Sometimes an ordinary day can quickly turn into a suspended moment thanks to a small daily miracle. This is undoubtedly the feeling felt by Frank Cifaldi, founder of the Video Game History Foundation – dedicated to the conservation of video game heritage – during a detour on eBay. The famous online auction site has released two NES games from its bowels, never released commercially, at least not in the versions displayed. The first, Napoleon Senkiif he saw the color of the Japanese linear, never arrived under his name of Battlefields of Napoleon In Occident. To be localized and published by Broderbund, this highly ambitious real-time strategy game for the NES seemed lost for good on the preservation battlefield. Regarding the second, it is a prototype game for the infernal device that was the Power Glove. The title, mysterious, is simply adorned with a “CES Sample” without further details, but was developed by the talented studio Rare.
?Attention video game preservation fans with money to spare?
There are currently TWO unreleased, one-of-a-kind, never-digitized games for the original NES on eBay right now. This has literally never happened before. Our resources are stretched thin, and we could use help. pic.twitter.com/54ym603mHM
— Frank Cifaldi (PRGE).nes (@frankcifaldi) October 11, 2022
So there are necessarily treasures to quickly record and store for the VGHF. But, auction site obliges, all this has a cost. $9600 (just over €9835) precisely for Battlefields of Napoleon as of this writing. Hence Franck Cifaldi’s request for financial assistance, especially in times of crisis, as he indicates on Twitter: “Normally, @GameHistoryOrg is on a “preserve now and deal with the rest later” logic in terms of money. But the year has been quite difficult. We’re healthy and happy, but not healthy enough to keep spending thousands of dollars on every prototype that comes along.“. Let’s hope the foundation finds a solution.