Video game heritage rotting away - Polidicks

[release]Interactive fiction and video games are part of our cultural heritage. As original systems cease to work because of hardware and media failures, methods to preserve obsolete video games for future generations have to be developed. The public interest in early video games is high, as exhibitions, regular magazines on the topic and newspaper articles demonstrate. Moreover, games considered to be classic are rereleased for new generations of gaming hardware. However, with the rapid development of new computer systems, the way games look and are played changes constantly. When trying to preserve console video games one faces problems of classified development documentation, legal aspects and extracting the contents from original media like cartridges with special hardware. Furthermore, special controllers and non-digital items are used to extend the gaming experience making it difficult to preserve the look and feel of console video games. This paper discusses strategies for the digital preservation of console video games. After a short overview of console video game systems, there follows an introduction to digital preservation and related work in common strategies for digital preservation and preserving interactive art. Then different preservation strategies are described with a specific focus on emulation. Finally a case study on console video game preservation is shown which uses the Planets preservation planning approach for evaluating preservation strategies in a documented decision-making process. Experiments are carried out to compare different emulators as well as other approaches, first for a single console video game system, then for different console systems of the same era and finally for systems of all eras. Comparison and discussion of results show that, while emulation works very well in principle for early console video games, various problems exist for the general use as a digital preservation alternative. We show what future work has to be done to tackle these problems. [/release] [url=http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/147]Source[/url] [url=http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/147/209]PDF[/url] [release]Diverse technologies, missing or secret documentation, and hostile copyright laws threaten video-game preservation. [img]http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/file.aspx?bid=377&ufid=44708[/img] Not long ago a film buff turned up a 90 year old film of Charlie Chaplin. It had not shown since 1914, and was utterly forgotten by film historians -- yet because analog film technology has remained fundamentally unchanged since its invention, preservationists were able to re-debut the movie at a film festival in Virginia. If the situation outlined in a new paper on the preservation of console video games does not change, decades from now similar rediscoveries--of the games many of us grew up with--will be impossible. And it won't just be the obscure titles: Entire libraries face extinction the moment the last remaining working console of its kind--a Neo Geo, Atari 2600 or something more obscure, like the Fairchild Channel F--bites the dust. To arrive at this startling conclusion, a trio of researchers at the University of Vienna conducted a systematic evaluation of the preservation methods available for console video games--the kind that run on cartridges that contain microchips that contain game data, as well as more recent types that are stored on DVDs or some other proprietary media. Their work revealed that only video recordings of gameplay captured from original hardware satisfactorily preserved the look and feel of most vintage systems and games, with the major drawback that such recordings completely eliminated interactivity. [img]http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/file.aspx?bid=377&ufid=44709[/img] To preserve the playability of the games--so that they might be available in a future "museum of gaming," such as the UK's Games Lounge--the curators turned to emulation of original game hardware. In this strategy, code extracted from game cartridges and disks can be used on virtual machines running on contemporary hardware. This approach has a number of drawbacks, beginning with the inability of most emulators to faithfully render all aspects of a game. [quote]Most emulators are not developed commercially. Dedicated emulators tend to receive few updates and are frequently discontinued when the authors become distracted from development. Therefore, hardly any emulators exists in a final version that perfectly emulates all games for a system.[/quote] In addition, emulators are not Universal Virtual Computers (a strategy proposed in 2005 to enable the perpetual preservation of digital media). That is, the emulators are themselves in danger of becoming obsolete. [quote]Most emulators for systems released after the third era use assembler language for time-critical parts of the software in order to achieve the speed of the original system. None of the emulators tested was using a virtual machine to ensure long-term availability of the emulator, which is a critical drawback for using them as digital preservation alternatives.[/quote] [img]http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/file.aspx?bid=377&ufid=44710[/img] Even if preservationists had the resources to develop the kind of emulators that can stand the test of time, their task would be made all the more difficult by the tendency of game companies to worry more about piracy than preservation. This means that documentation on how their machines work is either non-existent (if the company goes out of business or fails to preserve it) or secret, so makers of emulators must laboriously reverse-engineer existing hardware. Finally, there's the copyright issue. Getting permission to preserve a game requires signoff by everyone with a stake in it--its creator, publisher, etc. [quote]Given the current legal situation concerning emulation, it is not possible to preserve video games digitally using emulators and copy media to different physical layers without the manufacturer's agreement. Establishing responsibility for the preservation of digital data must be seen as a priority. Awareness has to be raised among the manufacturers of console video game systems and console video games to reach agreements about how to preserve their work.[/quote] Requests to lawmakers to except video games from copyright laws making it illegal to extract their contents for preservation have so far been ignored. [quote]Changes in the legal deposit legislation are necessary to allow exceptions for memory organizations to archive video games. Legal deposit laws should be extended to include digital data and the legal situation would have to be adjusted to enable legal deposits to perform the actions needed for digital preservation (e.g., copy protection mechanism circumvention).[/quote] The oldest home video-game console--the Magnavox Odyssey--is now almost 40 years old. In 1972, no one anticipated that any of these consoles could make it to 2011, and there's no telling how much longer they'll last. [/release] [url=http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=377&bpid=25538]Source[/url]

Atari 2600 owners unite

I lost my 2600 to a hurricane. shit sucked

I still have my genesis that my cousin gave to me, I wish it still worked so I could play sonic one more time. :frown:

I have a Sega Genesis... Best console ever.

