Almost all of our favorite games will die

[Anonymous No.766825]

Both film and literature have been preserved by numerous organizations for their cultural significance. Music has also been preserved, many times by pirates, and is relatively easy to keep alive.

But video games don't often see this kind of concerted effort. To my knowledge there is no great effort to ensure that games of yesteryear can still be available or preserved. Video Gaming isn't seen as art, and this ignorance will be lamented fifty years from now, when the first video games will be looked at like early Hollywood.

What does /vr/ think of this current state of affairs? What games should be preserved?

[Anonymous No.766832]

Tons of early films are lost because the film was allowed to decay, or burned in fires.

[Anonymous No.766827]

>>766825
>yesteryear can still be available or preserved.
what the fuck do you think the people on here do?

[Anonymous No.766835]

and likewise a good majority of films and tv shows have been long destroyed

as has a good majority of written classical music

[Anonymous No.766845]

>>766825

OP, don't take this the wrong way, but you're kinda stupid. You talk about how music was preserved by pirates and then go on to speak about how video games are somehow in danger.

DO YOU HAVE
ANY IDEA
HOW MANY SITES THERE ARE DEDICATED TO ROMs AND ISOs

[Anonymous No.766841]

>>766832

Early films were often straight up destroyed when their runs were up, many hadnt considered titles from the studio era worth keeping

[Anonymous No.766847]

>>766825
ROM chips are literally etched in stone. They're not going anywhere.

[Anonymous No.766848]

That's why digital media and pirating is a great thing. Media can be restricted and lost physically, but in digital form, it can possibly last forever. When something has digital form, it's much harder to wipe out than a physical thing.

If you were to burn books today, who would care? Someone tries to suppress a piece of media, it's useless, it can be copied infinitely for anyone with a computer device.

[Anonymous No.766851]

Uh, MAME and MESS are pretty much entirely dedicated to preserving and documenting video games and video game hardware. Even byuu of bsnes fame is currently archiving every single SNES game ROM, manual, and even box.

[Anonymous No.766856]

>>766845
>>766827


I appreciate the work the Pirates do, but there might come dwindling amount of people interested and capable of keeping the games up to date. I realize many pirates have kept alive a lot of games so far.

>>766841


I know this, and it is because film wasn't considered culturally important.

[Anonymous No.766857]

>To my knowledge there is no great effort to ensure that games of yesteryear can still be available or preserved.

>To my knowledge

I found your problem there OP. Your knowledge sucks. Maybe you should try researching a topic before trying to make some kind of sensationalist emotional jerkfodder.

The United States Library of Congress is commited to exhaustively archiving every form of American media possible, including videogames. There's people there whose job it is to archive and research incredibly obscure titles, freeware shit from the 80s and 90s that only existed on a few floppies.

For arcades there is the MAME project which has been exhaustively preserving arcade games in a code-accurate fashion for decades.

Byuu has attempted to bring the same archival focus and consistency to console emulation but has not been successful. We could do better there.

[Anonymous No.766859]

>>766856
People are always going to be interested in getting shit for free.

[Anonymous No.766868]

>>766857
MESS is not quite as developed as MAME, but it'll get there eventually. Byuu is but a cog in that machine. There is plenty of interest in the preservation of even the most obscure home computer within their ranks. Hell, MESS has an emulator driver for an incredibly obscure computer/console thing I had when I was a kid that I have literally never heard anyone else ever mention anywhere on 4chan, and it works pretty damn well. That's how committed they are.

[Anonymous No.766875]

>>766868
How is MESS dealing with ROM standards?

[Anonymous No.766876]

It's not true that video games won't be preserved.
Their cultural significance may never reach the status of movies though, and that's kinda sad. I can't really imagine the general public playing 80s arcade games and appreciating the beginnings of a new genre, it's mostly just nostalgia.

[Anonymous No.766878]

>>766856
even if you don't count the numerous sites that you can get the games from, you can still get them off of psn and xbox live and the virtual console. There are also museums strictly for video games and there are a shit load of collectors out there. You can also get reproduction carts or roms so your fear isn't going to be a reality. If anything there has been more care and more preservation for video games than film and music.

[Anonymous No.766884]

>>766876
The "general public" doesn't watch Citizen Kane, let alone silent films. Film history is respected but still unaccessed to non-afficionados.

[Anonymous No.766891]

>>766876
Well, video games are rivaling movies as an industry. But I'd wager a large amount of that is less money on average spent on a game than a movie, while games are usually higher priced. Less cost for creation+higher price=higher profits.

Ironically, what's gonna take for them to catch on as popculture the same way as movies is going to be what VR hates, appealing to the masses. That means easier game play,focus on storylines, more homogenized graphics, etc. Basically, to keep it from being a niche hobby based on skill, and drawing people into them with storylines.

