This wiki is a community-driven effort to document preferred methods of preserving video games by “dumping” them (saving the game data to a computer file) from their original physical media in ways that support:
We tend to prefer tools released under free/open source licenses, so the preservation community can make improvements, like fixing bugs and updating software to run on modern platforms. Hit Save! offers financial support for open source projects focusing on video game preservation.
Video games have played a large role in our cultural history for decades, but we're at risk of losing many older games forever. Floppy disks, CDs, and other physical media have begun to reach the end of their lifespan and it's often no longer possible to access an uncorrupted copy of their data. Even for games that haven't yet succumbed to bit rot, playing them often requires obsolete technology.
We need to preserve these artifacts of cultural development so future generations can appreciate and learn from them.
We want to assist the global preservation community in their efforts to preserve video games on discs, carts, floppies, and other media. Use the guides on this site to verify games in preservation databases like No-Intro and Redump.
If you have expertise in dumping a specific system or media, or how to best use a specific software or hardware tool, we would love to have you join in on the effort! Please see the todo page for systems, tools, and media that we need help with, and come chat with us on Discord :)
This wiki is focused on physical media preservation, and won't include current-gen systems or digital storefront dumping guides. You can find guides not covered here at MiscDumpingGuides.
This is a project sponsored and maintained by Hit Save!, a registered 501©(3) non-profit dedicated to the preservation of video games, their history, and related physical and digital materials.
A lot of information has been gathered from the no-intro.org and redump.org wikis and communities. An enormous thank you to everyone who has spent time and effort building tools and guides for a huge variety of systems.
Download icon made by Kiranshastry from www.flaticon.com