Frank Cifaldi | |
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![]() Cifaldi at the 2024 Game Developers Conference | |
Born | May 22, 1982 |
Occupation(s) | Video game archivist, historian, and developer |
Known for | Founding the Video Game History Foundation |
Frank Cifaldi (born May 22, 1982) [1] is a video game preservationist, historian, and developer.
Cifaldi founded Lost Levels, a website that collected information about unreleased video games, in 2003. [2] This began his career in the video game industry, and after years of writing about and producing games, he founded the Video Game History Foundation in 2016. [2] He is currently the director of the organization, [3] [4] and has assisted in projects including Digital Eclipse's Mega Man Legacy Collection [5] [6] and The Disney Afternoon Collection remasters. [7] Cifaldi would leave Digital Eclipse around 2020 to work on the Video Game History Foundation full time. [8]
He is also known for his extensive personal collection of video game periodicals. [9] [10] Cifaldi has also researched early video game advertising, [11] early Nintendo prototypes, [12] and the official Super Mario Bros. release date. [13] He presented on games preservation at the 2016 Game Developers Conference. [14] [15] Cifaldi is additionally a former features editor of Gamasutra , [16] and a former host of the Retronauts podcast. [17]
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is a 1986 platform game developed by Nintendo R&D4 and published by Nintendo. A sequel to Super Mario Bros. (1985), the game was originally released in Japan for the Family Computer Disk System as Super Mario Bros. 2 on June 3, 1986. Nintendo of America deemed it too difficult for its North American audience and instead released an alternative sequel, also titled Super Mario Bros. 2, in 1988. The game was renamed The Lost Levels and first released internationally in the 1993 Super Nintendo Entertainment System compilation Super Mario All-Stars. The game has since been ported to the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, along with being re-released through emulation for the Wii, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch.
Roy is a fictional character from Nintendo's Fire Emblem video game series who, alongside Marth, first appeared in the 2001 crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. Melee as a representative character from the Fire Emblem series. He is the lead character of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade; within the story, he is the son of Eliwood and heir presumptive of Pherae, who eventually becomes a major military leader. The inclusion of Roy and Marth in Melee is cited as one of the reasons Nintendo started localizing the series for international distribution. Roy continues to make recurring appearances in subsequent Fire Emblem media, such as a manga series and spinoff video games.
1Up.com was an American entertainment website that focused on video games. Launched in 2003, 1Up.com provided its own original features, news stories, game reviews, and video interviews, and also featured comprehensive PC-focused content. Like a print magazine, 1Up.com also hosted special week-long online cover stories that presented each day a new in-depth feature story, interview with the developers, game screenshot gallery, game video footage, and video of the game studio and creators. On February 21, 2013, Ziff Davis announced it would be winding down the site, along with sister sites GameSpy and UGO.com.
Kotaku is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier.
Ike is a character from the Fire Emblem series of video games. He is the central protagonist and Lord-class character of the ninth game in the series, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and one of the central characters in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Ike is one of the most popular characters in the Fire Emblem series, and has appeared in other media, most notably the Super Smash Bros. fighting game series.
Digital Eclipse Entertainment Partners Co. is an American video game developer based in Emeryville, California. Founded by Andrew Ayre in 1992, the company found success developing commercial emulations of arcade games for Game Boy Color. In 2003, the company merged with ImaginEngine and created Backbone Entertainment. A group of Digital Eclipse employees split off from Backbone to form Other Ocean Interactive, which, in 2015, bought and revived the Digital Eclipse brand.
Chrom is a character in the video game Fire Emblem Awakening and its related Fire Emblem franchise. He is the prince of the Kingdom of Ylisse, a descendant of Marth, the brother of Lissa and Emmeryn, and the father of Lucina. He is in charge of the state-sponsored militia force known as The Shepherds investigating the actions of an enemy state, and wields the legendary Falchion. Chrom has also appeared in other games in the Fire Emblem series and in crossover video games such as Project X Zone 2, Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He is voiced by Tomokazu Sugita in Japanese and by Matthew Mercer in English.
Rare Replay is a 2015 compilation of 30 video games from the 30-year history of developers Rare and its predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game. The emulated games span multiple genres and consoles—from the ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360—and retain the features and errors of their original releases with minimal edits. The compilation adds cheats to make the older games easier and a Snapshots mode of specific challenges culled from parts of the games. Player progress is rewarded with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews about Rare's major and unreleased games.
Celeste is a 2018 platform game developed and published by indie studio Maddy Makes Games. The player controls Madeline, a young woman with anxiety and depression who aims to climb Celeste Mountain. During her climb, she encounters several characters, including a personification of her self-doubt known as Badeline, who attempts to stop her from climbing the mountain.
Lucina is a fictional character and one of the protagonists from Intelligent Systems's 2012 role-playing video game Fire Emblem Awakening, part of their overarching Fire Emblem series of video games. Her popularity later led to her inclusion in several other video games, including Intelligent System's 2015 title Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., Nintendo's crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and its sequel Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Capcom's Monster Hunter Frontier G, and Bandai Namco's crossover RPG Project X Zone 2. Lucina would again appear in future Fire Emblem titles as well, including Fire Emblem Fates, Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Warriors, and Fire Emblem Engage though in more of a supporting role rather than a protagonist with the latter titles.
The Disney Afternoon Collection is a compilation video game developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Capcom. It features six video games originally developed by Capcom and released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, all based on animated series from the television block The Disney Afternoon, which ran in syndication from 1990 to 1997. The compilation includes the titles DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck, DuckTales 2, and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2. It was released on April 18, 2017, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.
Video game preservation is a form of preservation applied to the video game industry that includes, but is not limited to, digital preservation. Such preservation efforts include archiving development source code and art assets, digital copies of video games, emulation of video game hardware, maintenance and preservation of specialized video game hardware such as arcade games and video game consoles, and digitization of print video game magazines and books prior to the Digital Revolution.
SethBling is an American video game commentator and Twitch video game live streamer known for YouTube videos focused around the 1990 side-scrolling platform video game Super Mario World and the 2011 sandbox video game Minecraft. He created original and derivative video games, devices and phenomena in Minecraft, without using Minecraft mods. He created an interpreter for the programming language BASIC and an emulator for the 1977 home video game console Atari 2600 in Minecraft. In addition to Minecraft builds that run without mods, he created plugins for the game.
The Video Game History Foundation is a non-profit foundation founded by Frank Cifaldi. The primary aim of the foundation is the archival, preservation, and dissemination of historical media related to video games.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a 2018 crossover fighting game developed by Bandai Namco Studios and Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the fifth installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, succeeding Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (2014). The game follows the series' traditional style of gameplay, in which players control one of the various characters and use attacks to weaken their opponents and knock them out of an arena. It features a wide variety of game modes, including a single-player campaign and multiplayer versus modes. Ultimate features 89 playable fighters, including all characters from previous Super Smash Bros. games as well as newcomers. The roster ranges from Nintendo characters to those from third-party franchises.
Isabelle, known as Shizue (しずえ) in Japan, is a fictional character from the Animal Crossing series of video games. She is a gentle Shih Tzu that debuted in the 2012 release Animal Crossing: New Leaf, where she serves as the secretary to the player character.
David Hunt, known online as GrandPooBear, is an American video game streamer, speedrunner, and creator of Kaizo Super Mario levels. A Red Bull athlete, Hunt is primarily known for playing and creating levels for Super Mario Maker. He has also performed at various Games Done Quick events and TwitchCon, and has hosted his own in-person and virtual speedrunning events.
Undertale Soundtrack is a soundtrack album by Toby Fox, released in 2015 for the video game Undertale.