[Anonymous No.766905]

Wait what? I think OP might be new to retro. The romsets are 99+% complete with the exception of MAME but even that is probably 95% complete and it's unlikely any of those are "your favorite games" even cancelled unreleased "lost" games usually leak or turn up as Wu Tang Clan fighting games. Some obscure early computer games may have vanished but they probably sucked anyway. I even recently located a disk image of an Apple II issue of Microzine from when I was a kid just to finally beat a particular game that I remembered and in the process reminded myself of quite a few others.

If anything, the danger as the world becomes more and more digital isn't losing the past, it's how seductively easy it becomes to live in it too much.

[Anonymous No.766935]

>>766884
A lot of people get pissed that video games aren't getting geometrically more amazing any more but it might just be the beginning of the first golden age of video games. No more getting by on gimmicks, games will succeed only by being good games judged on their merit. As many people will be playing the new blockbuster game as seeing the new blockbuster movie. What a time to be alive!

or it may just all crash to shit

[Anonymous No.766943]

>>766935

Or they keep selling the same IPs because developing something new is too big of a financial risk.

[Anonymous No.766953]

>>766943
Yeah that's what they said about Technicolor

[Anonymous No.766976]

>>766825
> What does /vr/ think of this current state of affairs?

Personally, I think rom and cd based games are being preserved quite well online. 90% of english language snes games are floating around on tpb and will remain there until the last seeder dies.

> What games should be preserved?

Personally, famicom disk system games and bios images. Fds disks deteriate easy due to being a magnetic media that was made.poorly. as japanese titles, the english speaking world ignores them a bit more than us and eu region games.

[Anonymous No.766978]

If you compare gaming to comics by year, comics pretty much started in the late 1930s as a niche interest. Games became available in the home in the late 1970s in the same way. If you draw the ages of comics along with the generations of home consoles and parallel their development, we are now entering the modern age of video games in that analogy.

As for those of you worried about archivists, I'm sure there are a great many making serious efforts to keep aged media in circulation.

[Anonymous No.766990]

>>766976
That's pretty true playing that hacked together version of BS Zelda makes me feel like the whole Satellaview thing was probably quite an experience. Much more so than Sega Channel. Unfortunately, that stuff is likely to get lost unless people seriously pursue intact memory cartridges from like 20 years ago and dump them. Japan has a different attitude toward that type of thing than Westerners do so it probably ain't gonna happen.

[Anonymous No.766991]

>>766976
Almost every single FDS game has been dumped by the folks at No Intro, and they are fully playable on highly accurate emulators such as Nestopia.

[Anonymous No.766993]

Speaking on a technological level, this sort of comprehensive archival is archaic.
Reels degrade, phonographs degrade, binary data can be copied over and over again with no issue, and stored in millions of places forever.
The cartridges may degrade, but that's unimportant in every way.

Old media may be lost, and new methods of preservation are regrettably unusable on degraded media, but with binary data, new methods always open new doors, and too much time is never passed.

[Anonymous No.766997]

>>766990
I see what you mean about the different attitude, given that most Japanese emulators tend to be closed source. The mindset for continually striving to preserve the original hardware seems to be lost on them, though it is not very surprising given how huge the used games market is over there. You can still get copies of super old and obscure games for far less than in the west, after all.

[Anonymous No.767003]

>>766997
They're even more capitalistic than us, as long as there's a market no matter how small they'll keep it alive but the idea of preserving things just to preserve them is lost on them. Even the otakus and the hikikomoris .

[Anonymous No.767013]

>>766978
> we are now entering the modern age of video games in that analogy.
You lost me here. How can we enter the modern age if we are in the modern age?

>>766990
Actually we had a thread about the Satellaview just a few weeks ago, and there are people (mostly westerners though) who are attempting to do just what you said is unlikely.
>seriously pursue intact memory cartridges from like 20 years ago and dump them.
The only shit I can foresee getting lost over time are those generic Chinese consoles you can sometimes pick up in Big Lots or Dollar General. But honestly I don't give a shit if they disappear, there's never anything worthwhile on them that isn't a rehash of an NES game.

[Anonymous No.767026]

>>767013
There will be a few surviving examples of clone/bootleg systems as a historical example, a thorough archiving of them isn't really something posterity necessarily needs

[Anonymous No.767029]

>>767013
I think St Giga went away though. I'm sure the backbone of Satellaview will be lost. It may be recreated in some lesser format but I dunno. It's like how a lot of the good-but-less-popular MMOs are unplayable now with no server software leaked.

[Anonymous No.767075]

This thread looks like it was meant for the wrong board.

I don't think you have to worry about retro preservation right now, you should, however, go discuss with /v/ about how DLC, digital-only distribution and server side DRM is pretty much gonna screw preservation of current and future generations.

[Anonymous No.767095]

>>767075

>implying

Piracy preserves that too.

[Anonymous No.767141]

>>766825
>But video games don't often see this kind of concerted effort.
Yes they do.

