Happy birthday to EA's video game adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which came out 22 years ago today! Developed by the now-defunct Visceral Games, Return of the King flexed EA's budget by hiring many of the movie's cast and crew to make the game as authentic as possible!

Last month at PRGE, we held a reunion panel with Nintendo employees who launched the NES. Hear from Bruce Lowry, Gail Tilden, and Lance Barr about how the scrappy staff at NOA defied all odds and released one of the most iconic game systems ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2WDfsiLiRA

Happy birthday to @infinityward.com's #CallOfDuty 4, which shed its WWII roots and thrust players into the modern era in more ways than one! In addition to a powerful single player campaign, the game debuted its new perks system that set the standard for the series going forward. Did you prestige?

Didn't want to jinx it before it was in my hands but I managed to find a beautiful copy of this 1987 #Nintendo calendar with a piece of #Zelda art we had only seen in Art & Artifacts miscredited as for the 1994 re-release of Z1 AFAIK this is the earliest official illustrated face we have for Ganon!

Happy birthday to @insomniac.games' Resistance 2, which turns 17 years old today!

Episode 2 of @camerabird.bsky.social's Preserving Play Docuseries is offically up on YouTube, and it features Hit Save's own @jonasrosland.bsky.social! Check it out! #gamepreservation

War never changes, but games sure do! 17 years ago today @bethesdastudios.com brought the Fallout series into the 3rd dimension and the modern era with the release of Fallout 3!

25 years ago today the Sony Playstation 2 was released in the US. The #PS2 brought affordable DVD players into American homes, featured full PS1 backwards compatibility, and to this day remains the best selling game console of all time. Its impact on the game industry simply cannot be overstated.

Thanks to a donation from @joerybicki.com, we now have a complete collection of P.S.X., physically AND digitally! October 1996 was the last issue we were missing and also the last unscanned issue archive.gamehistory.org/item/c548c7c...

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a quarter-century old today! Anyone else "met with a terrible fate" upon learning this fact? Can someone play the song of time, please? No? Well at least we can enjoy one of the coolest TV ads of the new millennium!

Happy 20th birthday to @infinityward.com's Call of Duty 2! This legendary FPS let you fight evil Nazis forces through the eyes of American, British, and Soviet allies in historic #WWII campaigns. Sure, health regen wasn't historically accurate, but there's still plenty of real history here to learn!

Happy birthday to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, which turns 19 years old today! This ambitious blockbuster of a game spanned comic book series and console generations alike, but despite being re-released on PS4/XBONE/PC in 2016, licensing issues pulled it from online storefronts a mere two years later!

Happy birthday to Super Mario Bros 3, which was released in Japan 37 years ago today! We don't have anything in our archive for SMB3 (yet) but there's never a bad time to link to one of @gaminghistorian.bsky.social's fantastic documentaries! youtu.be/MxT6IwUtLSU?...

Save the Games returns next year to The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY! More info to come, but save the date! July 29 and 30, 2026!

We are deeply saddened by the loss of Greg Newby, who led Project Gutenberg ( @gutenberg.org ) with passion and purpose. Greg’s belief in free and open access to knowledge continues to inspire us and so many others working to preserve our shared culture online. gutenberg.org/about/newby....

Y’all have GOT to stop uncritically sharing Stealth’s posts without checking your sources! I can’t find a source for when and where Miyamoto supposedly said this or who translated it ANYWHERE and yet my timeline is flooded with takes on it.

Sounds like the Miyamoto quote was extremeeeely misinterpreted by the original source, so I deleted those posts The point still stands that commercial distribution of classic games at scale is much harder than for film. But it sounds like that was not the substance of what he was talking about

Happy birthday to @obsidian.net's Fallout: New Vegas, which came out 15 years ago today! This teaser was the first look at FNV for many of us, and set the tone for one of the most interesting stories in the Fallout universe to date!

On this day in 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System was first released in the United States. That's right, the NES is a whopping 40 years old! For those still using and maintaining the original hardware, we have a special treat for you: A Nintendo Repair and Maintenance VHS tape from 1992!

CORRECTION: It seems the two games were developed separately from each other! Thanks to @jtduckman.bsky.social for sharing this video where Mr. Sakurai goes into more detail! For anyone who isn't familiar, this video series is a treasure trove of info from a development legend! youtu.be/bRDAYgRns4E

youtu.be/bRDAYgRns4E Sakurai has said the gamecube kirby air ride is completely unrelated to the cancelled N64 game. it seems like both games were developed with entirely different teams, directors, and concepts. seems like outside of the shared title theres not much in common between the two

The new Kirby Air Riders comes out next month, but the original Kirby Air Ride for Nintendo Gamecube turns 22 years old today! But wait, WAS it the original? The game actually started life on the Nintendo 64 before being cancelled and developed as a Gamecube game instead!

Happy birthday to King of Fighters: Maximum Impact, which released on Playstation 2 21 years ago today! Terry might not have been shouting "Rum and Coke" all this time, but the first 3D game in the #KingOfFighters series is old enough to order one now, at least here in the USA!

