Lost media: Four web games that can’t be played anymore
Game preservation is very hard. It is a constantly evolving domain that require a lot of time and resources, and sadly, even with the best intentions, that can’t save every game. This is especially true on the Internet where more games than ever are published. There are simply too many of them, and despite some great preservation efforts such as The Internet Archive and Flashpoint, some of them are already lost, while others pose huge technical challenges to preserve. And, as time passes by, somes games are doomed to be lost forever.
Today I am showcasing five cases of lost games on the Internet. Each represents a different perspective on the topic of game preservation and thus a different challenge to overcome in order to preserve them.
Club Marian
In 2004, Second Life was an exciting novelty. The idea of hanging out in a virtual space was not new, online 3D chat existed way before, but this game brought it to a new level, becoming a pop culture sensation. And a small studio from Vancouver decided to follow the trend with an ambitious idea.
MaidMarian is a studio mostly known for their free-to-play MMORPG Sherwood, but back in the early 2000s, their business model was to make online games in real time 3D playable through browser, totally free AND with no login required. All of this was possible thanks to Shockwave, the not-quite-as-popular-than-Flash plugin from Macromedia that could render 3D games in real time on the web browser.
In the early days of The Museum of Screens, I made a thread about one of these games, Moonbase, by far the most popular one, but there were many others, such as Tank Ball, or Club Marian, an online game where you could hang out with people on a tropical island. To be fair, these games were barebones. The graphics were simplified for performance issues, and there wasn’t much to do aside from walking around, sending messages on the chat, or ride a car. But because of how easy it was to log in and start playing, it was quite popular, and stayed active for a long time, even though Shockwave was very outdated at that point.
Today, the servers have shut down for all these games. Technically the shockwaves files are still available and you can still run them if you use Internet Explorer, but there isn’t much you can do except look at the login screen. Club Marian doesn’t even load anymore because of errors. Unless we manage to retro-engineer the files in order to make them connect to private servers, these games won’t be played anymore.
Skull Splitter III
Lewis Trondheim is a french cartoonist with an impressive career and an extensive library. In 2000, to promote the new entry of the comic book serie Donjon made with other french cartoonist Joan Sfar, the french studio Pastagame released a free online game called Skull Splitter III. It was apparently a parody of Nintendo’s Game & Watch machines, using the characters and drawings of the series.
Java applications embedded in websites was a short-lived trend in the early years of the Internet, being slowly replaced by Flash and Shockwaves. Pastagame worked on many small promotional games over the years, alongside mobile games and curious videogames adaptations of the Build-a-Bear Workshop brand. They are still active, their most recent production being the definitive edition of Rayman Legend. But despite their website having a very detailed chronology of their games, there is no mention of Skull Splitter III.
I actually managed to download the .jar file of Skull Splitter from the Wayback Machine, but it is not properly working in its state. It would need extensive retro-engineering and heavy modifications to make it work on current computers, if it is even possible. The file is available here, if anyone feels up to the task.
Interpets
Interpets was a Flash pet simulator released around 2008 on a now defunct website called MyGameLine. In the game, you took care of little creatures called InterPets. You could customize them, dress them, make them travel to different locations… And that’s pretty much all we know about it. The game was not a huge success, it wasn’t posted on any big Flash website like Newgrounds nor did it was widely shared, as far as I know. But when I shared the game on Twitter a few peoples came forward to say they remembered the game and liked it a lot.
MyGameLine does not exist anymore, and the versions on the Wayback Machine are very broken, none has a working version of Interpets. The man behind the game went by the same name as his website, and his online presence online was a Youtube page and a DeviantArt page. In fact, the video below might be the only remaining images of the games available online.
Unless the maker himself decides to publish somewhere else the game, Interpets seems truly lost. I do not want to actively research him, game preservation is not worth stalking or invading someone’s private life. It is not our business to know why he closed his website. But if he or someone who knows him reads this article, please send me a message. I’ll be happy to talk to you.
The H2G2 tea game
This is by far the most elusive game on the list. There is nothing available online about this game. No archived web page, no name, no video. In fact, the online presence of this game today consist in a single tweet. This tweet:
I dug around the Internet for a bit, and asked publicly if anyone remembered this game, to no avail. It seems truly lost, only living in the memories of a few people. I asked Wendy if there were more things she recalled about the game, this is her answer:
Okay so I remember it as an almost top down perspective […] I think it used a rounded white mug with a saucer […] and I think the assets were actual photos, and not (too) stylized. And what stayed with me most was that the colour of the tea would change so much depending on how often you’d “click” to add the milk (1 click seemed to be one shot).
Before adding the milk the tea would be clear and red-brown, and then you’d add the milk and it would become opaque and beige, and lighter and lighter. You could also add sugar and the tea itself. So you could have a cup of only milk. You kind of chose what to put into the cup. […]
The stirring also fascinated me, but I think you just clicked the spoon to enter the cup and then clicked again to stir. And you could click a lot and it would buffer up a bit of stirring (or at least it felt like it to me). and I believe it did also make the tea look like it was being stirred (with that vortex in the middle) […]
I think the items (milk, sugar, tea..pot?) were aligned around the cup in a sort of half circle […] That’s all I remember so far.
If you were online around the 2000s, you probably had similar experiences: a game you were fond of, in a small fan website, that was definitely lost when it closed years later, and nobody took the time to make copies of it. This game might seem anecdotal, the creator probably didn’t think too much about it, but I can guarantee you how small a game is, there always will be someone to remember them. Sometimes, preserving web games is like putting on rails while the train is running: If we don’t take action fast enough to archive games, they will be gone faster than we anticipated and there won’t be much we could do about.