Yes they fucking do.

[Anonymous No.767152]

>>766990
But it's been happening for awhile now. People look up, buy and borrow memory cards and dump Satellaview broadcasts from them. A lot of Satellaview stuff has been preserved already.

[Anonymous No.767193]

>there is no great effort to ensure that games of yesteryear can still be available or preserved.

do you even realize what you are saying? Old games are available for downloads and there are reproduction catridges and stuff too. we have shit like PSN, Nintendo e-shop, steam and so forth.

[Anonymous No.769820]

>>766935
No. What is happening is Video Games are imploding. Look at the music industry. It's already imploded. People can get whatever music they want. The radio is nothing but garbage. Now everyone listens to indie music.

The same thing is happening to video games, except that now its flash games and iOS instead of indie bands. The video game industry is essentially dead outside of a few exceptions (like cod)

[Anonymous No.769836]

>>766876
I dunno about that, but if a hobby is only based around nostalgia, it reflects very poorly on it. It says in essence "X thing sucks, but dumb nostalgiafags think it doesn't"

[Anonymous No.769838]

>>766884
>The "general public" doesn't watch Citizen Kane

Beg pardon, but CK was hardly a mainstream, accessable movie in its day

[Anonymous No.769854]

>>766884
>>769838
You don't know that watching ancient movies while 420blazed is a college student tradition? Everything's great while high.

[Anonymous No.769878]

Really fuck the public.
fuck the average person.

There is no need to cater to the inferiors. Be superior, be quality, do quality things, be around superior and quality people.

Good taste.

[Anonymous No.769883]

>>769820
Video games are fine, though. It's only AAA that's suffering, and even then, it's only AAA games released by publicly owned companies.

The video game industry is definitely in a transitional period. People are starting to realize that, oh, hey, this is actually art. We can't just follow marketing trends and expect to make money. And that's cool! It means AAA games are going to suck balls for like a decade or so and, maybe they'll die for a bit. But we're already seeing "double-A" stuff (like Kane and Lynch, Max Payne, Demon's Souls) fill a valuable place the AAA game market (unfortunately) neglects so, it's not like the industry is dead or even dying. It's just naturally shifting back to what it needs to be.

I also want to mention that, when the 360 was announced, many people claimed this was going to be A Thing: AAA becoming to expensive to sustain itself, shit being really boring for a while, and then games with smaller budgets rejuvenating the market. This isn't coming as a surprise to intelligent people.

Just to 4chan.

[Anonymous No.769880]

>>769854
especially Koyaanisqatsi

[Anonymous No.769894]

>>769883
If it is art then it isn't high art of any caliber.

Really fuck off, nerd, there's no need to call video games "art".

Video games, they are games, played on consoles or computers, VIDEO, they are GAMES. Games are not ART. Trying to make a video game that art will result in shitty gameplay and kitsch. Focus on making video games as they are which is GAMES.


Stop it.

[Anonymous No.769892]

>>769838
I'm sure every film student for the last 60 years has seen CK and Metropolis, but yes probably not the average sheeple

[Anonymous No.769896]

I have near every SNES game ever here in a folder and I'm sure a bajillion other people do too.

[Anonymous No.769897]

>>769892
that is art*

[Anonymous No.769905]

>>769892
I was a film student. does watching citizen kane for 5 minutes before turning it off "seen it"? I have seen Metropolis. one the of the best silent films.

[Anonymous No.769914]

>>769905
>does watching citizen kane for 5 minutes before turning it off "seen it"?
Kind of

[Anonymous No.769916]

>>769894
Pretty much anything that communicates ideas is art. Stop signs are art, paintings are art, blockbuster movies are art. Don't be one of those people who assumes something is more valid or respectable because it's considered "art". Art can suck. Art can be a big fucking nothing. Art is little more than a word we use to describe something that was made with the intention of interacting with our feelings or senses.

[Anonymous No.769919]

>>769916
"Modern art came into being when there were artists with imagination, but not skill."

-- Some guy who's name I forget

[Anonymous No.769921]

>>769916
You fucking liberals turn everything you touch into shit. With your stupid views of art and video games you are going to degrade art even more and make video games less fun and their "artistic elements" a bunch of kitsch.

[Anonymous No.769930]

>>769921
>>>/pol/

also how is broadening the definition of art in any way related to the specific direction modern games have taken with regards to presentation and gameplay

[Anonymous No.769931]

>>769921
You're a pretty funny guy. Maybe you should stop getting so mad though, I wouldn't want to see you have a heart attack or something.

[Anonymous No.769954]

>>769930
There is no need to broaden the definition. You don't fucking need to make video games art Accept that you are a loser for making your life revolve around video games

[Anonymous No.769961]

>>769921
You can like, or dislike, what the art world currently is: that doesn't make it non-art. No amount of No True Scotsmans will save your view. You need to stop equating art with good.

[Anonymous No.769964]

Rom sites anon.

