The game industry is youthful compared to other areas of entertainment and recorded culture - younger than film and TV, and of course a baby compared to printed works. Yet we're now decades into the history of gaming, especially if you go back to the systems of the 1970s, perhaps even a little earlier. Even if you choose to focus on the 'modern' post-crash era of gaming, we're rapidly approaching 40 years within that narrower perspective.
We see this every day as fans, of course - franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog are over 30-35 years old. We have commemorative products and re-releases on a regular basis, and the way we appreciate and consume retro games is also continually evolving.
Despite all of this, an issue of increasing importance continues to drift along with limited improvements and engagement from gaming's largest companies and rights holders - preservation. It's a topic we've covered before, both in terms of the practical realities of ageing media malfunctioning and the difficult issues around copyright.
- Feature: Your Beloved Games Console Is Slowly But Surely Dying
- Talking Point: Nintendo And The Industry Needs To Get Serious About Game Preservation
It's a topic that's come up again recently, with the announcement by Frank Cifaldi that he has an arrangement with WATA to verify and catalogue rare prototype games before they disappear entirely into private ownership. Before we explore what's ruffled so many feathers, a brief recap of the parties involved, and why they're important in the game preservation space.
Working with WATA for the greater good
Frank Cifaldi is co-director of The Video Game History Foundation, an organisation deserving of praise for its continued efforts to create and grow a video game research library. It's an organisation that also arranges events to showcase history, gathers together key physical gaming history like hardware and magazines for its archives, while challenging and campaigning for companies like Nintendo to improve their practices and attitudes to game preservation. Cifaldi is a key and respected figure in that space.
WATA is a company that initially gained attention for facilitating auctions of game collectibles at eye-watering prices, generating headlines as game copies changed hands for huge sums, such as a Super Mario 64 copy selling for over $1.5 million. A focus of these sales is a 'grading' applied by WATA, and it describes itself as a "trusted leader in collectible video game grading". However, there have been accusations that the organisation operates a manipulated market based on speculation and flipping, artificially driving high prices; there have also been allegations of collusion with auction house Heritage Auctions. Karl Jobst produced an extensive video exploring various angles of the controversy. Questions over the basis of these valuations are continually raised, with a suggestion that greed driven by WATA gradings is distorting and damaging the collectible market.
Cifaldi, an advocate for game preservation, therefore caused surprise when he confirmed his work for WATA in verifying prototype games before they go to auction, some of the most genuinely rare products in the industry; for some it was hard to put the two together. From one perspective Cifaldi had done a deal with the devil. As Cifaldi puts it, though, his work allows him to verify and record data on rare game prototypes that could otherwise be entirely lost from the public eye, getting a form of information to share before they're gone.
Of course, social media is rarely a place for reasoned debate, but after a couple of days for the dust to settle Cifaldi did post an extensive thread outlining his reasoning behind the agreement with WATA. He offers a defence of some collectors in terms of the work and research behind a lot of purchases, in addition to those significant sums of money in each purchase. In the earlier post three years of reports were also shared, giving a glimpse at the number of interesting prototypes that were authenticated and recorded.
Ends justifying means
While it's the easy option to simply look at this as a negative, given the poor repute in which many hold WATA, we think valid points are made about the grey areas, where compromise and reality are accepted and the best possible solution is found. Most would like a wonderful world where all rare gaming history is shared freely for the public to enjoy. That's not the world we're in, though, so it's understandable to get involved in the auction market on the proviso that you get something back - in this case records of rare non-commercial gaming prototypes.
We're at an awkward juncture where preservation and failing old cartridges and systems make archives more necessary, but companies still see money to be made.
We've compared gaming record keeping unfavourably in the past with older mediums, but similar compromises take place in those archives. Let's take rare books, as an example. Academia and public-funded organisations like National Libraries do a great deal of the legacy work in cataloguing, preserving and sharing imagery of rare books. Yet this is the result of 100+ years of work and many more centuries of book history falling into place. For example, many archives heavily rely on posthumous donations from collectors, so there will have been decades when these rare editions would have been in private hands. Universities and libraries also attend auctions to try and secure items, but are often outbid by private individuals.
So even that scenario isn't perfect, and that's with these historical editions not having the same copyright concerns that are still prevalent in the modern industry of gaming. That's where the big companies come into play - they're businesses seeking to profit from their products, not give them away. Nintendo now shares a controlled number of retro games on Switch via its Nintendo Switch Online subscription service, while SEGA recently gave details of Sonic Origins, which will package old games together in a $40 digital wrapping. We're at an awkward juncture where preservation and failing old cartridges and systems make archives more necessary, but companies still see money to be made.
