Topic: Game Preservation

I've been meaning to make a thread on this topic for a while, but I couldn't think of any recent examples until today. But in general I've found that trying to buy legitimate copies of old games, even PC games, becomes more troublesome as time passes. I've been playing a fair bit of RollerCoaster Tycoon recently and it got me in the Tycoon mood (no problem finding it by the way, since it's available on Steam and GOG). I've also played a fair share of Zoo Tycoon back in the day, so I thought I'd give that game a shot too. I still have a disc somewhere, but my laptop doesn't have a disc drive unfortunately. No problem, right? Just go to Steam or GOG and get myself a digital copy, or at least, so I thought. Zoo Tycoon (2001) was published by Microsoft Studios, and until a few years ago you could purchase a digital copy from their online store. However, since the release of Zoo Tycoon (2013), Microsoft decided it was a good idea to retcon the entire franchise and remove the old games from their online store. As a Microsoft published game it won't appear on Steam or GOG, and the disc-based copy doesn't do my any favours either (and I am fortunate I still have my copy, they fetch quite a bit on eBay these days...).

Anyway, so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, I don't have the means to read a CD-ROM (assuming it still actually works), but more importantly, there's no legitimate means of buying a digital copy. Trust me, I've tried other places, but all I found was a bunch of shady sites and malware.

It also highlights a bigger issue. It's not just PC games, what about NES and SNES games? Old Atari games? Yes, emulators are a thing, and Nintendo has VC (at least, I expect it will come to the Switch some day). But we also know this won't cover everything, and it's mostly due to expired licenses, or the fact that too few care about a certain game. Physical copies (of retro games) have become collector's items at this point, and even they will stop working at some point in time. Whether it's a cartridge or disc, neither will last forever.

Going forward I wonder if there's any way to remedy this problem, because I can only see it getting worse over time. What's your thoughts on this subject? I'm genuinely curious, because I don't a lot of articles or threads on game preservation. Do we even care?

Just friendly reminder that any links to illegal software, torrents, emulators and ROMs isn't allowed!

This is an interesting topic.

I will speak about consoles since I don't play PC games.

Let us start with SEGA. To be fair it has done a decent job to preserve the games. All of the Mega Drive classics made by SEGA are or steam. The interface is bad but the emulation is good. There is also a disk in PS3 with most of those games. I think some are on X1 but I don't have it so I can't check.

This is good for Mega Drive fans but what about Master System and Game Gear? Some SMS games I have don't play any more and it is a pain to set up the system. I have two Game Gear systems but both have problems in sound. The best SMS games are in Wii VC and GG ones on the 3DS but I would prefer a steam solution since both are archaic platforms.

For Saturn some of the fighting games have been rereleased while some classic Dreamcast games are also on steam.

Moving to Playstation up to PS3/Vita it has done a good job of preserving its games with PS1 and PS2 games on some models playable on PS3 and PS1 and PSP games playable on Vita. However in PS4 there is a disaster with no PS1 BC, stalled PS2 releases and no PSP/Vita compatibility yet. It is a pain to set up PS1 and 2 in modern TVs.

More or less the PS disks will fail so the digital copies may be a solution. The digital games may be a solution since a HDD is not as likely to fail and you may have back ups. The console may fail but this is a problem in any case.

I never had an X1 so I have no idea what happens there.

Now in Nintendo the situation is mediocre. In the Wii U you have most of the top games released but due to the obselute system it has the situation is less than ideal. Most also are Wii based sand need the Wiimote that I am not a fan of. For gameboy you are limited to the small 3ds collection.

Finally the Steam re-releases may not play after a windows or graphics card update but still it seems as the best preservation solution. I may write more stuff later if there is interest.

I'm all for preservation. I'm part of a gaming preservation site, and I even managed to preserve a game on that site that wasn't likely to be of interest to many people. A game that would have had very little appeal outside of Australia. The PS version was kicking about, but the PC version was impossible to find. I even had to repair the disc before I could back it up because it had seen a lot of use.

I download ROM sets, manuals, heaps of PC games, gaming magazines, Betas, Pen and Paper RPG manuals, OSTs and translations, anything I can get my hands on. The thing is, I won't consume even 1% of the stuff I've download, so I'm clearly not doing it to get stuff I don't want to pay for.

We have seed and DNA banks to preserve plants and genetic material of animals, the same should be done for games, movies, books and any other form of media. But the difference between preserving a species and a piece of media is that the piece of media should become accessible after a point because it is something to experience.

So yes, people do care. The problem is that what we do is considered "illegal." A few years ago a watchdog organisation managed to get a preservation site shut down for having, among other non-named games, FIFA '98 available to download, a game nearly 20 years old at the time!

Taken from the article:

TorrentFreak talked to UG member Graham who praised the tracker for its extensive collection of old and rare games, and describes the UG community as the go-to place for retro gamers.