[Anonymous No.769965]

>>769954
>Accept that you are a loser for making your life revolve around video games

Huh, wonder where that came from. It seems like you took a pretty big leap there buddy. Simmer down.

[Anonymous No.769980]

>>769961
Fallacies are arbitrary bullshit.

[Anonymous No.769983]

>>769980
>something that can literally be expressed as boolean algebra and formally proven contradictory is arbitrary

[Anonymous No.769990]

>>769983
But of course you're some sort of formalist retard

[Anonymous No.770092]

>>766978
I'm quite the packrat. Sadly I dont have as large a archive of retro stuff as I'd like. Sure gigs of games but I like the bbs era and would love to track down more files of that type. I have been thru tons of file archives doing just that.

Some of you retro fans might enjoy digging thru http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html a bit and grabbing whatever. Most is shareware but i've snagged piles of music and art going thru there.

[Anonymous No.770098]

>>769990
stay mad

[Anonymous No.770136]

>>770098
>knowyourmeme.com

[Anonymous No.770475]

>>769916
Agreed, and the real issue is; Is any of this art of any merit? Honestly, very little of it can be put into consideration. People will cite things like Metal Gear solid or Ocarina of time as examples of games as art, but it's always for things like story. Or occasionally art design. But that alone doesn't elevate it to something worth recognizing forever. There are many new books written much better than old classics held up as standards, or films better written, acted, and directed than some legendary movies. The thing is, those books and films were groundbreakers. And the art world isn't so easily impressed with something that does something well but that's not really innovative.

[Anonymous No.770487]

>>766825
Everything dies anon
Enjoy what you have.

[Anonymous No.770507]

>>770136
>4chan file name
good to see you took my advice and remain mad

[Anonymous No.770519]

>>766825
Um, like nearly every retro vidya has been preserved via means of ROMs

Even the oldest films that archived aren't done so with their original film. It's about the content, not the material.

[Anonymous No.770958]

>>769961
The problem is not that he's associating art with "good", it's that he's associating art, with art. I know that probably doesn't make sense so let me explain.

In our day+age, art, as you said, can mean just about anything. It could be a fifteen second video of an ice cube melting on a brick, it can be an oil painting done two hundred years ago, it could be the sequel to Space Jam, or it can be the stop sign at the end of your street. It is not only everything, but it is made by everyone. Any guy or girl off the street can throw some shit on a canvas (sometimes literally) and find someone who will pay out the ass for it for some reason or another. Now lets apply that to Video games. Obviously you'd get some people making some really amazing shit, its already happening in the form of indie games, but you also get some really terrible shit too. That 40 hour long open world RPG made by one guy would be surrounded by whatever the modern equivalent of Pong consoles would be. And then you've got the weird abstract stuff. Most of the game's that identify themselves as "art" are fucking terrible. There's a game on steam right now that is literally, you controlling an old woman slowly walking through a graveyard and sitting on a bench. But wait, it gets better. If you buy the full version of the game, there's a slight chance she'll keel over and die If you play it again (as if it has any replay value at all).

If I make a shelf, and think of it as just that, a shelf, The product I produce will be just that, a shelf.
But If I made an "art" shelf, it takes on a whole new meaning. I now have some sort of attachment or obligation to this shelf weather I want to or not. It might not even be a good shelf, it might be a terrible piece of shit. But because its an "art" shelf, it suddenly becomes different in the eyes of others (even if I still think its a piece of shit).

Art, by definition, can mean anything at all.
But by connotation, it is a very specific word.

[Anonymous No.770964]

>To my knowledge there is no great effort to ensure that games of yesteryear can still be available or preserved.

www.gamebase64.com

[Anonymous No.770972]

>>770958
That pictue btw, basically says that in the US you'll be worthless because every musician gets credit, but in the USSR only talented musicians can make it.

[Anonymous No.770978]

>>770958

art doesn't matter

quality of craftsmanship is what's important.

[Anonymous No.771042]

>>770978
if you're TLDR'ing my post, then thats spot on, if not...

[Anonymous No.771063]

I personally am more concerned about the preservation of the hardware, ESPECIALLY when it comes to arcade machines and pinball. It seems there are very few out there who actually take the time to properly maintain these machines and most arcades that exist today just toss out older games for new ones.

Luckily there are places like the Pinball HoF and PaPa World HQ, but I still can't help but worry.

[Anonymous No.771154]

>>770092
http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3A%22cdbbsarchive%22

[Anonymous No.771169]

>>771063
I own quite a few arcade machines but the MAME project really does do a good job of preserving the important elements. GroovyMAME has gotten to a point I've been thinking of converting one of my shittier cabs to it.

[Anonymous No.771175]

>>769905
Watch the whole thing, man. It's worth it.

[Anonymous No.771181]

>>766825
Art and literature have been around for hundreds of years.

Video games have been around, what, 40 years?