The oldest console I have is a PS1, ahh the memories.

I have a Super Nintendo never opened. Mint-condition. I wonder if it's worth anything.

rockstar still makes quite good games but i agree that heritage is going away. activision primarily are responsible.

[QUOTE=First 10'er;23691714]i agree that heritage is going away. activision primarily are responsible.[/QUOTE] now the activision hate is just getting ridiculous.

[QUOTE=thisispain;23691845]now the activision hate is just getting ridiculous.[/QUOTE] its true, activision has ruined the gaming heritage. they dont even make good games anymore. sorry bud, you can keep on believing what is wrong though.

[QUOTE=First 10'er;23691897]its true, activision has ruined the gaming heritage. they dont even make good games anymore. [/QUOTE] Starcraft 2

[QUOTE=WebOfTrust;23690232]Atari 2600 owners unite[/QUOTE] River raid!!

[QUOTE=thisispain;23691908]Starcraft 2[/QUOTE] Blizzard had already done pretty much all the work before Activision bought them. Just because they own the game doesn't mean they made it.

[QUOTE=Anti Christ;23691924]Blizzard had already done pretty much all the work before Activision bought them. Just because they own the game doesn't mean they made it.[/QUOTE] well then activision hasn't made any games since the Atari considering it's a publishers house

I have a Sega Genesis that my uncle bought for my dad in '91. Because of this, I played mainly Sonic until I was 10 or so, so at least it "brought me up" properly. I'm going to rue the day when everyone starts out on Modern Warfare # and are going to be instantly filled with elitist ways. I've noticed people like me, that played classic games first, don't tend to act like that, yet the people I see that started on Modern Warfare think they are the best at FPS's period.

I still have two Ataris, an NES, SNES, four original Gameboys, two Gameboy Colors, and my old Sega Genisis. Not that I play all of them, I just like keeping old shit. One of the Ataris has a metal covering, the other has old school wood paneling.

activision made pitfall that makes everything okay anyway

You can't blame one company for the destruction of "video game heritage" because they only make things for the present, they are not actively going to seek out and destroy the old. Putting all the blame on one company is like trying to put the blame on one person for WW1.

[QUOTE=Lebowski;23692019]You can't blame one company for the destruction of "video game heritage" because they only make things for the present, they are not actively going to seek out and destroy the old. Putting all the blame on one company is like trying to put the blame on one person for WW1.[/QUOTE] nope activision mw2 did 9/11

[QUOTE=Anti Christ;23691924]Blizzard had already done pretty much all the work before Activision bought them. Just because they own the game doesn't mean they made it.[/QUOTE] Activision doesn't make games at all. They publish them. :ninja:

[QUOTE=First 10'er;23691714]rockstar still makes quite good games but i agree that heritage is going away. activision primarily are responsible.[/QUOTE] So Activision are actively destroying old video game cartridges and consoles, is that what you're saying? Read the goddamn OP.

And we all thought EA was bad, it seems EA have improved while activision have gone down the shitter, from actually publishing decent games back in the days. Except starcraft 2 and Singularity and probably a few more I have missed.

[QUOTE=WebOfTrust;23690232]Atari 2600 owners unite[/QUOTE] You called? I love my atari to this day, it hasn't died on me yet.

Luckily, a lone hero still keeps the fire alive... [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOt1c9nJRqk[/media]

[QUOTE=Blackwater;23692333]And we all thought EA was bad.[/QUOTE] only if you were eight years old

I love my Atari 2600. But in all serious it's becoming harder and harder to find even modern games now. Print releases of Mass Effect and Dead Space don't exist anymore because they've already been discontinued.

[QUOTE=thisispain;23692395]only if you were eight years old[/QUOTE] This. I never understood why people complained about EA so much.

I need to get my dad's old Atari 2600 out.

[QUOTE=First 10'er;23691897]its true, activision has ruined the gaming heritage. they dont even make good games anymore. sorry bud, you can keep on believing what is wrong though.[/QUOTE] Congratulations, you missed the entire fucking point of the news story. Did you even read it?

I like Activision pretty much every game they've made i've enjoyed.