Introduction from our Executive Director
Hello all you wonderful volunteers, supporters, and community members! We want to give you an update on what we've been doing in public, and also what we're working on behind the scenes. From now on, you should expect an update such as this at the end of every quarter.
Patreon and donations update
We are incredible grateful for all your support since we started this journey in 2020, we couldn't do this without you! As we are a non-profit we rely on donations, both large and small, and there are two ways you can support us financially. To support us on a monthly basis, Patreon gives you multiple options. We have made some updates to the tiers to accommodate for everyone's financial situation so please check them out!
If you want to send us larger one-time donations we recommend using PayPal Giving Fund, where PayPal will cover all fees.
At the same time we are also retiring our Ghost memberships, so if you have been a paid Ghost member come join us over on Patreon 🤗
Finally, corporate sponsorships are a great way for organizations to meet their own socioeconomic or ESG goals, and a relatively modest contribution can make a huge difference to the long-term plans of an organization like Hit Save! If you think there's scope for your company to work with us and support the work that we do, we'd love to chat so please reach out on hello@hitsave.org.
Hit Save! Hits the Road
Tewksbury Public Library
One of the most vital parts of our mission is not only to preserve the physical and digital items that make up video gaming's history, but to make these items available for what is, ultimately, the purpose of gaming - play!
We love to get out and about in the community to allow gamers old and new to relive the magic (or enjoy for the very first time) that video games can bring to our lives.
We were delighted recently to have the opportunity to work with the Tewksbury Public Library to do just that, with Jonas and Rachael from our Board helping more than 75 patrons enjoy playing games on consoles ranging from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Switch.
As well as some classic fan favourites, we were also able to highlight a bunch of donated indie games thanks to our partnerships with Super Rare Games and VGNYSoft.
The library team were super helpful and welcoming and we're currently scheduling a second event with them in July - keep an eye on our social media channels and their calendar to find out more.
PAX East
After a fantastic experience at last year's PAX East, the Hit Save! team will be there again for this year's event, running from May 8th to 11th at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
We'd love for you all to come along and join us at the event, so if you are attending then please stop by to meet the team and learn more about our preservation efforts!
The 2025 schedule isn't live yet, but we're also hoping to do a Community Meetup, showcasing some live demos of how we preserve games, so keep an eye on the PAX East website and our social media channels for more news soon!
Doing more in the community
We'd love to work with more libraries, community groups or other public spaces to bring the magic of video gaming to everyone, with a goal this year to do one per quarter.
It's thanks to your vital and continued support that we are able to cover the cost of delivering these kinds of events. We're a small team of volunteers, and every dollar received helps us do more to meet our mission and work with communities to advocate for and promote the importance of video games and their preservation.
If you know of any archives, museums, libraries or any other public or community spaces that would like to work with us to deliver a gaming-focused event, then please let us know on hello@hitsave.org.
Highlight from the Archive
39 years ago, Nintendo released The Hyrule Fantasy: Zelda no Densetsu for the Famicom Disk System in Japan. In doing so, they kicked off one of the most popular and influential game series the medium has ever seen.
To celebrate, Hit Save added the Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition to our archive!
This Nintendo GameCube release was never sold in stores, and was only available in promotions like console bundles, registration bonuses, and Nintendo Power subscriptions.
In our archive, we have made available high-resolution scans of the cover art, disc, and inserts, as well as video content extracted directly from the game files and converted for maximum compatibility. The discs were also dumped to Redump standards and the physical item itself remains securely stored in our archive, ensuring that this vital piece of video game history is preserved for the ages!
Upcoming Stream Content
We've made a huge effort over this past year to purchase and preserve items containing vital pieces of video game history - "making of" documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, early trailers or adverts, and much more! All of this content will not only be preserved in our archive, but also made available on our 24/7 live stream thanks to the efforts of Andrew Czudak, Board Member and Video Production Specialist.
We've got loads of really exciting content planned over the coming year to coincide with a range of important dates and anniversaries in video game history. We're particularly excited to premiere some rare items that we have preserved for the very first time.
Coming very soon, in honor of Ubisoft recently turning 39, we have a very special YouTube premiere planned that features Ubisoft behind the scenes developer footage that we can't find anywhere else online! Games featured include: Assassin's Creed 1, TMNT, Brothers in Arms, Rainbow Six Vegas, Haze, Splinter Cell Conviction, Naruto Rise of a Ninja, and more!
Keep an eye on our Twitch and YouTube channels and our socials for more news!
Other Stream Dates
As well as our special premiere events, we also do a bunch of regular stream updates and special events to tie in with gaming anniversaries. Here are a few previous and future dates for your diary and, as always, keep an eye on our social media platforms for more!
- 5/4 - Star Wars Day
- 5/11 - SEGA Saturn Anniversary
- 5/12 - Tony Hawk Birthday
- 5/13 - Super Mario RPG Anniversary
- 6/1 - Madden Anniversary
- 6/3 - SEGA Anniversary
- 6/9 - Midway Anniversary
- 6/23 - Sonic Anniversary
- 6/29 - Banjo Kazooie Anniversary
Regular Stream Events
As well as our own 24/7 stream, a couple of our Board Members do their own regular streams. Be sure to check out the below Twitch channels for your regular dose of gaming goodness!
kazoodac - chill out with some cartridge cleaning, disc dumping and laid back beats!
NerdLovesGeek - highlighting indie games every week, including some from our very own archive!
Supported Project Update - SquirrelJME
As part of our efforts of supporting the Keitai community's Japanese feature phone preservation efforts, we were incredibly happy to announce back in September 2024 that we were supporting Xer Shadow Tail and their amazing SquirrelJME project through our open source funding initiative!
Since then, Xer has made some amazing progress including:
- Progress on NanoCoat, a native C application/library, which as of this writing is at the very start of executing Java byte code. This relates to the RetroArch core, of which if everything continues to go well should see a release this year.
- Reworked the graphics system to be fully synchronized to ensure that all drawing operations are stable regardless of the host system, this fixes a large number of freezes and graphical glitches due to changes in how modern CPUs and graphical systems operate.
- Improvements to MIDP and DoJa application compatibility, including bug fixes.
You can see a few great examples of feature phone games running in SquirrelJME below, and the latest build can always be found in the downloads section of the SquirrelJME website. Simply look under "0.3.0: Development Build" and select the standalone build for your operating system.
Hit Save Needs You!
We hope you've enjoyed the first of what will be our regular updates to our Patreon supporters! As we've mentioned throughout this piece, all of the work that we do is enabled by your continued support. So, first and foremost, a heartfelt thanks to all of you for continuing to support us here on Patreon.
As an organization, we remain in a strong and stable financial position for the foreseeable future, but we also have to look ahead and ensure that we seek out sustainable funding sources to allow us to continue in our vital mission.
To do this, we'd like to ask for your help. Firstly, please help us spread the word! You can find us on the following social media platforms, and every follow, like and share helps get our message out to a wider audience.
Secondly, if you work in the games industry or in a related field, we're always looking to make connections with industry partners to help support and forward our mission. Our very own Amanda Farough has put together a fantastic "Video Game Preservation 101" resource which can be downloaded below and that we'd love for you to share within your own organisation.
Thank you all so much, we hope you have a fantastic spring!