In 2090 they'll still have the opportunity to look back at Super Mario Bros and say, this is where it all began.

Or Pong, Duck Hunt, some other Commodore games or fuckin Call of Duty or some shit.

[Anonymous No.771204]

>>771181
>art and literature
>hundreds of years
>hundreds

[Anonymous No.771205]

I hope that I can someday play this on its original hardware.

[Anonymous No.771215]

>>771181
>people of the future looking to Call of Duty as the birth of true video games
>mfw this might actually happen

[Anonymous No.771217]

>>771204
Alright, thousands of years. Did you get the gist of what I was implying?

[Anonymous No.771262]

>>769905

i take it you flunked

t: film grad

[Anonymous No.771289]

>>769905

Your name is Garret isn't it

[Anonymous No.771294]

>>771205
Good luck and godspeed.

[Anonymous No.771295]

>>771215
Not as long as we write the resources and maintain the truth.

[Anonymous No.772141]

>>770972
That's not what it says.

>In capitalist states:

>The way of the talent(ed)...

>In socialist states:

>Make way for the talents!

[Anonymous No.772238]

>>766845
These roms and isos are not perfectly emulated by most emulators. They do not behave exactly like they would on the original hardware. Only Byuu has been autistic enough to do this with SNES and he's working on NES, GB, and GBA. But N64 emulation, Xbox emulation and the like--especially more obscure systems like NEOGEO--are likely lost forever. By the time someone comes around who wants to do the autistic method to preserve them, it will be hard to find original hardware in working order to analyze minutely how the hardware behaves and emulate it exactly. The truth of how these games functioned will be forever lost to us in time.

[Anonymous No.772248]

>>769883
You're inaccurate there in that the middle market already dropped out. Maybe you're just discovering middle market games, but they are nothing compared to what they were in the 90s and early 00s. And no Max Payne 3 is not middle market--the damn thing cost over 100 million to make! And it was a commercial bomb! And no Kane and Lynch is not middle market! The company that produced it spent millions on advertising to GameSpot so they could fire Gurstman for giving them a bad review. Demon's Souls is the only true middle market game you named.

[Anonymous No.772254]

>>769883
>videogames
>art

[Anonymous No.772258]

>>772254
Are you strolling, or do you truly not consider video games an art form?

[Anonymous No.772260]

>>772254
Anything made by humans is art. Yes, those toilets and soup cans too.

[Anonymous No.772261]

>>770972
>not being able to read blatant propaganda.

You are literally more dense than the barely literate peasants those posters were designed for.

[Anonymous No.772273]

How many of you guys love byuu now? I didn't like him because his emu didn't have save states and he forced you to convert your shit before using it, but he seems to have taken a more reasonable approach in recent years, providing the accuracy we crave with the features we need.

[Anonymous No.772378]

Man, Japan was super bad about keeping works of it's games up until around the turn of the millenium, since back in the 80's and 90's it was common practice within the industry to get rid of all the source code of a project (Especially console-based games) after the game had shipped, so you could work "FRESH" without relying on tired old gimmicks, even if another game they would go on to develop would require the exact code to get some of their basic stuff up and running.

Thanks to that, tons of prototypes for things are outright lost, and it bums me the fuck out when I think of the prototype for what would have been Lufia 3, since that was around 80% done before the dev studio went bankrupt and taito took everything internal and ripped apart the assets and downsized everything to turn it into a GBA game (It was originally developed for the playstation) About 40% of an already unfinished game was removed and then shipped out, and that's the Ruins of Lore we all know today.
I want to hope there's a prototype for the PS1 version still out there somewhere, but that's maybe too much to hope for.

[Anonymous No.772393]

>>772378
>That feel when you will never know the development histories of some of the greatest games of all time and that any remnant of them is already gone.

[Anonymous No.772423]

>>772393
Another thing is for games that have multiple versions, since this is something partially discussed in another thread, like with games like Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen and Knights of Xentar, you have at LEAST 2 diffrent versions out there, one that is just a basic ass game and another with CD quality music and fully voiced scenes (And in xentar's case, with or without pornagraphic images)

The FUNNIEST case in this point is that the superior versions, the ones with all the extra shit included, tend to be the rarest versions of said game. Hell it's also almost impossible as of right now to even find the Non-pornagraphic fully voiced version of xentar on the internet. Things are still kinda fucked up.

[Anonymous No.772437]

>>772393
No one outside the developers of Chrono Trigger will ever know what the Zeal Dungeon was for.

[Anonymous No.772453]

>>772378
Oh sorry, I actually made a mistake in the name, it wasn't the GBA ruins of lore, it was the Gameboy color one that I forgot the name of at the moment. But yeah, just think about how much was taken apart/changed just to get it into that version from what it originally was suppose to be.

[Anonymous No.772459]

>>769894
>Video games aren't art, they're video games!

