The creator of the Video Game History Foundation, Frank Cifaldi, has announced yesterday on social media that the 501(c)3 non-profit organization has recently come into possession of 125 mystery prototype ROMs, which are believed to originally be from Taito Japan.

And, better yet, the non-profit will be doing a livestream in a week's time (on June 5th) where it will be dumping and analyzing their contents live on stream.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

For the time ever, you can now watch some never-before-seen footage of Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII's lost Chocobo Racing mini-game, thanks to a group of feature phone preservationists.

As you may or may not already be aware, over the last few years, there's been a concerted effort from members of the Final Fantasy fan community and the Keitai Wiki Discord to try and preserve and rebuild the mobile title, which served as a prequel to Final Fantasy VII and focused on a story about the Turks.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

When you're talking about obscure video games, they don't come much more obscure than 1993's Cosmology of Kyoto, developed by Japanese studio SoftEdge. A nonlinear CD-ROM adventure, the game was lucky enough to get a Western release in 1994, and while it wasn't commercially successful, it has since gained a cult following online.

However, as leftfield as Cosmology of Kyoto undoubtedly is, its sequel is even more unknown—in fact, until very recently, it wasn't even known if it had actually been physically released. Entitled TRIPITAKA 玄奘三蔵求法の旅, the game sold on Yahoo Japan in 2023 for almost $300—and video game academic Bruno de Figueiredo has successfully managed to get it preserved online.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Preserving Japanese phone games is a tricky and often underappreciated process. These titles weren't distributed physically but as digital downloads via services such as i-mode, so tracking them down and ensuring they're not lost forever as hardware dies is effectively a race against time.

While many gamers look down on mobile phone games—especially those produced before smartphones became commonplace—it's easy to forget that some of the biggest publishers launched exclusive instalments from their best-selling franchises on Japanese phones, making their preservation a matter of considerable importance.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Games That Weren't, the website dedicated to preserving early and unreleased builds of games, has just announced the release of 7 newly discovered prototypes related to Ocean Software and Enigma Variations' 1993 NES platformer The Addam's Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt.

According to Frank Gasking, the creator of Games That Weren't, the builds were provided to the website by Mark Greenshields (formerly of Enigma Variations), who gave his permission for them to be added to the site.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

The i-Mode version of Hudson Soft's 2008 mobile title Bomberman Puzzle Special has now been dumped and preserved, the feature phone preservationist RockmanCosmo has announced.

Released in 2008, Bomberman Puzzle Special is a Sokoban-style puzzle game that acts as an expanded version of the 2003 i-Mode title Bomberman Puzzle (which was also released for EZWeb-compatible phones in 2004). It includes double the amount of puzzles over the original game (600 in total) as well as the ability to create and save 10 custom levels — a feature that wasn't present in the initial release.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Two weeks ago, when Time Extension ran a feature on our struggles, we weren't optimistic about turning things around.

There was a crisis of confidence that perhaps we weren't needed, weren't wanted, or that the community wasn't interested. The response was the complete opposite. We received around 400 new supporters, bringing in roughly ¥160,000 (£830 / $1100) per month. There were hundreds of new emails in our inbox, which we are still going through. The response was overwhelming and deeply heartwarming. In fact, we now have more supporters from outside Japan than from within.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Friends of Mana probably isn't a title that many Western fans of the Seiken Densetsu/Mana series will be aware of.

Released in 2006 for Softbank-compatible feature phones (and for i-Mode and EZWeb services one year later in 2007), the network-based multiplayer RPG was never localized outside of Japan, meaning only the most dedicated members of the community are probably even aware of its existence. Nevertheless, it remains an intriguing part of the series's history, being the first mobile entry (predating games like Circle of Mana and Echoes of Mana) and one that has unfortunately found itself in somewhat of a precarious situation when it comes to the topic of preservation.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

A selection of over 200 beta GBA, DS, DSi And 3DS carts could be at risk of falling into the hands of a private owner, it has been revealed.

The non-profit preservation group Video Game Preservation Museum was in discussion with the seller about dumping and preserving the carts. However, it was revealed yesterday that the seller backed out of the arrangement after being contacted by other individuals, presumably with higher offers.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

N64 Recompiled is a new tool that allows for the static recompilation of N64 games, turning their code into C language and opening the door for native PC ports.

We've seen a growing list of N64 titles mooted for PC versions, and now an unreleased example is joining the ranks: Rare's Dinosaur Planet, the game that would eventually become Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Fallout series creator and legendary designer Tim Cain has been sharing stories of game development on YouTube for a while now and recently claimed that, to his knowledge, the source code for the first few Fallout games on PC had been lost after Interplay—the original publisher—ordered it to be destroyed.

"When I left Fallout, I was told 'you have to destroy everything you have, and I did," said Cain on his YouTube channel. "My entire archive, early design notes, code for different versions, prototypes, all the GURPS code… gone."

Read the full article on timeextension.com

"Currently, in our bank account, we have £2100 (around $2800). It's not even enough to pay the rent for one month," explains Joseph Redon, head of the Japanese Game Preservation Society. He's describing the end of the non-profit organisation he set up in 2011 with the aim of properly safeguarding Japanese gaming history before it is lost forever.

The GPS has successfully preserved thousands of Japanese games—including many floppy discs, which have a finite lifespan—and related media, such as magazines and books. Honorary members of the society include Tomohiro Nishikado (creator of Space Invaders), Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage composer), Yoshio Kiya (Dragon Slayer, Sorcerian) and Tokihiro Naito (creator of Hydlide)—yet, despite attracting the support of such legendary figures and operating in one of the world's most influential nations when it comes to interactive entertainment, the organisation is on its last legs.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Square, Capcom, Taito, and Sega are all making steps towards archiving their past, according to a recently resurfaced SIGGRAPH Asia talk from last December.