The failure of old technology is an area where the gaming situation comes under stress. There's also the question of how long companies should maintain their 'vaults' of old content on the off-chance they can squeeze some more profits. The business angle would be "as long as copyright, IP and trademark laws allow", that is the company's right. What organisations like The Video Game History Foundation highlight, though, is that companies like Nintendo (and many others) often fall short in preserving their own source code practices. For example, companies sometimes turn to those that are preserving original game code for help, as their own copies and virtual archives have fallen short.
It's often private groups or enthusiastic individuals preserving gaming history, and to do so privately is perfectly legal. The question comes up, though, when should this history be open to share with the public? When can a ROM of a classic game be shared with the world? Do we wait for myriad copyrights to expire, or do companies take a more holistic view? Likely the former, of course.
Documenting a digital past before it disappears
And what of games that aren't actually available through any legal avenue? These are often blocked from public access too, of course, leading to the many arguments as digital stores close down and games are truly lost outside of private copies and preservation. This is just on the horizon for relatively recent games when the Wii U and 3DS eShop stores close.
https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg/status/1494398068346654720
It's complicated and difficult, and the best solutions will naturally need some form of compromise. We'd love a scenario where major companies agree a 'term of sale' for games, perhaps 40-50 years, after which public access to digital source code is allowed without roadblocks and takedowns.
That seems fanciful, of course, but unless a compromise is found between business and preservation, we'll be left to deals with the devil or, worse, simply waiting decades for copyrights and more legal periods to expire.
Let's just hope that historical source codes, in various forms and physical media, survive long enough for the eventual solution.
Comments 53
At this point, my recommendation is to leave everything up to the individual, instead of waiting for companies to preserve our beloved games for us.
Say what you want about emulation and ROM dumping, but it's the only real way that a person can truly preserve the games that make them happy. PC gaming is easier to preserve than physical media, and emulation is literal years ahead of consumer gaming in terms of preservation. In fact, I would say that emulation basically has that issue solved and finished. It's been way ahead of any corporation. The paltry offering on NSO, when compared to the massive library one can find through emulation, is a great example of this.
I highly recommend that we, as a culture, stop waiting for corporations to do things that make us happy.
Find your own happiness, in whatever way you can.
It’s a cult of garbage. They set the prices and their own staff profit.
WATA is not primarily for 'game preservation' to begin with. anyone can put a game into a strong plastic case or loader, and it will be protected forever. But of course they grade games and this creates a hierarchy of quality and state for any given title. The games collectables industry is probably more booming than any other collectables industry in the world, bar perhaps the fine art market itself. The crazy inflation on prices is contingent upon an economy that paradoxically, is in very bad state. in fact the whole of western civilisation is in a state of rapid economic collapse. Fiat cash is understood as being a kind of illusion (worthless), so people who have money are flying into whatever commodities and valuables they can. The video game scene is one of the major places for that right now (along with trading cards), and so companies like WATA are naturally making a killing (and playing the market a bit along with it).
Definitely the Nes, Snes and Gameboy alot had colour after that.
@BloodNinja Couldn't have said it better myself. Games are being preserved, by a community of fans that do so. And not just the games themselves, there are alphas, betas and other various versions of games preserved forever within the emulation community. And without intention of profit.
What worth more more? The original Divine Comedy written by Dante himself or the English translation of the Divine Comedy from that timeframe written by someone nobody cares about?
My point is that people put too much value in games they were localized to English by some dude without talent, and treat the originals (usually japanese) as garbage.
For exemple, the ultra valuable sealed super Mario bros has a box art that has not the creator's vision on it just because it was not made by the game's original team. So historically has much less value than the japanese version.
More like WATA scam they're running.
Ill stick to the beauty of roms. Than again I'll never understand paying more than retail price to "collect" a piece of plastic or a CD when the actual experience, memories and enjoyment from PLAYING the actual game is all that matters.
WATA are a scam company set up to profit off the massive inflation of the used game market by nefarious means. Their founders latched onto the scene due to their familiarity with other (non-gaming related) collecting bubbles that they could create and exploit. They don't care about video game preservation; they care about marketing themselves and concealing their dishonesty.
Why not just deal with like with the other media section like music, books and films?
I think "our guys" on the internet do a much better job of preserving gaming as we know it: YouTubers like Hard4Games, the Gaming Historian and others, as well as community efforts like ROM repositories (love them or hate them, they do that job for us), game enthusiast companies selling aftermarket ROM dump tools, and wikis like The Cutting Room Floor that chronicle and organize deep looks into verified aspects of beta/prototype assets found.