[Anonymous No.772468]

>>769894

It's hard to believe there's anyone on 4chan (outside of /fit/) that calls other users nerds. Talk aobut pot calling the kettle black

[Anonymous No.772471]

>>772453
Rather than nonsense video game "journalists" writing about brainless pop culture crap, there should be video game journalists who interview developers for famous games in depth and discuss the development process of a game. I know there are some magazines that do this like Retrogamer, but their features are usually rather shallow and often more about the developer (and his/her personal experiences while making the game; the generic LONG NIGHTS, OVERTIME, ETC ETC) than about the game itself.

[Anonymous No.772484]

>>769894
Video games are not inherently 'art', but they can be. Braid was the game that really tipped my opinion, although of course FIFA 95 isn't really a work of art.

[NESfag No.772490]

In my country video games are official art. This discussion is now over.

>On March 13, 2006, [Michel Ancel], along with Shigeru Miyamoto and Frédérick Raynal, were knighted by the French Minister of Culture and Communication, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, a knight of arts and literature. It was the first time that video game developers were honored with this distinction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Ancel

[Anonymous No.772494]

>>766825
games, music and film are all forms of media
games, music and film are all going down the shitter because of getting shittier and shittier remakes/remixes trying to appeal to lower class shitheads
games, music and film are all getting torrented and there are corporations out there lobbying laws to prosecute that, because muh profits

there's hardly any difference between any of them

[Anonymous No.772507]

Dont worry OP, theres a website called underground gamer that does a great job at preserving vidya.

[Anonymous No.772509]

>>772507
Stop it anon why are you so cruel ;_;

[Anonymous No.772518]

>>772507
That's not funny

[Anonymous No.772560]

>>769836
Idiot

[Anonymous No.772601]

>>772471
Hardcore Gaming 101, look it up.

[Anonymous No.772626]

>>766825
>But video games don't often see this kind of concerted effort.
Wrong, there's ROM archival. It's literally the closest thing we can do for video games to shelters for old films. And they're doing a pretty damn good job with trying to keep things going in the name of that.

I hate to steer the thread into shit, but BSNES, Nestopia, Gambatte, and Exodus do deserve a mention in this as the intention was to be as close to the actual system as possible without it being a physical system. Sooner or later, we'll be able to completely remake our consoles and games and play them as we should with this technology.

[Anonymous No.772627]

I am a collector too and this is my take on this matter:

I remember watching a report about an old man who collects really old view master discs, those were made in like 1920,and had various themes like parks, short comics etc; my reaction was "oh thats sort of interesting" i watched the report and that's all, i never felt like these things had a real value outside of collecting, and its not like i felt compelled to try one, even tough they are the grand grand fathers of home tv,

and so one day i found myself thinking that maybe this oldman could be me in the future, i would have a fine collection, but it would hold no real value outside of being in some sort of museum collectible, it doesn't represent the experience and i bet the people while they may find interesting to see these old stuff, will not really give a damn, so i could have all the attention and still be the only one who remembers or knows what having and experiencing these old videogames was like, because the world has moved on

tl, dr, Everything is worth nothing in the end

[Anonymous No.772642]

>>772627
Things are only worth what people are willing to pay for them

/thread

[Anonymous No.772641]

Death death death death doom doom doom doom

[Anonymous No.772648]

>>766876
It's terrible the things that nostalgia goggles can do to people's minds

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/swimming-champion-movie-star-esther-williams-dies-165304637.html

>these comments

Newsflash, morons. There were trash and sluts in like 1945, you just didn't know it.

[Anonymous No.772654]

>>772648
Eh, to be fair when some celebrity croaks, people always do this. "Hurp they dont make dem liek dat anymoar." It's almost as if they have a programmed automatic reflex to post comments like this.

[Anonymous No.772656]

>>772642
Capitalist logic

[Anonymous No.772651]

>>772627
Not to mention, you know. Disc rot.

[Anonymous No.772652]

>>772648
i feels more like these people just pretend they knew about her

[Anonymous No.772668]

>>772627
Your mom is worth nothing in the end

[Anonymous No.772679]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6AzUv3LXDc

lel

[Anonymous No.772681]

>>772668

[Anonymous No.772684]

Who cares.
Everything turns to dust eventually.

[Anonymous No.772690]

I believe E.T. for the 2600 should be preserved.

[Anonymous No.772693]

>>772679
"Like for example, you no doubt know about Princess Celestia being portrayed as a tyrant and God forbid, even a molester, and that Twilight and Rarity occasionally..."

"Ok this question is over!"

[Anonymous No.772702]

Fuck the games. Whats the point of having the binaries? It's like preserving a description of Hamlet, rather than preserving the play itself.
I say there should be a mandatory hand-over of design docs, media files and of course source code after a period of maybe 25 years to a dedicated archive.

