Random: Elected Official In Japan Is Looking To Legally Preserve Games

Since this is a generalized rule, I'm all for it. People tend to concentrate on Nintendo for that stuff, but they are far from the only company that doesn't regularly preserve their older games. In spite of the general narrative to the contrary.

@IronMan30 To be fair. Nintendo does preserve games... They just don't rerelease them XD.

And it's compleatly true that the mentality against preserving (and allowing users to access) games is not only coming from Nintendo (unfortunately). Hoping that changes someday, being because of the companies themselves or regulation.

Wow!!! some official news on a future for game preservation, be interesting to see how this plays out. Not sure about that statement of "from retro to live-service, to be preserved and playable from anywhere", I don't believe this bit.

In certain cases, the original hardware may not be functioning a decade from now. This goes for the original controllers as well as games. (Maybe aside from that one Gameboy at World Nintendo that was bombed)

Granted, we already have ROM back ups galore of just about every game since Pong. But having them preserved in a more official, and legal, capacity is still important.

There could be tons of licensing issues that may hurt this. But this is so cool, I’d love to see how it works out, and maybe if other countries could try it too.

Cool news, preservation should be a thing

easy, emulation. Besides some very rare lost titles if they exist, every single nintendo title is emulatable and so is accessible forever

@RupeeClock - Not to mention all those weird oddities of games born in the web browser phase of gaming. A friend and I talked about the old Captain Crunch CDRom game way back then not long ago, actually.

@prismt - What I wouldn't do for just a "Nintendo Choice NES Collection" game just released physically. Or even a port of F-Zero GX. Subs be damned.

Sounds like something geared towards the various issues in the industry. Nintendo imposing false scarcity, Square-Enix completely losing the source code of many popular games, and the dying trend of physical media.

Legality and preservation finally come together.

@jowe_gw right, and to be clear I want everyone to be held accountable. Including Nintendo.

That’s a good idea! Then people in 2152 can still play classics like The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past & Super Mario 64! (But what about discontinued games like Dr. Mario World?)

No one going to mention that his previous works include Love Hina and Negima?

First we get a ex-mma/dance artist turning to politics, and now a manga artist steps into the ring.

This would be great. Emulation legality/ethicalness is a conversation I'm tired of hearing about. Make it so these games have to be available legally in some format, so it can be more black and white already.

For the record, this goes both ways. Companies should make games reasonably accessible; people shouldn't be emulating reasonably accessible games imo.

The US has it's Library of Congress to preserve the creative brain trust. Japan is known for it's games - I can see this as a worthy effort.

@prismt why are people so against a subcription plan for older games? I don't think it's a bad way to rerelease older games. An option to also buy them would be nice but thanks to NSO I played a bunch of NES and SNES games that I'd never bought.

Somewhere in Kyoto, Shuntaro Furukawa picks up the phone and makes a call.
"Make it look like an accident."

I wish the president would preserve games in the Library of Congress instead of books by Shakespear

@VancouverVelocityFan

The sad truth about this, they will be the only games playable, with everything now cloud, digital only, nothing will be palpable or restoration will become impossible

I'm all for it, but if the preservation of games is contingent on the consent of game companies, what happens if they don't consent? As we all know here, Nintendo is notorious for being overzealous in protecting their IP. Either they rerelease the games themselves, or they don't get rereleased at all. Especially if they're digital-only releases.

Rather, game preservation should be mandatory, not optional. When it comes to video games, Japanese copyright laws should be updated to account for preservation, since it's their overly strict copyright laws that cause companies like Nintendo to be overzealous in protecting their IP.

Simply put, if the game is no longer in print, and the company that made it is either out of business themselves or has no plans in the near future (as in, one to two years) to rerelease the game or preserve it themselves, then the game should be rereleased and preserved by a third-party (with government-set royalties to the game companies or current IP holders as compensation).

Well, he's got my vote.

Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin be creaming their corn rn lol

Ken is doing work in japan!

Good to hear. Godspeed to him, I hope he succeeds. Gaming needs it, lest the vultures and opportunists swallow it all.

@Paraka Is it the one where you train a fuzz ball monster by eating cereal and doing platforming challenges for a final battle against the monster where he growls and doesn't speak from the commercial.

Dope. Gaming preservation, history, infrastructure and public ease of access are important.

… Wun can only hope.

@huyi yeah and that’s just sad. I love collecting games from all generations. I think that physical games are 10000% better than digital

@onery Also he made A. I. Love You and UQ Holder.

Nintendo are the ultimate preservers. They keep everything, even things they don't release and things that failed miserably, even complete and working arcade games (Google Sky Skipper if you don't believe me).

They also appear to keep all their source code complete with full commit histories, and even original source files for manuals and boxes if the gigaleak is any indication. Yes, the leak was by way of a third party but you can bet Nintendo have multiple backups of everything that was leaked and more.

What happens to all the stuff that hasn't leaked (of which there is a lot) if God forbid Nintendo ever goes out of business is worth thinking about. Frankly, the Japanese government needs to pass a specific trigger law which would establish control over Nintendo's archives as a matter of preserving a national heritage asset in the event that they ever go bust. It's not games themselves that I'm worried about disappearing, it's the kind of rich history that the gigaleak gave us all a glimpse of.

@Captain_Toad - Yeah! That is exactly the one. They were "crunchlings" or something like that. Just the first example I had in mind.

@VancouverVelocityFan yeah physical has its benefits, but the way that day 1 patches makes physical mute is fustrating, even YouTube influencers talk about how bad this issue is long term, no Dev cares about preservation 🙄🙄 apart from corps and higher ups

The question is, where is the line drawn between game ‘preservation’ and developer/studio rights to their creation?

@huyi exactly!

Ken Akamatsu has been a solid hand on this for years. He’s a consistent anti-censorship and pro-preservation voice in the anime and manga sphere and the series he’s produced over the years have been quite popular in their time and have afforded him a good following of fans to bolster his pushes. He puts his money where his mouth is too - when he first launched J-Comi, the first thing he did was put all 14 volumes of his own award-winning series Love Hina up on it for free (a series that had only finished it’s run a few years prior). Very glad to see him making it into the Diet and pushing forward.

What an absolute chad. I have so much respect for this guy and I hope he accomplished all of this and then some.

@Rosalinho "Nintendo are the ultimate preservers." Ha. Yeah, no. Unless you mean that they keep all of their source code. They don't preserve in anyone's interest but their own. I like your idea about a "trigger law." If a company goes completely out of business, then all of their past ideas should be fully public domain.