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[Topher]

Preserving classic video games has become increasingly difficult, according to the Video Game History Foundation

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A large portion of classic video games released in the United States are unobtainable, according to a new study.

The Video Game History Foundation has conducted a study in partnership with the Software Preservation Network on the availability of games released before 2010.

According to the study, 87% of retro games are "critically endangered" in the US, as they are difficult to play in their physical and digital forms.

Only 13.27% of classic games are readily available to play, in that consumers don't need to rely on travelling to a library, maintaining vintage gaming hardware, using an emulator, or piracy to play these games.

For example, only 5.8% of games across the Gameboy family of handhelds are still available to buy digitally, while on the Commodore 64, just 4.5% of games analysed are on sale via digital stores.

The number of games that are re-released are significantly low, especially games released before 1985 which represent 3% of the current market.

While libraries and archives like the Video Game History Foundation and Software Preservation Network can digitally preserve these games, they are restricted from sharing them due to copyright laws.

Earlier this year, Nintendo closed its Wii U and 3DS digital storefronts, which was a major blow to the digital availability of games on these consoles.

In July 2022, Chris Young, librarian and curator of the Syd Bolton Collection at the University of Toronto Mississauga, told GamesIndustry.biz that "it's going to be a lot harder to preserve games like we'd been used to before now" due to games being constantly updated.

"Keeping track of the changes to those games over time is pretty much impossible, to a certain degree," he added.

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87% of classic video games are 'critically endangered', says game history organisation

A large portion of classic video games released in the United States are unobtainable, according to a new study. The Vi…

www.gamesindustry.biz

 

[drganon]

Sad but not surprising.

 

[diffusionx]

oh no, if steam shuts down we will lose furry feet and sex with hitler 8

 

[Ceallach]

Emulation IS preservation though?

Like unless you really think it is feasible to keep every piece of hardware running forever, that is the solution.

 

[Jigsaah]

People don't care about this and it's a god damned shame.

 

[Historia]

Even Nintendo use uploaded Roms and emulator. It's going to be fine.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Thankfully, online archivists, ROM dumpers, and emulation programmers are doing the hard work to keep everything alive.

And while I'm against any kind of piracy of currently-available games, keeping ROMs for things like abandoned retro titles that have no legitimate way to purchase anymore is a perfectly good thing.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

If game is worth preserving, it will be preserved.

For example:




Or:




Or:

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

We desperately need updated copyright law that would make it legal to own or trade ROMs or other copies of any software that is (1) older than 10 years, and (2) no longer available for purchase in any form.

 

[nkarafo]

Most, if not all of those games have verified dumps since decades now. And emulators that can play them accurately. So i wouldn't worry.

 

[Last Hearth]

How many of the books published in 1923 are still readily available to be read?
90% of everything is crap, there is no need to preserve everything, we'd all end up like hoarders whose house is filled with useless stuff.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Ehh. Not everything needs to stand the sands of time. It’s ok to let things die and disappear. Move on, look forward. I think over the last few years, while I live the idea of nostalgia, it’s not something that motivates my purchase habits anymore. Maybe because I have such a limited amount of time to actually play games.

 

[BaldingAshCrimson]

This is quite bleak for the art form of gaming, but imagining a world where Emulation wasn't a thing, is way bleaker.

The idea that my hypothetical son/daughter wouldn't be able to play something like Parasite Eve 1, for example, is deeply fucking sad.

Thankfully it is a thing, but Emulation is not completely safe from things like Nintendo...

 

[crackajack]

How many of the books published in 1923 are still readily available to be read?
90% of everything is crap, there is no need to preserve everything, we'd all end up like hoarders whose house is filled with useless stuff.

I agree. There is a reason Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Twain, Shelley are still read today while all the thousands others are not. Pong, Space Invaders, Doom ... they have a place in history but preserving everything? For what? Anyone really thinks anyone from future generations should care about anything beyond the actual milestones, maybe even learn something from it?