[Anonymous No.772703]

I am a collector and restorer of classic motorcycles.
A lot were lossed, it is true and sad and makes things dificult, but people like me and you can change that for video games.
We are here now, we have the gaming collections, just protect and love them the best you can.
At the end of the day, as long as there is passion about something, even if it's only one man, that something can live on.

[Anonymous No.772704]

>>772679
>>772693
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH VIDEO GAMES!?

[Anonymous No.772706]

>>772702
>after a period of maybe 25 years
>before copyright has even come close to expiring
Yeah, right.
Cold, dead fingers, anon.

[Anonymous No.772714]

>>772703
Yeah...I know

[Anonymous No.772719]

This is what your grandfather fought on Guadalcanal for

[Anonymous No.772720]

>>772714
Personalities like him drive prices up even higher on rarities :(

[Anonymous No.772734]

>>772720
Now you see Jay's what they call an "enthusiast collector". These guys just love all cars. The other kind are nostalgia collectors, who are the fat 55 yo bald-headed clowns you see at Barrett-Jackson auctions that pay $40,000 for a 1967 Chevy because they lost their virginity in one. They don't actually like the car, just the memory they attach to it.

If you want to do that, it's your choice but you're not a real collector.

[Anonymous No.772735]

>>772651
That's not a real thing

inb4 link to the wikipedia article

[Anonymous No.772737]

>>772720
>using emoticons on an image board
Kill yourself

[Anonymous No.772739]

>>772735
Can you prove it's not real?

[Anonymous No.772746]

>>772739
No one can prove anything isn't real. The burden of proof lies on the claimant. Can you prove God's not real?

[Anonymous No.772748]

>>772706
I don't think the current views on copyright periods will hold up when generation yish comes to power. Might still take a while, though.
Still, e.g. libraries are archiving things without the need to hold the copyright. You could say we just preserve it until it becomes public domain. A trustee sort of thing.

[Anonymous No.772752]

>>772737
lol XD

[Anonymous No.772749]

>>772720
There are relatively few cars worth collecting. The three eras which stand out are:

*30s luxury makes
*50s fins-and-chrome shit
*60s muscle cars

The rest is basically filler

[Anonymous No.772750]

>>772734
I don't see where I implied anything like that.
I was just saying people like him make unknown brands more popular which as a result drives the prices up on those brands.
and yes those fat clowns also drive prices up too, and yes I hate those guys. But I was just pointing at Jay because he was the one bought up.

[Anonymous No.772751]

>>772746
Most people accept disc rot is real because there are various sources stating so.

YOU are the one claiming it's not real.

[Anonymous No.772754]

>>772748
They came about because of artists like Sonny Bono who feared living to see the copyright on their early works expire.

[Anonymous No.772762]

>>772748
I don't know that I agree. It's getting a bit off-topic, but the legal system isn't exactly set up for that kind of correction, and much of the younger generation is completely in the pocket of these companies, believing things about copyright and their own rights that are absolutely false and tolerating what protection they have being taken away.

[Anonymous No.772760]

>>772749
That's a nice opinion and all but I like cars and motorcycles from all eras. (leading up to about the 80s)

[Anonymous No.772761]

@772750

>I was just saying people like him make unknown brands more popular which as a result drives the prices up on those brands

Why...what specific brands was he driving the price of up?

[Anonymous No.772765]

>>772760
Cars after the mid-80s or so became unrepairable except by professionally-trained mechanics due to too much electronics. The days of working on an engine in your garage are long over.

[Anonymous No.772772]

>>772761
I wasn't blaming him specifically, you're taking my small quip way too seriously man.
It's just me wanting to get things cheap and the last decade or so prices have gone really high up as a result of classics becoming more popular, people like Jay Leno spread this popularity.
For example, I got a 1926 indian scout in the 1980s in... okay condition, for $200, now in the same condition one would fetch thousands.

[Anonymous No.772774]

>>772765
Among other factors that car culture is pretty nonexistent among people under 45

[Anonymous No.772778]

>>772772
>For example, I got a 1926 indian scout in the 1980s in... okay condition, for $200, now in the same condition one would fetch thousands
Which is slightly ironic because in the 80s, there were lots of old nostalgiafags around who would have paid $$$ for that whereas they've all crossed the River Styx by now

[Anonymous No.772784]

>>772765
That's almost true, you can still do quite a lot in your garage on your car... but it's just frustrating to do so. Manufacturers made it harder for some reason(assuming to make money from their own licensed mechanics) by making components hard to access and cramped, etc. But if you have hte patience you can still do a lot with a car in your garage.

[Anonymous No.772785]

>>772774
Car culture? Is this like cis-culture?

[Anonymous No.772804]

>>772762
>the legal system isn't exactly set up for that kind of correction

I don't believe there would be a legal system, wich deserves the name, where it isn't possible to introduce less strict terms again. Even in heavily lobbied ones, such as Washington or Brussels for that matter.