We don't need acronym organizations and suits looming over what we the community have always done a fantastic job of doing. You're letting the fox into the henhouse by doing so, as far as I'm concerned.
Video game preservation is important (the physical product included), but I'm not sure WATA is it. All that seems to have lead to is people treating sealed video games like currency. As a member of several trading groups I see it daily and it's never not been weird to me.
I know there are obviously good things that come of it as well, like yeah, they do catalogue everything and that's important, but as a company overall it seems built on profit and little else.
I also fight with the idea of "slabbing" games in general because it seems so backward to my idea of collecting to play and appreciate, but I know not everyone feels the same.
@Scrubicius
It's the hardware issue, I think.
Some albums and and singles are now rare or lost as they were not released on CD.
Most films have been released on DVD or Blu-ray, but there is a load that have been lost to the mists of time. Same goes for TV programmes. And some have only been released on videotape.
Books, you only need paper.
Edit: unless you mean digitising it all - emulation is that equivalent, and a lot of films, albums and books have been pirated like games
Standing up for WATA now?! Im done with this website.
See y’all
@Funneefox While not following, I don't blame you at the same time LOL.
I'd wonder if of all things, Mini consoles would be the way to preserve games. Not the way they've been done by just giving you a select pre-determined number of games though. Imagine an NES Mini, that while it came with the basic games you'd expect, had an online storefront where even the most obscure of NES & Famicom games were available for purchase. An official emulation machine with as many games as they can get for the storefront, would shut down so many reasons for pirating.
WATA? Why should anyone trust them?
The video game industry is totally backward when it comes to preserving its own history. Imagine if the majority of music that came out 30 years ago or earlier (i.e. all music before 1992) was unavailable because the record companies couldn’t be bothered to keep it in print. Video games are such an important cultural medium, and yet there’s an attitude within the industry that old games have little to no value, and aren’t even marketable unless the original graphics are replaced with new visuals. Yes, these are corporations and they’re always going to be concerned with profit, but they can choose to prioritize classic games and market them to a new audience.
This effort from Video Game History Foundation is making the best out of a rough scenario. Game preservation is incredibly expensive, with WATA being a recent culprit, but at the very least, this allows some sort of backup in the event of which the product is extremely scarce. It also gives WATA an inch of accountability, something they seem to be incredibly lacking
In addition, it gives a check that the product being sold is of historic value, which is often incredibly hard to judge through an online auction in a certain time and place. Part of what Video Game History Foundation does is compete in auctions worth thousands in order to attain relics that may be unique and have historic value to the industry. This collaboration at the very least mitigates the risk that archivists aren’t wasting their money on a insignificant ROM and that money can be better used elsewhere.
Why is this website defending or at least giving a platform to some of the worst scams running on the gaming industry right now?
WATA, Intellivision Amico, and a bunch of other consoles and organizations along the way.
Delete my comment if you want, that'll only confirm your stance.
“Most would like a wonderful world where all rare gaming history is shared freely for the public to enjoy. That's not the world we're in, though”
It could be though, and I don’t think that this a great argument to just give up and help maintain this crappy situation
Still missing an I at the start of WATA.
Luckily i own a lot of retro games and systems, I will keep collecting until I'm six feet under. But there definitely needs some sort of proper preservation for the industry we love. Also thank God for Mame without it most amazing arcade games would be lost forever.
Gaming is industry, these are products, and Nintendo is a toy company. That's the breaks. It's not changing anytime soon and any large scale efforts are likely to go the way of WATA or worse because there's money to be had. FPGA projects within the community are the way gaming will be preserved, as the hard copies will continue to be hoarded and traded as commodities until it's just them and gamers who take their collections to the grave.
Nlife must have gotten a nice payout for running this article. I would say i am surprised but i wouldn't expect anything less from Whitehead and the rest of the 'journalists' that make up the reporting team on this site.
Doesn't he need consent first? Maybe I missed it
It’s quite amusing reading through Cifaldi’s evaluations. The vast majority of games are identical to final retail releases or near identical. There are plenty of fakes discovered in there too. I’d imagine someone submitting their proto cart in the hopes of making big money would have soon had their bubble burst when Cifaldi deems the cart identical to retail or fake. 😂
So while I do abhor WATA, I think Cifaldi is actually providing a useful service in busting the myth that prototype cartridges often have significant differences from the final release. Of all the protos I’ve owned, I’ve only ever seen one with differences from the final release.
I rip and store all my games on my PC so for when the inevitable time comes that my media dies I'll still have it in some form at least.
WATA is not to be trusted. They have earned their bad reputation.
