Video Game History Hour

Updated: 15 Oct 2025 • 150 episodes
gamehistory.org

Industry expert Frank Cifaldi, Executive Director of the Video Game History Foundation, brings on fellow content creators, game developers, video game historians, and storytellers to teach us a little bit about video game history. Our casual, “chatting over coffee” style interviews let us see the true life of a researcher: bang-your-head-against-a-wall dead-ends, “I can’t believe no one’s told this story before” moments, the thrill of sharing incredible history with the world, and more. Pull up a chair and join us!

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It’s another quarterly update! Host Robin Kunimune talks with Frank Cifaldi and Phil Salvador about our recent work. From Chicago travel to launching Computer Entertainer, from our new Booth-in-a-Box to 4,000 magazines archived, from NES’s 40th to building Lego; come find out just how many new collections we've added i

90 min
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01:30:59
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Phil Salvador interviews Dr. Stephanie Harkin, lecturer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) School of Design Games Program in Australia, about her research on femininity in gaming, particularly in girls' lifestyle magazines. Dr. Harkin discusses her journey from media studies to focusing on feminine g

58 min
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Host Frank Cifaldi is joined by documentarian, historian, hacker, and all around cool guy SynaMax to talk about their documentary Resurrecting Sinistar: A Cyber-Archaeology Documentary. The 1983 top-down space shooter arcade game’s unique 49-way joystick allowed players to pilot their spaceship to prevent a giant skull

63 min
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We’re joined by pioneer video game historian Leonard Herman, author and publisher of several video game history books including the first comprehensive book chronicling the history of the videogame industry, Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames, and its subsequent series. We touch on Leonard’s early career, the

71 min
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01:11:36
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Host Phil Salvador is joined by Derek Alexander, of the YouTube channel Stop Skeletons From Fighting, and Zarithya, of the YouTube channel Zarithya, to talk about the fan-restored 16-player mode for the 1991 Game Boy game Faceball 2000 as laid out in My 2 Year Journey to Solve the 30-Year Myth of Faceball 2000 | SSFF.

77 min
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01:17:35
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Frank Cifaldi and guest-host Kate Willaert (of A Critical Hit) are joined by Marylou Badeaux to discuss the history of the vitally important Computer Entertainer, also known as The Video Game Update: a monthly newsletter which covered video game availability information and reviews in the 1980’s. Co-created with Marylo

97 min
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01:37:17
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