Video Game Preservation
Think back to your childhood. Remember those games you used to play that completely altered the course of your life? The ones you played for 10 hours straight while at home from school on a sick day? Or that you and your friends would gather around to partake in some friendly rivalry?
If you have ever tried to go back and find these games now, you may have been met with a very disappointing roadblock. More times than not, the system you played on as been out of circulation for a decade and the only way to play the game is to order both the system and a physical copy of the game off of a slightly untrustworthy eBay seller for several hundred dollars.
Backwards compatibility for games is bad. Very bad. And unfortunately, this is largely to do with the need for developers to make money. Investing in backwards compatibility between systems is expensive and doesn’t really pay off. Some developers have tried to remedy this financial burden by reselling old games on their new hardware, but rebuying an old game you already own but just can’t play is a hard pill to swallow. This is by no means a gripe at developers — video games are extremely expensive and time intensive to make. People’s livelihoods are at stake, so they just can’t really focus on reskinning a game made 15 years ago for the handful of people who want to have nostalgia playthrough.
Many collectors and video game preservationists opt for physical ownership of games and their consoles. This works, but with one major and obvious caveat. Game systems break. Game disks will wear out. Sometimes, crazy things happen and the huge cabinet of PlayStation 2 games in your basement goes up in flames. Additionally, video games are becoming increasingly digital only artifacts. Without access to a network, so many game do not even exist. That’s why many video game enthusiasts, myself included, want to emphasize the importance of digital preservation.
When it comes to preserving old games, emulators are key. And quality emulators can make all the difference in making a game feel the same way it did on it’s initial release. You can find a ton of emulators online, with some every once in awhile creeping into mobile app stores. Unfortunately, as developers hold their IP close to their chest, legal and legitimate ways of using emulators to play vintage games can be hard to come by (looking at you, Nintendo). Because of this, and also their access to the necessary resources, the clearest and cleanest path forward is for developers to create their own emulators to preserve their old catalogs.
I hope the reasons to preserve video games are obvious. Video games are forms of art. They are also a part of our history. They’re an immersive media that can express both the story of the game and the culture it was born from in a way no other media can.
Sources and further reading
(Video) Modern Video Game Preservation (The Good, Bad & Ugly): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ6wOboYSEI
(Article) The Fate of Video Game Preservation Is in Your Hands: https://www.wired.com/story/fate-future-video-game-preservation-you/
This article is a part of an ongoing project of daily video game mini essays. If you like the idea of getting these mini essays dropped directly into your inbox, I am cross-posting on Substack. You can subscribe here for free: https://howtogrowroses.substack.com/
If you want to learn more about me or my games, you can find my website here: https://www.heyitsamanda.com/