Happy birthday to @rare.co.uk's Jet Force Gemini, which turns 26 today! Game 8 of Rare's 11-game run on the Nintendo 64 was interesting and unique, both in concept and in control scheme! We take dual analog sticks for granted now, but back in the 90s 3D control schemes were a real Wild West!

Did you get to try the #GameTank at our #PAXEast booth this year? If not, then you may not have heard of this brand new, open source 8-bit game console! Come listen to @gametank.zone as he shows off the system and learn how you can get involved as a player or a dev! Link in the reply:

Looking for something to watch today @unabandonware.bsky.social is giving a presentation at #JawnCon2025 about Japanese phone game preservation, and it's live right now! Stop in and watch if you're around! www.youtube.com/live/Cvf-mAd...

Had an amazing time visiting @doublefine.com last night to tour their studio and play some of their new game, Keeper!

Collectors! Store owners! Hoarders! Help us out! @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social is looking to source copies of this 1985 NES pack-in poster for fundraising reasons, and we need them asap. We already cleaned out eBay. Note that they need to be the ones that say copyright 1985, as pictured! Can pay!

Today we share a fantastic deep dive into the story of @jeltron.bsky.social, comic book artist and game creator. Ben's work focuses on handcrafted experiences that prioritize player agency, realism, and emotional impact. Check it out! hitsave.org/from-comic-b... youtu.be/dmGnhdhOytI

I was today years old when I learned that a travel guide was produced for the Game Boy in 1991 and that it has a cute little pixel animation to represent the character of each major city it covers.

Anybody remember when Sonic Team's next big franchise after the hedgehog was... Billy Hatcher? (Here's a teaser ad from 2003, in case you forgot...)

Happy birthday to the Dark Souls, one of gaming's most legendary... wait. No, hold on. Wrong Dark Souls!

Happy Sweet 16 to Demon's Souls, which first released in the USA on this day in 2009! We've got some great press kit material for the game in our archive, so check it out if you want to bring yourself back to the dawn of the Soulslike genre! archive.hitsave.org/ark:/78322/1...

A game development legend needs your help!

Happy birthday to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, which released in the USA three decades ago today! This game pushed the Super Nintendo hardware to the upper limit, and included dedicated hardware in the cartridge itself to expand the system's capabilities even further!

Check out this amazing remastered (at 4k!) version of "The Making of Myst" mini-doc! Originally included on the Myst CD-ROM in 1993, this version has been carefully recreated by Ted Sase using footage preserved by the VGHF! https://youtu.be/xBtLZDPnYlM

Happy birthday to the experimental but ill-fated Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, which released on PS1 28 years ago today! This game took the Mortal Kombat series into an entirely new direction...unfortunately, audiences and critics alike largely agreed that the new direction was...downhill. 😬

Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

Happy 29th birthday to the Nintendo 64, which first released in the US on this day in 1996!

Thrilled to announce the release of scans for the entire run of Technopolis! Read about the history of this Japanese computer gaming magazine written by @ftb1979.bsky.social and download/view the scans. Enjoy and please RT to help spread the word. www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/2025/09/t...

If your placeholder assets aren't clearly placeholders, you'll forget to replace them Back in ~1999, the art director for some dollhouse game made a temporary diamond-shaped model for their character UI. By the time he realized they hadn't replaced it, it was too late and it shipped as-is. Oops!

Happy birthday to @esrb.org, which was founded on this day 31 years ago in response to US congressional hearings addressing violence in video games!

How often do sequels live up to or surpass the original? The Sims 2 sure did, and it turns 21 years old today! In honor of the occasion, we've just added the Sims 2 Double Deluxe to our archive. This version came with a bonus disc containing trailers, wallpapers, music, and tutorials from the devs!

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was released in the US 12 years ago today! Certain copies were bundled with disc containing a 49min documentary called Tekken Takes Tokyo, where project director Katsuhiro Harada gives viewers tours of the Bandai Namco office as well as some of his favorite places in Tokyo!

30 years ago today, Sony released the original #Playstation in the USA, which means that on this date in 1995 American gamers were first introduced to what is quite possibly the greatest boot audio to ever grace an electronic device. Sound on for this one, everyone! #PS1

Our latest podcast episode is up! Earlier this summer Hit Save director @jonasrosland.bsky.social sat down CrunchBite, current project lead on the #XLinkKai tunneling program, and got the story behind one of gaming's most enduring community-driven projects dedicated to connecting gamers worldwide.

One of the most famous and influential video games of all time released in the US 28 years ago today: Happy birthday to Final Fantasy VII! Check out these three 30 second cinematic spots, complete with movie trailer voice! Seems they were keen to take some shots at the film industry, huh? #FFVII

Up in the @hitsave.org archive today: Mario Party 8, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga & Bowser's Inside Story, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, Mega Man 9, Mega Man 10, and Metal Gear Solid 3. Enjoy! archive.hitsave.org/item?sort_by...