I'm a simple man. I see WATA and I dislike.
@shoeses,
The problem with having an online storefront, is that at some point, they get shut down if they don't bring in much revenue. Which gets us back to dealing with this whole problem in the first place.
The only way I see this working would be for said store to work in a manner that legally lets people copy the roms they bought to other devices they own or back them up on whatever media format they want. Start treating game roms like DRM-free music files or video files. You bought the content? You should be able to play it on the device you prefer, through the emulator you prefer.
But this would NEVER happen because it would prevent companies (like Nintendo) to sell you the same game over and over again on each new console generation... or move them behind a subscription fee. And the bigger problem is that most gamers out there seem to accept this as "normal", and pay again, and again, and again....
I'm all for a solution that would make people pay once, and "own" the game in a way they can play it however they want.
But like I said.... it's never going to happen.
I'm reading this while drinking a cool glass of Wata.
"Most would like a wonderful world where all rare gaming history is shared freely for the public to enjoy. That's not the world we're in, though,"
But it is, but game companies and shills call people "pirates."
Hmmm… you know what would be REALLY funny?
If WATA suffered the same fiasco that Logan Paul did to PSA.
WATA is scummy, plain and simple. What they're doing isn't preservation; it's assigning an arbitrary number to a game, sealing it in plastic, and selling it for absurd prices. They've harmed the retro collecting community to a possibly irreparable degree, they aren't worth defending in the slightest. They don't care about the games they're "preserving," they just care about whatever scam will make them the most money right now. They did the same thing with coin collectors before, they'll move on to something new once they're done with games.
@Realnoize But here's the thing: Nintendo is stupid so they go about reselling their stuff in the least optimal way for both them & the consumer. They rarely do collections, the obvious solution, and when they do, they screw it up like when the Kirby one for Wii was only for certain Regions or obviously Mario All-Stars.
They could've very easily made a LoZ Collection with either the NES, SNES, GB, GBC, & GBA games, or instead of the Skyward Sword remake being a standalone, make that part of a collection with the Wii U remakes of WindWaker & Twilight Princess. People would've went crazy for both - instead they made a stupid Game & Watch that I haven't seen been touched in stores.
It's hard to even argue that collections would take away from online subscription sales when it's mandatory now. Most people don't pay for NSO for retro games - they pay for it because if they want to play Mario Kart, Splatoon, Pokémon, Smash, Animal Crossing, etc. online, they don't have a choice.
WATA don't care about video game preservation, sticking them in sealed plastic boxes for some perceived value and never to be played again. They're doing their best to destroy the retro game market.
As for preservation are these old cartridges really failing? I've got 40 year old Atari games which work perfectly fine but nevertheless you can easily find almost every single console and arcade release online and emulation/fpga is the real game preservation. Both are fantastic solutions and on PC I can experience any retro consoles with accurate or improved performance, with a variety of controllers and even a lightgun
@BloodNinja I've long since accepted that none of these companies care about the preservation of their games. Thankfully there are plenty out there who are so I happily download all these old games and play them through the many amazing emulators we have these days.
I've got the likes of Sega Model 2 and 3 arcade stuff, every House of the Dead including Scarlett Dawn and a new lightgun to play them. I have access to every console and their entire libraries and replica controllers for many. I'm playing Mario 64 with the Render 96 pack and ray traced lighting at 60fps whilst Nintendo could only be bothered to add a few new textures and call it a day, soon Ocarina will get the same treatment on PC.
Whether people like it or not, emulation is the only true game preservation as most games will never be released again and the physical versions too few in numbers and too expensive
@carlos82 I love it! Game on, brother and/or sister! (lol)
NINJA APPROVED
@DestructoDisk It might hurt WATA yes, but then that means they'd stop working with him and there would be not be ROM dumps at all. They'd all be like that Trog NES proto famously listed on ebay that the seller gloated is undumped, as it sits there to bitrot ("the casing prevents UV from erasing the EEPROMs my a**"). I know Trog in not an unreleased game, and it's also a game nobody really cares about. But the principle!
Even he has said he's aware it's not the ideal situation.
It's unfortunate it I don't get to play the games regardless, but it still feels better to know SOMEBODY has preserved the ROM than NOBODY.
I think if they are recognized as an archival institution, it gives them some protection from copyright law.
It's only a matter of time before we see an article on how stealing someone's breast milk has its upsides
WATA is not interested in game preservation, all they care about is the profits to be made from the same of rare graded games, they are in bed with Heritage game auctions, who are very questionable at best.
So we are arguing between an untrusted company and individuals saving roms.
