MIT Says Our Video Game Heritage Is Rotting Away in an Attic
by Stephen Kelley, posted on 28 July 2010 / 786 Views
Many of you have heard of film preservation societies and companies tasked at keeping the artistic medium of film from being truly forgotten, but have you heard of one that specializes in video games? The answer is probably “no” as video game developers have made it nigh impossible for such things to exist. We have entered an age where, in most cases, the only legal way to look back at a decades old video game is to hope your dusty old console still runs. If it stops, that’s a shame, no Neo Geo for you.
In an MIT article 'Mim’s Bits', Chjristopher Mim outlines the problems faced by would be curators of such a preservation house:
“Their work revealed that only video recordings of gameplay captured from original hardware satisfactorily preserved the look and feel of most vintage systems and games, with the major drawback that such recordings completely eliminated interactivity.
To preserve the playability of the games--so that they might be available in a future "museum of gaming," such as the UK's Games Lounge--the curators turned to emulation of original game hardware. In this strategy, code extracted from game cartridges and disks can be used on virtual machines running on contemporary hardware.”
As you all know, emulation is a gray area that game companies try to thwart at any cost. The rest of the article is a good read, please check it out.