 

[FoxMcChief]

I agree. There is a reason Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Twain, Shelley are still read today while all the thousands others are not. Pong, Space Invaders, Doom ... they have a place in history but preserving everything? For what? Anyone really thinks anyone from future generations should care about anything beyond the actual milestones, maybe even learn something from it?

In 75 years, do we really need access to Cloning Clyde? Nah. Tetris? Sure.

 

[Games of Today]

I heard Gamestop is buying up tons of retro games and console and hoarding them waiting for the value to increase year after year. This could be because of that.

 

[Con-Z-epT]

There are still a lot of new and cool games out there but with each passing year i feel more and more drawn to the retro side of gaming.

Would be nice to see more initiative in the preservation of the past gaming history in an easily accessible and playable state.

 

[Ceallach]

Most, if not all of those games have verified dumps since decades now. And emulators that can play them accurately. So i wouldn't worry.

Yeah, the only exception are games from the very early years that used bespoke discrete logic instead of CPUs. These games we are forced to just simulate what they would have been like. DICE is decent enough, but for real accuracy we need better hardware solutions nd documentation. We would really need to uncap every IC on every PCB to come up with a good FPGA based solution if we want to really play something like Nurburgring 1.

 

[YCoCg]

Whilst not EVERYTHING needs to be preserved, surely then it's OK if a person decides to download a ROM of old content that is no longer sold or available? Especially in this industry, it was barely just over 20 years ago that master projects got saved, remember how Silent Hill 1/2/3 have their masters lost and I wouldn't say they're small games.

 

[kruis]

A bigger worry should be: WHICH VERSION of the game will be preserved?

It's not hard to imagine a future where digital archives contain only the unpatched v1.0 version of Playstation/Xbox games but the patches that were once available on Sony/MS/Valce cloud servers will be lost in time after those services were shut down.

 

[tusharngf]

emulation is the way to preserve these games.

 

[Fuz]

emulation is the way to preserve these games.

Yeah, but it shouldn't be the only way, considering how borderline it is.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

A bigger worry should be: WHICH VERSION of the game will be preserved?

It's not hard to imagine a future where digital archives contain only the unpatched v1.0 version of Playstation/Xbox games but the patches that were once available on Sony/MS/Valce cloud servers will be lost in time after those services were shut down.

The movement to digital software and horrific after-launch patching (where the release-day game is simply broken) is horrible for game preservation. This is another case where I'm much happier with Nintendo and its continued release of things like TOTK on physical media, 100% ready to play and requiring no patch. But even in those cases, the DLC has to be carefully preserved, eg. for BOTW.

 

[deriks]

First of all, let's clear up some things so we don't have fuss like "the market is in decline" or something like that; many of the games that no longer exist were titles from that era and basically only worked on that era, aging badly in many cases. Other games just didn't sell well, and therefore it wouldn't make much sense for the publisher to port to the current generation with the risk of cash not coming back. Of course every content is important, after all it was a piece of art made by several people who made an effort (or not) and achieved a particular result in this industry that we love so much

In any case, emulation has and will always be the strongest alternative/necessity. Fortunately, the emulator community is mostly very expressive and active, looking for games even that are based on Internet browser cache memory. It's God's work! Still, we can talk more into this to distributors offer more optimized emulators. Microsoft does, Nintendo has improved a lot in this regard too, and currently the Online games are very faithful to the originals, and Sony is a little weird in this scenario, and although his emulators are good, they don't have much expression in numbers - ask how many are buying PS2 games on their PS5

Something that is coming a lot in recent times are emulators through cycles, as they make games close to the original devices even with small hardware (like the MiSTer, which VGEsoterica is always on) are achieving results good enough to run N64. I wouldn't doubt that in 10 years we'll have PS360 running in cycles already. As from PS4 onwards it can run natively because it's X86, we'll be at a point where the idea is just to add content

It's a great time to play

 

[Ceallach]

A bigger worry should be: WHICH VERSION of the game will be preserved?

It's not hard to imagine a future where digital archives contain only the unpatched v1.0 version of Playstation/Xbox games but the patches that were once available on Sony/MS/Valce cloud servers will be lost in time after those services were shut down.