That statement is true, and a lot of those old and rare games are currently lost because the user-base was dispersed.

I am a retro video game collector. I have been preserving my own collection for years. (Especially when it comes to NES/SNES/GB etc).

When it comes to preserving the actual physical carts, there are things you can do to extend the life of your retro goodies, but eventually, something on the board is going to give out. I have replaced the batteries inside all of my NES/SNES/GB games that have the ability to save for example.

The online community is really good about dumping new roms as games are discovered. I don't think you need to worry about too many games not being preserved online. There have been a few a-holes who have held rare games from the community at large trying to get their big pay out

@Octane
Well...
For me, I will keep my games safely as I can.
As the games get aged, there is no way to prevent them to not died due to lifespan.
Also, at the same time I will be aged too.
I realized Nothing is eternal.
If I have to lost my games due to aging, I will let them died by Naturally. I can't take them also into my graveyard either.
I will say Thank You to my dead games for accompany and humoring me as long as they can.
I can let them go when the time is coming.
My heart must be prepared.
So, I don't need Emulators, Super PC, ROMS to Revive my beloved games.

@MegaTen
Exactly.
The Modern games will be Unplayable after 40 - 50 years from now due to Patches, DLC, etc.

It should be noted that while it is true that any type of physical media will ultimately fail ("bit rot" and all that rubbish, etc), but it is a very largely overstated problem in some parts of the retro community, as the reality is that it will take several, several decades before that becomes a legitimate concern.

Case in point are the tons of 40-year old Atari games that i own that still work as well as on Day 1, or my 30+ year old copy of Legend of Zelda which still runs perfectly (and whose battery still works and saves without a hitch).

@shaneoh The fortunate thing with digital media is that they can easily be copied and distributed. I think that licensing is the biggest issue. I dunno, it's a bit extreme, but I'd like a law that state that a company has to make a game digitally available on a modern system if it wants to hold on to the license after X many years. Could be a good way of separating the companies that don't care about their old library from the ones that actually do. So if a game isn't available on any modern system, it can be distributed online for free, legally.

@MegaTen The Super Mario Bros. article was a good read. I had no idea nobody knows the exact date.

@the_shpydar Anecdotal evidence.

Although it's true that probably more games get lost by simply ending up in a litter bin somewhere, than physically breaking down, it should be noted that it is an issue in the long term. Especially if you don't take good care of your games. Now, I'm certain that collectors do, but how many games get lost before it even becomes a collectors item? And when it gains that status, some games also end up more expensive than they ever were to begin with. But my point wasn't really to go into disc rot and all of that. I'm aware of it, and I also know that games can last for way longer than some people claim, provided to take good care of them.

I# started collecting for the original xbox and i still have many cs-roms from german pc magazins with plenty of old games on them
i even have xbox demo discs but i used most of the for decoration

@Octane I know this might be off the subject but cat you get an external USB DVD drive for your laptop?

I think we should make a difference between collecting to preserve the "artifact" and preserving the content through other means, so that it can be available to anybody at any time forever.
I am very much in favour of piracy and I think what @shaneoh and communities like his are doing are worthy of praise and should be supported. Hats off to you mate.

I think piracy is having success where the "white collars" have failed, that is, creating a large archive of games from the past that is easy and convenient to access and makes sense historically. Virtual Console seemed to be a step in the right direction but it's not an archive anymore if you start again from scratch every 4 or 5 years. Plus, with games coming and going, disappearing or not appearing because of licencing issues, poor emulation, premium prices and releases scattered between 5 or 6 different systems, even the historical purpose gets lost.

Videogame history is only 40 years old and we take many things for granted but if it wasn't for "pirates" our collective knowledge of videogames would be shockingly poor - just think about MAME and what an incredible resource to understand the evolution of games it has been over just the last decade.

I wonder how pirates intend to preserve videogames that came in unorthodox formats (such as LCD games) or in other forms (like flash games, mobile phone games and user-created content in games).

That's what I think, if it isn't commercially available for a modern system or PC after about 10 years, then most commercial rights should be null and void. They should still be able allowed to sell it after that point, like in the case of RARE Replay where the rights are a shambles and they finally work something out with all parties, but any copies online of the original ROMs should still be fair game.

Thanks, but I just spread it about, something easily done. The dudes that compile complete ROM and DOS sets, and scan manuals are the ones who deserve the praise.

I think like anything in this world - if you care for it then work for it. If you care to preserve video games then invest money in doing so and getting the necessary equipment and making proper archives. You can also work with others who are interested in preserving games. All of my vintage games work fine, but I take great care in their handling and storage.