[Anonymous No.772821]

>>772774
I hope when that generation dies their families sell all their good shit off and flood the market making it all worthless so I can buy it up.

[Anonymous No.772875]

Fuck you. Old games will survive forever. Their physical copies and consoles won't. That's how thing works, and there is nothing wrong with it and you can't prove me wrong. Deal with it.

[Anonymous No.773021]

>>772821
That's what you think

>my uncle is in college (early 80s)
>he really wants a 30s Ford hot rod
>but nostalgiafag WWII vets have driven the prices to where they were unobtainium
>he figures "Oh well I'll just get one when all those guys have keeled over."
>30 years late
>he still doesn't have a 30s Ford due to hot rodders driving the prices up

[Anonymous No.773049]

>>772627
Your mom is worth nothing in the end

[Anonymous No.773762]

>>772751
There are various sources stating God is real too. Disc rot is just an excuse for people taking poor case of their possessions. "I left my Saturn games in cheap sleeves in the basement and now they don't work? Musta been disc rot. Couldn't have been helped.

[Anonymous No.773787]

>>766825
I will always keep the legacy. I already have every game ever released on the 16bit consoles on my hard drive, as well as the best emulators available. I will also keep up with the times and keep those games playable.

You can count on the fact that there are several other people who do this. Our old vidya will never die, as long as we keep our vigil.

[Anonymous No.773829]

>>772875
>Old games will survive forever.
>you can't prove me wrong

The sun will eventually die, but before it does it will engulf the Earth. At that point in time all life on Earth will have been dead for thousands of years. Even if humanity migrated to another planet, another solar system, another galaxy, it wouldn't matter. All stars in the universe will eventually die and there will be no suitable matter with which to make new stars.

Preserving something "forever" is a fool's errand and an impossibility.

[Anonymous No.773843]

>>773829
Energie kann weder erstellt noch vernichtet werden, nur dann geändert in eine andere Form. Eines Tages das Universum auf sich selbst zusammenbrechen und herzustellen eine andere Grosse Knall.

[Anonymous No.773860]

>>773843
Say it in English, Hans

[Anonymous No.773931]

>>773860
It's Newton's first law of thermodynamics. You shouldn't need to know German to recognize it.

[Anonymous No.774249]

>>773762
I don't know about CD's, but disc rot is a very real thing for floppies. And no its not just a
>"Oh this disc appears to no longer have the data I stored on it a decade ago"
its more of a
>"Oh shit, what the fuck is up with this disc? There's crap growing inside of it, what the hell!"
Not only can things like mold damage floppies (and I would assume CD's too), but they can warp due to heat, shrink if it's too cold, crack, separate, demagnetize, even leaving them on an uneven surface will cause them to bend over time.

So yes, without proper care and maintenance, all CD's will eventually no longer work.

[Anonymous No.774323]

>>774249
Without proper care and maintenance everything will cease to work. That doesn't mean you might as well toss your treasured game collection because it's going to be worthless in just a few more years no matter what you do. My laserdiscs are all just fine and they're way older than any Saturn game that is supposedly rotting away right now.

[Anonymous No.774354]

you can download a full nes romset in about 2 minutes from several places on the internet. retro games aren't going anywhere.

[Anonymous No.775168]

>>774323
You do realize the only "confirmed" cases of actual Disc rot are very early CDs, right?

Disc rot takes over 30 years to start being noticeable on well kept discs.

[Anonymous No.775189]

>>775168
>mfw I have quite a few Discovision discs that are just fine
>mfw everybody likes to bring up a phenomenon that supposedly has only been "confirmed" on discs that represent a minescule fraction of discs.
>mfw I have no face

[Anonymous No.775204]

>>775189
You seriously sound like someone who is in denial just because it's never happened to you.

[Anonymous No.775207]

>>775204
If it's unavoidable then it should be happening to all discs that are so old right? Plus I have a fairly extensive collection.

[Anonymous No.775208]

http://retroconsoles.wikia.com/wiki/Retro_Consoles_Wiki

Pls

[Anonymous No.775214]

Let's get ourselves a couple of sealed CRT TVs, sealed consoles, and sealed copies of our favorite games, and store them in our temperature and humidity controlled underground nuclear bunkers.

>mfw I actually wish someone did this on a large scale

[Anonymous No.775231]

>>775214
I read 7 Seeds last month so I think about stuff like this too.

[Anonymous No.775297]

If the Singularity ever happens, computers will figure out, on their own, how to write emulators for themselves to run old software at the owner's request.

[Anonymous No.775798]

>>775207
Yes, it's inevitable, it's why it's been said before that books actually last longer than digital media.

You really sound like an obnoxious cunt who is being stubborn about how ignorant he is. I suggest you shut up about things you clearly have no clue about.

[Anonymous No.776241]

>>772490
>knighting people for anything but their skills at chopping off heads

disgusting

[Anonymous No.776276]

>>772735
>chemical reactions are not a real thing