Why preserving video game history matters
Thousands of works of art could be lost if we don’t help
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The year is 1958, spooky season is in full swing and a Physicist, William Higinbotham is hard at work on a new kind of entertainment, a simplistic digital tennis game. What is widely believed to be the very first video game. Fast forward 65 years and I doubt that Mr. Higinbotham could have foreseen how massive gaming has become. Over the last 65 years nearly 5 million games have been released taking us to unimaginable worlds. Italian plumbers fighting massive apes, squirrels with guns, racing the fastest cars and battling the deepest eagles. Connecting with characters on their journeys. Unforgettable adventures each sculpted to be a work of art in it’s own right. And art is worth preserving right? So why is it that 87% of games released before 2010 just aren’t commercially available? I’m Andrew Hamilton from Hardwired and that’s what we’re going to dive into today.
According to a recent study conducted by the Video Game History Foundation and Software Preservation Network, a staggering 87% of games released before 2010 are simply unavailable through normal means. Only 13% of these games are still accessible, either through re-releases on active platforms or via the use of emulators. This means that most of gaming history is slowly being lost and more over that newer generations may not even have the option to learn about so many great titles. I spoke last month about how gaming is one of the most unique mediums out there, and with that comes so very unique problems. Early game development was a wild west frontier of loose contracts, companies flaring up then flaming out of existence and a never-ending need to one up the competitor leading to some questionable designs. Titles released prior to 1990 have a re-issue rate of only 3%, and you can bet on it just being the big hitters. Yes, Mario games have been preserved but what about Glover 3D or Clay fighter, scratch that let’s look at games as recently as the PS3 console, a console so notoriously difficult to develop that even Sony doesn’t fully understand it. Even emulation is not exact for these things. So, how did we get here? Typically, media is maintained through the commercial market, take for instance movies, every new format brings with it re-releases of older movies, the most recent being 4k upscale or restored movies. Even if you can’t find a movie like, let’s say Quest for Camelot, physically you can usually find it somewhere digitally. But the video game industry has done a pretty terrible job keeping it’s own history alive commercially. Publishers simply don’t want to spend the resources preserving what’s come before when they are constantly rushing headlong into the future. Resales of games come with it’s own set of baggage but eventually those old copies will get worn down after being purchased and played and purchased and played.
So video game history is dying. What do we do about it? Well, the Video Game History Foundation says the best thing we can do is start thinking ahead, particularly on the governments of the worlds side, to work with game companies to provide an effective infrastructure to preserve video game history. Emulation tools being expanded and even supported by game publishers would also help. Yes, places like Limited Run Games are re-releasing master pieces like GEX but these are few and far between If the publishers aren’t going to re-release these games the least they could is properly save them. So go online, and check out the links on this article over KWTX.com/entertainment/hardwired to see what you can do to help preserve this important body of art. Developers poor hundreds of thousands of hours of work into these games, let’s not let it be forgotten. And while we’re not forgetting things don’t forget to subscribe to Hardwired on YouTube. Special shoutout to this weeks sponsor, Bell County Comic-con, coming August 5th and 6th to the bell county expo center in Belton, tons of great guest will be there and I will be there emceeing the celebrity Q&A. Link in the description. Until Next time I’m Andrew Hamilton
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