The Game Availability Study published in partnership by the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network found that 87% of video games released in the US before 2010[…]simply aren’t in print anymore.
I would donate money to a video game museum that housed a copy of every single game and console in existence.
The games and consoles are for looking at while there are playing stations with emulators to sample the games. The game art alone would make it worth it.
I always wanted to see a visual timeline of all game consoles lined up in a row to see evolution of design over the years. From disks to carts to cds.
And that’s why I am very grateful to the emulation community (except for currently sold games / machines like the Switch obviously). Unfortunately, it is illegal at some point, but I believe it is the only way to save as much video game as possible for the next generations.
Here’s a video from someone I believe helped with this project. I feel it gives good reasons why this is an issue that emulation alone can’t solve beyond just the legality issues.
This doesn’t even make sense. You can still buy old games physically on Ebay, and you can also emulate them.
Back in 2010, nobody was saying that games from the 80’s were “endangered”, because it was understood that video games are generally enjoyed through physical copies or emulation. But now that everyone is used to buying games digitally, suddenly those old games are “endangered” now? It makes no sense.
Emulation is kind of in a legal grey area, and relies on the free labour of volunteers. Who’s to say that in 50-100 years’ time there will still be people able and/or willing to maintain the emulators? You could also argue that emulation is an imperfect reproduction of the actual gaming experience - emulators can both cause bugs or make the game actually run better than it did when it was released.
Legally, it does. For it to be legal, you need to show proof of ownership for the game. At its base, you can say that companies like Nintendo are trying their best to remove access to games through the work of their legal department.
But i think most these games that have been lost to history or are in danger of it are games we don't care much for anymore. Like old Atari games and the many thousands that have filled the libraries of the different game consoles over the past 40 years.
And even with emulation, that ROM still has to be saved somehow. Any medium we store data on is volatile. So, even with emulation, there's still a risk of loss and then already we've lost the copy of a game and not the original. This also means, the original medium with its artwork would be gone.
This has gotten me thinking about legal deposit requirements, such as those that have existed for centuries in certain countries where published works must have a copy submitted to a national library for conservation purposes. Does anyone know if there are initiatives like this for video games? How are they going?
I don't think those are really a thing anymore. At least I know in the states copyrighting things hasn't been accompanied by a log in the LoC in quite a while.
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