It's starting to feel like a bunch of criminals are trying to legalise something to make themselves feel better for what they are doing.
It's a thin line between game preservation and pirating.
"Oh was that your car? Sorry... I was just trying to "preserve it".
Companies actively oppose preservation of their old content - Nintendo is case in point here. Emulation is the only reliable method that has allowed an endless number of games to live on until today.
This industry deserves far better. Will it get better? Nope. Because under capitalism, companies care only about their bottom dollar and not about history or the public good
@thomasbw84 Damn fine article, just wanted to give kudos. We all wish for a sunny day where we all can just pull our favorite game off the "shelf", but that slid through the original owners fingers back from a time when we weren't worried about game preservation. Lack of original owner bookkeeping, company closures, changing of the guard, etc made our modern dilemma all but an inevitability. In my opinion, a clean way forward may be for a new consortium to emerge who has deep enough reach (and likely pockets) to knock on the doors of the major publishers and private owners, as well as obtaining original code wherever it may lie, and literally create a one stop shop for non-profit (or profit, even if shared with the code owner) for the sake of gamers "winning". Likely only gamers themselves would have to create such a thing.
@BloodNinja 100% spot on. It's the way I have done things for a while now. I bought a gaming PC for the big games, but also for emulation of all the older stuff that is no longer being offered. I have my Switch for anything Nintendo, so the combo covers me completely. I know that no company is going to preserve the games I loved so I did it myself. There is just too much getting released now to even attempt to preserve them anyhow.
@Shredderlovespizza Exactly! It’s a much better way to go. Plus, emulation machines don’t need high requirements, so if that’s how you game exclusively, you can save a lot of money, too.
"...yet there’s an attitude within the industry that old games have little to no value" - primarily among gamers - there is a belief that games should depreciate in value faster than cars and to the point where they should be given away freely.
I love free games, particularly when they are bigger releases, but I don't feel the expectation for price depreciation is particularly helpful for the video games industry.
@Mando44646 "Companies actively oppose preservation of their old content - Nintendo is case in point here." - More accurate to say they oppose OTHER people trying to preserve their content. Nintendo do preserve their own stuff (See what they did for Super Mario Maker for example).
This is not to say that Nintendo or others are totally in the right either. Just pointing out that Nintendo and other companies do preserve games - they just don't share that with everyone else.
Preservation =/= accessibility
@jsty3105 I argue preservation is the same as accessibility
This is why the Library of Congress exists. To preserve written (and visual) works in perpetuity. This is why museums and the concept of public domain works exist too.
Humanity deserves to have easy (whether paid or unpaid) access to art once it exists. This shouldn't be a crazy statement. I'd be more than happy to pay for stuff that I want to read/watch/play. Just give me the ability to. Until that time, emulation is the ethnical duty of all in order to preserve art.
Should be legal to download and emulate games sfter 10 years they stop production or official selling (for digital games). But the company should have the right to sell it's own emulated products in newer systems to not allowed free emulation.
I know it's not that way, but that's the way I do. I only emulate old games and if it have a collection I buy it (like Castlevania Anniversary and Advance Collections). I'm really anxious to buy Cowabanga Collection (Sonic Origins I won't, I already have the games on Mega Drive Collection on Steam)
Several thoughts here: Emulation is the only answer I see for now. I love that I have some modded systems with thousands of games ready to go because let’s face it, We all know that Tons of old classic games will NEVER EVER see the light of day ever again for one reason or another. And while some companies in the industry deserve kudos for their efforts of releasing old games on current hardware which I ALWAYS will support every time with my wallet, it’s simply not nearly good enough imo. There’s sooo many awesome games younger players missed and older gamers for that matter!! Then you get strange (or greedy) moves with Sega for example reissuing Sonic Colors (a good move), the Monkey Ball series, Genesis collection but then they turn around asking $40 for the Origins collection, for a mere four 16-bit Sonic games included?? I thought Origins was going to be a much bigger collection! Too expensive be it digital or physical for what’s on offer. You gotta hand it to Microsoft in doing a pretty damn good job with their backwards compatible efforts. Then you have collectors like me who has been working on building up his Jaguar library and holy cow are some of those games very expensive!!! If it wasn’t so damn hard to emulate the Jag I’d save some serious cash! Lastly, you just gotta love ❤️ what Hamster is doing with their one classic a week program. While some complain about the $8 per game price tag this is your big chance to legit own tons of classic arcade games on Switch & ps4!! Just wish they didn’t stop making them for Xbox! I totally believe in game preservation but I just think there’s too many damn roadblocks to preserve most of them. Hope they figure it all out!
@Rambler Yup keep your old console.
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