This is where pirates once again come to the rescue. If you are looking to steal a game from one of the piracy sites, the games have their bases, patches, DLC, etc all there.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

Ehh. Not everything needs to stand the sands of time. It’s ok to let things die and disappear.

What in the hell is this god damn smack talk breaking in here?

 

[trent_the_gent]

All those Wii shovelware games, lost like tears in rain.

 

[solidus12]

Thank god, Phil Spencer is pushing for games preservation.

 

[Chastten]

Yeah, going to be honest here and say that I don't really care.

Roughly 80-90% of all videogames are mediocre to crap and don't really need to be preserved.

Hell, the N64 is one of my favorite consoles ever, but even that probably only has around 50 games that are worth playing. And most of those 50 are in dire need of some QoL improvements in order to be enjoyable.

I'm really not expecting companies to keep all their old crap updated and re-released for newer platforms, that's just not realistic.

 

[01011001]

I meam, that's not really my problem... I go on emuparadise or Vimm's... maybe Internet Archive, and get full rom sets

get fucked publishers who don't rerelease their games

 

[GHG]

And there still are people who are against emulation. Ridiculous really.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

To an extent this figure is massively overblown. A lot of classic hardware, especially mainstream hardware, is not particularly expensive and neither are "most software" for said hardware. Can you fire it up on Steam with a whim? No. Is it available for a reasonable price if you want to play it? Yes. Perhaps not through primary markets but regardless there is not a lot of friction to accessing "most" software on mainstream hardwares of the past few decades. Example, to my best knowledge Duck Hunt is not available to purchase on newer hardware/official emulator. This would qualify as "critically endangered" by their metrics despite an NES and a copy of Duck Hunt being reasonably available for those interested.

Now when you get to particular releases that are highly sought after ? Ok, I can roll with that. At best a certain percentage of each library is in this difficult to obtain category and some other non mainstream hardware/software can fall into this category by default as well.

 

[93xfan]

I’m the type of person that gets super hyped to find the NES version of Baseball Stars in the Xbox version of the SNK Collection. I love having these games around for the wonderful nostalgia they bring.

It’s why BC and also forward compatibility are so important, imo. emulation should be a last resort imo.

 

[SNG32]

First of all, let's clear up some things so we don't have fuss like "the market is in decline" or something like that; many of the games that no longer exist were titles from that era and basically only worked on that era, aging badly in many cases. Other games just didn't sell well, and therefore it wouldn't make much sense for the publisher to port to the current generation with the risk of cash not coming back. Of course every content is important, after all it was a piece of art made by several people who made an effort (or not) and achieved a particular result in this industry that we love so much

In any case, emulation has and will always be the strongest alternative/necessity. Fortunately, the emulator community is mostly very expressive and active, looking for games even that are based on Internet browser cache memory. It's God's work! Still, we can talk more into this to distributors offer more optimized emulators. Microsoft does, Nintendo has improved a lot in this regard too, and currently the Online games are very faithful to the originals, and Sony is a little weird in this scenario, and although his emulators are good, they don't have much expression in numbers - ask how many are buying PS2 games on their PS5

Something that is coming a lot in recent times are emulators through cycles, as they make games close to the original devices even with small hardware (like the MiSTer, which VGEsoterica is always on) are achieving results good enough to run N64. I wouldn't doubt that in 10 years we'll have PS360 running in cycles already. As from PS4 onwards it can run natively because it's X86, we'll be at a point where the idea is just to add content

It's a great time to play

This ps3/x360 are pretty much the last generation that wasn’t on x86 and emulation is getting better by the day for them well atleast rpcs3 the ps3 emulator. Other than that a lot of Xbox one and PS4 games other than some 1st party have released or releasing on PC anyways. As for Nintendo a lot people are scared that with next console they well implement some type of drm which I believe but eventually someone will find a way to emulate it. I don’t think it will be as easy as the switch but it will happen eventually since the architecture will be close to pc.

Also this is Nintendo we are talkin I don’t expect them to use cutting edge technology to block games from being emulated since they are cheap on technology anyway.

