<
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/jul/12/pushing-buttons-playing-old-video-games>
"Grim news heralded in a report published this week by the Video Game History
Foundation, which claims that 87% of video games released before 2010 are no
longer commercially available. This equates to a lacuna of tens of thousands of
works, many of which represent key moments in the medium’s evolution. It’s an
excruciating loss of source material for the people who worked on these games,
as well as for historians and archivists, for gem-hunters and for any younger
player who might wish to enjoy interactive works created in different
socio-political circumstances, against different technological constraints and
fashions or within different market conditions.
The void is not unique to video games – there are books that are no longer
published even in digital form, some films can only be watched on defunct
formats, others disappear from streaming services mere months after release –
but the scale of the video game void is unmatched in other media. According to
the report, less than 5% of games from the Commodore 64 are still available
today. The 13% availability rate of classic video games is one percentage point
less than that of American silent films. As the foundation’s co-director Frank
Cifaldi tweeted: “Nine out of 10 classic video games are no longer available to
consumers, and that number is unlikely to get any better. It’s practically
guaranteed that something you grew up with is gone, for ever.”
The reasons for the vacuum are myriad – and slightly tedious. The technology
for distributing books and films is straightforward and mostly unchanging. By
contrast, every video game system is different, so bringing, say, a Spectrum
game to a PlayStation 5 requires various acts of technological reshaping. There
may be question of expired licenses (both the Xbox’s joyous
OutRun 2 and the
Dreamcast’s solemn
Ferrari 355 Challenge were based on expensive and
time-limited authorisations from the Italian carmaker). And, while some major
game companies like EA have archivists dedicated to collecting their teams’ art
materials and source code, the video game industry has always failed to
properly recognise and celebrate its past. Sega reportedly lost the source code
for one of its most celebrated and difficult-to-find Saturn games,
Panzer
Dragoon Saga, leaving anyone who wants to play the game to slink off to eBay,
where, grief-stricken, they will have to pay a minimum of £500 for the
privilege."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
