
Apr 29, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Before I mail out one of @GameHistoryOrg's blind box magazines (gamehistory.org/shop) I make sure it's been scanned online. If not, I put it in a "donate to scanning group" box. I'm finally sorting them today and it's, um, a lot. This is years of labor. We're getting closer to my dream of having every video game magazine OCR searchable every day, I'm so excited that we're able to use this program to get more things online and make video game research easy for everyone!
Apr 28, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is an amazing reminder that what we call "pixel artists" were often painting for messy analogue television canvases. In this case, it's absolutely clear that this game is meant to be played with a composite signal. Look at what it does to the checkerboard dithering! artist
Apr 26, 2021 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Looking at a giant pile of mystery EPROMs tonight that are all cryptically labeled and mismatched, with few clues as to anything, including their platforms. It's a really hard puzzle game basically. Image So far it's mostly stuff like "...I think that's SNES?" but we did recently have OUR FIRST SIGN OF LIFE, FOLKS. Image
Mar 23, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Video game companies would sometimes (not always!) "watermark" copies of games sent out before release, so that if it leaked they knew the culprit. Here's a fun example in a build I just dumped of Boogerman on the SNES. Left is retail game, right is review copy. Image Update: Motika has been apprehended and is in federal custody
Mar 21, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Our old Cuisinart burr coffee grinder has a hilarious design flaw that fills its own insides with super fine grain coffee over time. The switch stopped working so we couldn't turn it off, there was a solid coffee brick stopping it after like 13 years of near-daily use. Image I should brew this and relive most of my adult life in one cup
Mar 20, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
It's time to show everyone that Koala Mario is the king of off-model Marios. Get in here and vote Lou OUT. You're all voting for the wrong one
Mar 10, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm really proud of this episode, because we mostly talked to Howard about his craft and his creative process, not about E.T. and the market crash. In fact, it took about 45 minutes until E.T. even came up! I think Howard's a really interesting guy, and his output during his time at Atari demonstrates a really unique take on what game machines could be capable of at the time. He's a rebel and a pioneer, not just "the guy who made E.T."
Mar 6, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Hello today I am enjoying the chunky sprites, typography, and pseudo-NES music in the GBA version of Batman: Vengeance. ImageImageImageImage Look at chunky Robin! Almost a pseudo-Sworcery look going on with the one-pixel-wide extended arms Image
Mar 2, 2021 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Okay, I've hit a dead end so I'm asking Twitter for help.

Anyone out there working at GameStop in 2015? I'm trying to figure out if there was a preorder display box for Mega Man Legacy Collection. I have a vague memory of seeing one but can't substantiate. I'd like to get one! Image It was my first physical game, so I went wild on collecting anything that promoted it. There's a lot. Image
Mar 2, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Oops I'm playing with the mailing label thermal printer again Image Ahhh Image