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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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 mean emulation has replicated a ton of them. I don’t think that’s how the article wanted them preserved, but people are doing the work
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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.