 

[Sgt.Asher]

I first I think it's bad, then I remember the "little Nicky" gbc game that sucked balls. No publisher would want to resell that.

Just stick to roms for preservation.

 

[DaGwaphics]

Emulation IS preservation though?

Like unless you really think it is feasible to keep every piece of hardware running forever, that is the solution.

Agreed. I can understand the piracy concerns, but at a certain point the money made from most of these games has been made. For things like the C64 it seems like the most reasonable option.

 

[systemr123]

If game is worth preserving, it will be preserved.

For example:




Or:




Or:

Fan projects are nice and all, but they’re not the original games.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Fan projects are nice and all, but they’re not the original games.

You're right because these are better than original releases. You can keep it the gameplay vanilla or go nuts and modify it to your needs. Your choice. It's superior way of playing these titles.

 

[systemr123]

You're right because these are better than original releases. You can keep it the gameplay vanilla or go nuts and modify it to your needs. Your choice. It's superior way of playing these titles.

That might be so, but they’re not the original games. It needs to be original for game preservation. I don’t care how any fan project plays, that’s besides the point of the topic. (I love open ttd but it’s not the original game).

 

[MidGenRefresh]

That might be so, but they’re not the original games. It needs to be original for game preservation. I don’t care how any fan project plays, that’s besides the point of the topic. (I love open ttd but it’s not the original game).

I guess we have a different idea on what preserving a game means. You can always download and play original Transport Tycoon. The game is preserved forever online in it's original form, so I don't see a problem.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Well, at least legally. If the rights holders don't give a shit about game preservation then there will always be some group of enthusiasts who will make sure that you will be able to play a certain game in one way or another.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

This is why GOG is doing GOG's work. They are preserving older games DRM free.

I don't support piracy but I'm completely for emulation to preserve older games.

 

[Puscifer]

Emulation IS preservation though?

Like unless you really think it is feasible to keep every piece of hardware running forever, that is the solution.

2D preservation should be pissed easy, you can literally fit everything from Atari to the SNES and GBA on a damn thumb drive.

At this point I feel like if you're really worried about emulation and preservation you have what you want. The amount of link pages I've come across just doing basic research is astounding really

 

[ByWatterson]

Game preservationists when they find out no one wants to preserve hundreds of shitty movie tie-in sidescrollers from 1991:

 

[the_master]

How many of the books published in 1923 are still readily available to be read?
90% of everything is crap, there is no need to preserve everything, we'd all end up like hoarders whose house is filled with useless stuff.

I conpletely disagree.
I enjoy going through the full catalogue of a system. See what was released, play a few. You can always find something interesting in less popular games.

Games are knowledge. It is great to have access to all of them.

 

[the_master]

Worse than that is how to even preserve or emulate modern games if they can’t work without some code on a server that has not been shared

 

[Fools idol]

lets be honest, how often do you go back and play super old games. I have a handful of childhood favourites that I still fire up, but those are super popular 10/10 games that have been digitised already.

Most of the shovelware and mediocre stuff, I may have played and enjoyed some of them back in the days but playing them ever again is both unlikely and not worth doing.

 

[Trilobit]

So recently I heard about The Thing for PS2 being pretty scary and good. So I'm looking to buy it further down the road as I still own the console and a CRT. But it would have been frustrating to not have been able to buy it at all.

We have the technology to save past games and make them virtually immortal, so there should be a true governmental effort to do so. Sure, right now we might scoff at some poor games, but in the perspective of history they're all important.

Time moves on and what's now 40 years in the past will some day be a hundred years in the past and fascinating to future gaffers. Just like some videos/films from the 19th Century are super fascinating for us to see.

 

[cartman414]

How many of the books published in 1923 are still readily available to be read?
90% of everything is crap, there is no need to preserve everything, we'd all end up like hoarders whose house is filled with useless stuff.

Why shouldn't they be?

It's become much easier since then to store that much media.

Also, people's minds and means (i. e. money) change regarding what they want to check out all the time.

 

[DannyDanger]

Meh, if the goal is to play the game. There are emulators.