** Altruism from the industry.
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** Lost NES game becomes our first fundraiser cartridge
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[link removed]

Starting today, iam8bit is opening preorders on Xcavator 2025 ([link removed]) , a brand new NES game, on a real NES cartridge, with 100% of the profits going directly toward our preservation work here at the VGHF.

This isn't just any NES game- this is based on a prototype made all the way back in 1991! You might remember our story about recovering and rebuilding an unreleased Days of Thunder game ([link removed]) for the NES from the archives of its programmer, Chris Oberth. What we didn't tell you at the time was that we found an unfinished demo by him for another game, Xcavator.


** An act of altruism from the industry
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After we recovered the data, our friends at Incredible Technologies ([link removed]) , where Xcavator was originally created, were kind enough to donate all of the game's copyrights to us. Developer Mega Cat Studios ([link removed]) stepped up to donate their time finishing and polishing up Oberth's work, and Lost in Cult ([link removed]) stepped up to donate the brand new key art on the game's packaging. Finally, iam8bit ([link removed]) agreed to publish and market the game on our behalf, eschewing all profits and sending them straight to us!

This really is a first-of-its-kind: a lost game that was donated back to the archivists who recovered it, and a multi-company effort to publish it as what just might be the first commercial game to fund a preservation charity.

The cartridge is available to preorder now ([link removed]) . We have plans to make the original prototype and its source code available for free as an educational resource as well, stay tuned for that!

Preorder Xcavator 2025 ([link removed])


** Winter Fundraiser continues!
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We like to "go big" during the holiday season, and we're excited to share some incredible new content with you!

On December 8th, we unlocked a talk ([link removed]) that we gave at this year's Game Developers Conference.

On December 10th (that's today!) we debuted Xcavator 2025 ([link removed]) .

We've only just begun, and can't wait to show you some incredible new finds next week! As a reminder, all of this is to promote our annual fundraiser campaign ([link removed]) , which is still going strong!


** We couldn't do any of this without you!
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The Video Game History Foundation is almost entirely funded by individual donors just like you. We're a relatively small organization, so when we say "every dollar counts," we really do mean it. Thank you so so much for your generosity, and for your belief that video game history matters.

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