Talking about bad dudes is getting me kind of depressed... Could you possibly recommend someone that stands out from the cesspool that is the video game community?
If we’re being honest, I’m constantly paranoid by any unrecognized person on Youtube and go through a careful and slow process of waiting for the other shoe to drop because, like, is Patrick H. Willems secretly somehow a closet monster? (I mean, I’ve seen enough of his videos now that I’d say probably not, but that’s just an example).
I suppose if you want someone that’s always been pretty cool for as long as I can remember, Frank Cifaldi is pretty alright. He goes way, way, way, way back to the early community of rom hacking and emulation and most importantly game preservation, where he was originally known as TheRedEye.
He eventually launched The Lost Levels, an early website dedicated to chronicling unreleased video games. His site got to the bottom of many mysteries, like the absolutely bizarre story of Bio Force Ape.
Cifaldi has had an on-again off-again relationship with game development, particularly in the realm of emulation and preservation. Most of that work has been done through the most recent incarnation of Digital Eclipse, who were behind the insanely loving Mega Man Legacy Collection, The Disney Afternoon Collection, Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, and the recent re-releases of the Genesis versions of Aladdin and The Lion King.
The through-line in all of those games is that they included bonus material detailing insanely obscure concept art, beautiful art galleries, and in-depth history sections. Mega Man Legacy Collection in particular has concept art for unused Robot Masters, and just all kinds of crazy, never-before-seen things. Those games are also among the gold standard for emulation accuracy (even though I’m sure Cifaldi will tell you they aren’t actually emulating the games -- it’s a more complex process than that, more akin to decompilation).
He’s also given very smart GDC talks about the challenges of doing collections of old games and why preservation is important.
And now he’s launched The Video Game History Foundation, essentially taking the work he started at The Lost Levels and expanding it dramatically. This is a place developers can submit archival materials of their games to be documented and preserved in a safe, clean, secure way. They also work with game magazine publications to dig in to their archives and document unreleased games that were lost to time.
He also just seems to be an all around nice dude. I’ve contacted him for help once or twice in nailing down the history of something I saw in a magazine and he was super chill and friendly and helpful.
Just an all around cool guy.
