Video game preservation

Wesley Hertgers
7 min readFeb 21, 2021

Video games are a large part of today’s society. It is one of the highest grossing mediums there is and it’s continuing to grow at a rapid pace. Video games are so popular because they reach many different genres. There are platformers, first person shooters, and role playing games, story games, and many more. Video game technology has continued to advance just like other forms of technology and has continued to give people new and refreshing concepts that sell and perform well. We are now living in a society where old things are now cool again. One particular old item that everyone is into now is records. Record sales have surpassed the sales of CD’s, which is amazing, and shows that people still have a fondness for old mediums. People are becoming nostalgic for old video games and there are people trying to make that possible.

https://www.businessinsider.com/nintendo-consoles-in-history-photos-switch-2017-1

Here is brief history of classic video games. One of the earliest video games was pong, a simple game where each player had a line that acted as a paddle and a ball which the players would hit to score points. Pong was one of the first arcade video games. One of the first home consoles was the Magnavox Odyssey which had 28 games which were basic and very innovative for its time. In 1977, Atari came out with the Atari 2600 which had joystick controllers and interchangeable game cartridges that played in color. The 2600 put the second generation of consoles into motion. During the second generation of consoles, we got games like Pac-man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and a third party developer for video games Activsion. In 1983 the video game market was flooded with poorly made games which were mass produced in a short amount of time. One of these games was E.T for Atari which was rushed to launch for the holidays. There were more copies of E.T, the video game, than there were Atari 2600 consoles and because of that the video game market crashed (History Editors, 2017).

Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System in the U.S in 1985 which peaked peoples interest in video games again. The NES allowed people to play the classic Super Mario Bros which has become an instant classic. In the 90’s Nintendo and Sega had the first console war which would determine the sales for each company. Sega’s marketing was about faster processing which made for faster games. While Nintendo on the other hand, had better graphics, better sound and an overall better appeal. Nintendo ended up winning the console war which would make Nintendo a home name for generations to come. Moving into the 3D era of games, Sony came out with the PlayStation which became the bestselling console of its generation. Sony continued to dominate the next generation with the PlayStation 2 as it could play all original PlayStation games and would become the bestselling console of all time. It would have a lifespan of over 13 years which is amazing for a console that came out in 2000 (History Editors, 2017).

Video games are very important artifacts in our culture. Each part of video games are worthy of study and preservation. Things such as old cartridges, box art, video game code, controllers and credit to developers should be stored and preserved for future generations. These old videogames have become important parts of research and are trying to be preserved at all costs for the benefit of future generations (Nyitray, 2019). A recent attempt to preserve video games came back in 2019. There was an auction for a prototype Nintendo game that was cancelled early in development called “Indy: the Magical Kid” which was sought after by Forest of Illusion, a video game preservation group. They had pooled $7000 dollars for the game but were out bid at the last second by $14000 from a private collector. The collector bought the game in order to make sure no one could replicate and share it with the world. Frank Cifaldi, who is the founder of the Video Game History Preservation Foundation said, “We’ve finally figured out that video games aren’t just passive entertainment projects.” Cifaldi then said “This is culture. If we lose the pieces that brought us here, then were doomed to repeat or mistakes. If we lack understanding of how we got here and why, then we’re missing out.” (Carpenter, 2019).

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/best-consoles

One of the most popular forms of preservation is emulation. Emulation is when a computer system preforms a behavior of another system. Emulation is a process which simulates certain hardware so that a certain mean can be met. There are emulators designed for specific consoles and those emulators are used for specific programs. Emulations purpose is to focus on the hardware to allow for programs to be run in the most authentic form (Carta, 2017). Emulation is a very popular way of playing old video games when you don’t have the console to play it on. Sadly, there are a lot of legal issues when it comes to emulation. Nintendo, one of the largest video game companies in the world is famous for destroying emulators and taking them down. Nintendo does not like having their intellectual property being used without profit. They recently had a tournament shut down because those running the tournament were using an emulator for one of their older fighting games, “Super Smash Bros Melee”, because it was using an add on which allowed online play on a game that came out in 2001. Normally the tournaments are played in person, but because of the current global pandemic, they couldn’t play in person. Nintendo has also sued many other companies which make emulators and digital ROMS (Dingman, 2018). While they have legal rights to sue and shut down other companies, it’s about the future of games. Nintendo has released their old games on their newer consoles so that new generations of video enthusiasts can play these games. Recently Nintendo released a compilation of their 3D Mario games which they claimed were remasters for their current console. Instead, they were just emulated games put into their consoles which people found lazy and not worth the $60. While video game preservation is slow there are many things that some companies are doing. There have been remasters of older games for newer consoles which are normally in a compilation of many games for around $40. There happen been remakes of older games which are just quick cash grabs to gain older fans attention. Even though preservation is still behind, it’s starting to gain traction and will someday not be a problem as we will have most, and hopefully all, games saved for future generations.

Companion Essay

Why did I choose the topic of video game preservation? Because I like video games. I grew up with video games because my Dad showed me video games. So when I wrote my paper I wanted to talk about the history of video games as a whole. I needed to give brief history overview of the world of video games. I needed to talk about how video game technology has advanced right alongside humanity. My main target audience was video game enthusiasts and fans of media preservation. We live in a society where were we have access to so much technology and yet there are so many limits to media things that we enjoy. We can watch just about any movie or tv show on the internet because of streaming services. But for video games you have to hope that whatever console you have that you can play some old video games. I talked a lot about emulation and how it is the future to play old video games. Emulation is stuck in a legal gray area where it is illegal to do emulation without permission. Emulation allows for you to play the games without having the hardware it makes it more cost effective and it makes it more accessible for everyone. I also talked about how there are groups trying to preserve video games for the masses but there are also people like private collectors who go and buy old video games so that the rest of the world can’t play them or obtain them. But I wrote this whole essay to inform people of video game preservation. If I make more people aware of it maybe more people would want to help join the fray. Old data for video games is decaying slowly and without preservation we will one day lose all of it.

Sources

Monnens, Devin, et al. “Before It’s Too Late: A Digital Game Preservation White Paper.” American Journal of Play, vol. 2, no. 2, Jan. 2009, pp. 139–166. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=eric&AN=EJ1069232&site=eds-live.

Nyitray, Kristen J. “Game On to Game After: Sources for Video Game History.” Reference & User Services Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 1, Fall 2019, pp. 7–11. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=aci&AN=140298496&site=eds-live.

Carpenter, N. (2019, June 27). Preservationists are SAVING video game history, one upload at a time. Retrieved February 15, 2021, from https://onezero.medium.com/preservationists-are-saving-video-game-history-one-upload-at-a-time-cc5b8bb512a2

Carta, Giovanni. “Metadata and Video Games Emulation: An Effective Bond to Achieve Authentic Preservation?” Records Management Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, May 2017, pp. 192–204. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1108/RMJ-10–2016–0037.

History.com Editors. (2017, September 01). Video game history. Retrieved February 15, 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/history-of-video-games

Dingman, H. (2018, August 11). Nintendo’s ridiculous war on ROMS THREATENS gaming history. Retrieved February 16, 2021, from https://www.pcworld.com/article/3296479/nintendo-suit-rom-emulation-game-preservation.html

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