Despite almost being five months old at this point, this talk only recently came to our attention thanks to a social media post from the former Software Creations and TT Fusion developer KevEdwardsRetro, who spotted a write-up of the talk (in Japanese) from Gamemakers.jp.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

The Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, New York, announced earlier this week that it had acquired a sizeable collection of development materials from the Saint's Row studio Volition.

This collection was reportedly donated to the museum by former "Volitionites" and is said to include "thousands of game builds, some source material, documentation, awards, and props".

Read the full article on timeextension.com

As you've probably been able to tell from the abundance of news articles lately, the feature phone preservation community has been extremely active in recent months, dumping a ton of old Japanese mobile titles that were previously believed to be lost to time.

Because of this, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they might eventually run out of steam and experience a slow period, wherein the team would hit a brick wall with what it was able to uncover. But, remarkably, this doesn't appear to be the case, with the video game preservationist RockmanCosmo recently taking to social media to announce another two games once considered lost have been dumped and preserved.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Decades after the release of Dark Castle for the MSX2, the game has finally been preserved online, thanks to the efforts of the game preservationist @TrevgauntletNeu.

Dark Castle was a dungeon crawler released for the MSX2 in Japan in 1993 and is one of three games that were developed by the indie developer MNS Soft (alongside Kidoairaku and Bunazogu). It was published using Brother Industries' Takeru kiosk system — a software distribution machine that would write video games to a cartridge or disk and was typically found inside Japanese video game stores in the '80s and '90s.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

The feature phone preservation community has saved another game from digital oblivion. This time it's Puyo Puyo Fever Habanero, a Puyo Puyo spin-off that was released for i-Mode, EZWeb, and Softbank-compatible phones in 2007, via Sega's now defunct Sonic Cafe portal.

According to RockmanCosmo, the game was dumped from a handset by a user named Chicken and is specifically the i-Mode version of the game, which has been extracted from a D903i phone. Prior to this discovery, many online had considered the game to be "lost media", as Sega had long since stopped selling it officially and fans had no idea whether a phone still existed that contained all of the files.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

A bunch of screenshots from a cancelled Virtual Boy Mario game have recently been discovered and shared online, giving us our best look at the game since it was first advertised back in the 1990s at industry trade shows (h/t: Polygon).

The screenshots were discovered by the Bluesky user rabidrodent and were discovered in a bunch of AOL file directories, accessible through The Internet Archive.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Games That Weren't's founder Frank Gasking revealed earlier today that he has managed to preserve another lost Enigma Variations game, following the discovery of unreleased NES versions of Sensible Soccer and Populous.

This time it's the turn of the 1993 side-scrolling mech beat 'em up Mechanoids 2 - The Final Conflict to join the Game That Weren't Archive — a previously unheard-of SNES game that was pitched to various publishers in the early '90s before eventually being put to one side.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

The feature phone preservationist RockmanCosmo has announced that a long-lost i-Mode version of From Software's PS1 dungeon crawler King's Field has now been preserved giving players the chance to experience an obscure part of the company's history for themselves.

King's Field, in case you're unfamiliar, was the first-ever video game released by FromSoftware and was published on the original Sony PlayStation in Japan in 1994. It took place in the medieval world of Verdite and saw players embark on a quest into the royal catacombs to search for their father and discover the cause of a recent monster invasion.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

Yesterday, it was announced that the feature phone preservation community had managed to find a way to locate and preserve a previously lost i-Mode port of the first-ever SaGa game, Makai Toushi SaGa — a title that is perhaps better known in the West by its localized title 'The Final Fantasy Legend'.

According to RockmanCosmo, who was the first to break the news over on social media, the game was preserved by a user named LNRC and appears to be loosely based on the Japan-exclusive 2002 WonderSwan remake of the original Game Boy title (that was launched back in 1989).

Read the full article on timeextension.com

The Konix Multisystem is one of the most famous unreleased gaming platforms of all time. First shown off in 1989, it was created by a team of former Sinclair Research staffers, it boasted a moving chair accessory and light gun—but the project collapsed when Konix went under in 1990.

However, the technology seen in the Multisystem lived on in a way. The "Multisystem 2", as it was unofficially called, wasn't a hardware platform as such but would find its way into the market via some rather odd devices, such as the unsuccessful TXC Multi-system—a combination of CD player, photo viewer, karaoke machine, and console.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

A bunch of Shenmue development materials have just been archived online, thanks to the Shenmue-dedicated website Shenmue Dojo. This includes "over 400 original sketches, illustrations, 3D renders & more" from the early development of the game, including the period in which Yu Suzuki's team at Sega (Sega AM-2) was still developing the game as a Virtua Fighter RPG.

According to an article on Shenmue Dojo, the impressive collection of materials comes from a couple of different sources, with the main one being three listings that were discovered earlier this year on a Japanese auction website called Zenmarket.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

We have another exciting update to share from the feature phone preservation community.

Yesterday, on social media, RockmanCosmo revealed that a remarkable 23 titles, developed for i-Mode compatible Japanese feature phones by Konami, had been dumped and preserved online. The majority of these titles had previously been considered "lost media" due to Konami pulling its Konami Net DX offline in 2016 and i-Mode-compatible phones falling out of use.

Read the full article on timeextension.com

At this year's Game Developer's Conference, a senior build engineer at PlayStation named Garrett Fredley gave a talk, entitled Preserving the Past for the Future: A PlayStation Case Study.

The talk, which has since been written up by GamesRadar staff (who were in attendance), centered on the problem of how you go about preservation if you have over 30 years' worth of history to capture, record, and archive. And the solution sounds like something out of an old science fiction novel or an Indiana Jones film.

Read the full article on timeextension.com