Companies are going to rarely care for their assets unless they see value in doing so. It has just been in the past 30 years that major movie studios started restoring and taking care of some of their most well renowned films. It takes a lot of money and talent and studios started worrying about it when they saw the advent of technologies such as Laserdisc and DVD making it of value to consumers who would pay money for these restores and archived movies.

Unfortunately video games are not in the same place. Many vintage games are viewed like silent films or some of the first motion picture tests ever recorded. They will always have an audience that is interested in history, but to find a mass audience for the preservation of games like Atari 2600 Football is a hard sell for any company to invest money in. (although I think that game is preserved) You will see major titles preserved and major studios or publishers already have preservation measures in place even though you may never see those game again. (early version of Zoo Tycoon)

@Octane I care, but I only care about games I actually like, not about every game out there. I know it is selfish and I know that there should be someone that care about any kind of software if we want to solve this problem as a whole. For sure companies don't care about their actual games for the most part, they only care about the money they make with them and to avoid anybody else could take advantage from their ip. I'm sure they'd rather make an old ip completely disappear rather than watching somebody else "steal it" and keep it alive even for unprofitable reasons (look what happened with the Metroid fan game).
As controversial as it can sound I think that rom files can help a little against the loss of gaming software but for sure it is not the definitive solution and not something you can rely on because it is based only on collection kept by individuals and made up according only to those individual desires and tastes.
I think the only solution would be some sort of organization that legitimately could begin to create and take care of an archive where all past games are safely stored for preservation reasons.
Companies should give their permission to an organization like this to keep a copy of their games, but still probably having the game available for you to buy could be a lot more problematic... There are games that are a licensing mess and while it could be possible for a no profit organization to keep them in an archive I don't think it could be that easy to get back them to actual stores anyway, but knowing that the game is safely stored somewhere and it will become available again once all the licenses expire would be still better than nothing I think

@Octane This is certainly a growing problem. It's not only the games themselves either. Imagine a game like Fallout New Vegas. It was a pretty popular game. But if you have the disc you have the launch version. Unpatched and glitch riddled. Sure right now you could get it on steam instead. But 15-20 years from now? Who knows? And you almost certainly wont have any Xbox Live or PS3 online support to download the updates you'd need to play on original hardware.

DLC is another issue. I picked up Star Wars KOTOR around 2008. It was an original Xbox game but it ran on 360 which is all I had (no gaming PC at the time either) I couldn't get the DLC that had been previously released for it. And as far as I know, you can't get it anymore, even with the Steam version today.

There are plenty of benefits to digital updates and content releases for games, but in the long run it seems as though all this legacy content will be abandoned by the companies in an effort to promote only newer content.

Even Game Consoles are a concern. Say you want to relive high school 20 years down the road, pick up an old Xbox 360 at a thrift shop. Who knows what version of the OS it will have or what content will work properly without the ability to update anything anymore?

In the future, when the current and last generation of gaming becomes retro, it is gonna be hard to enjoy it. From the PS2/Gamecube era and prior this wasn't really a concern, but from the PS3/360 era and beyond it is going to be.

@Octane As for your "my laptop has no disc drive" problem, just get yourself one of these:
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-External-Opti...

Or on the British site, if you're from the UK...

They should be compatible with any laptop that has USB ports.

As for the disc itself: there are dozens of game shops that have disc-polishing services, so if the disc is still intact but dirty or scratched, find such a service and get it polished. If it still doesn't read, then I'm afraid the data is lost.

As for the whole preservation topic: I agree with the people on here, especially @shaneoh, that rights on old games should only extend to a certain period of time and the media should then be released to the public, or to an archive of the company itself, for all I care, as long as this new art form (because that's what it is) will be preserved for generations to come.

As per your request, I will post no links to downloads or torrents, since people that use torrents will more than likely already know where to look anyways, but I will say that for those interested in old games and online archives with information, live forums to talk about those games, and how-to's can be found all over, luckily. It's a grey area, obviously, but I couldn't care less if I want to play an old game on my PC that isn't available anymore in physical or online shops, but can be found on one of those sites.

Downloading and playing that isn't hurting anybody, nor is it making any company lose money or profit, since the best before date of these games has long since passed.

Again: I won't post any links, but for those interested in taking a look at those sites and their archives, or joining these communities, just Google one or more names in the following list:

Emuparadise (tons of systems, great forum, free signup)
The ISO zone (same as Emuparadise, but even more active community)
Ocean of Games (take note with this one that search results will also show a site that is called "Ocean off Games", with a double "F", but that is a fake site that spreads viruses, so don't go there)
Planet Emu (for all you French speakers out there)
My Abandonware
Abandonware DOS
Abandonia
XTC Abandonware

And last but not least:

You know the title of a game, but you just can't find it on any of these sites?
Try the search engine that only searches for games: Old Games Finder.
(just Google that as well, first search result should be the right website)