Noting that a significant amount of feature films produced before 1950 are now irrecoverably lost, Cifaldi found himself wondering if the early history of video games would ultimately suffer the same fate.

[6] The foundation launched in February 2017, an event which was marked by a collaborative livestream between the VGHF and video game news outlet IGN.

Cifaldi has characterized this ephemera as being immensely valuable to historians, commenting; "I think that the greatest discoveries we're going to find are on materials that people don't know are important.

[6] A "digital library" of the VGHF's began shorty after foundting, a task which Cifaldi estimated would take several years given the size and scope of the project.

[14] They also included Power Up Baseball, an arcade game that had been in development by Midway in the 1990s in the style of NBA Jam but cancelled due to poor testing results.