Keeping the classics alive: how archivists are preserving video game history

The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has launched a digital library with more than 30,000 files of “industry ephemera” from the VGHF’s physical collection. The library, which is launching in early access, includes things like “more than 1,500 full-text searchable out-of-print video game magazines, never-before-seen game development assets, artwork, promotional materials, and more gaming relics,” according to a press release.

In a blog post, the VGHF highlights things like documents from retired video game producer Mark Flitman, production materials from Myst developers Cyan, digitized CDs of press assets received by GamePro, and a collection of FromSoftware promotional materials. (Note that some of the links may not work; as I’ve been writing this story, the links have occasionally been broken.)

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A survival horror classic is getting a new life on PC — and it might be the first of many. PC games shop GOG announced the release of Dino Crisis and its sequel, which are both available starting today. Alongside the launch, the service also announced a new tool called “dreamlist,” with the goal of letting players vote on which old games that want to see hit the service next.

For the uninitiated, Dino Crisis is essentially Resident Evil with dinosaurs. That’s not an insult: the first game was directed by original Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami, so the two series have a lot in common. Dino Crisis features the same methodical, survival horror gameplay but with faster (and occasionally much bigger) enemies to contend with. GOG says the new port supports Windows 10 / 11 and includes updates like support for “~4K resolution” and modern gamepads. The two games can be purchased individually on GOG or as a bundle.

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PC game platform GOG has launched a new preservation program dedicated to keeping beloved older games playable, “now and in the future.”

“If a game is part of the Preservation Program, it means that we commit our own resources to maintaining its compatibility with modern and future systems,” the announcement blog reads.

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When video game scholars want to study games that are no longer on sale, they sometimes have to drive many hours to do it legally — and that won’t be changing anytime soon. The US Copyright Office has just denied a request from video game preservationists to let libraries, archives and museums temporarily lend individuals some virtual, remotely accessible copies of those works.

Kendra Albert, who made the argument on behalf of the Software Preservation Network and the Library Copyright Alliance, says preservationists weren’t asking for a lot: “It was the thing that basically exists for all kinds of special collections in libraries: the library reviews the request, makes sure it’s not harmful, and allows access to the work.”

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February 29th was the last day of service for Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, a mobile game based on Square Enix’s Final Fantasy fighting game series. Since launching in the US in 2018, the game has amassed over 170 characters from across 30 years of Final Fantasy history, scattered throughout four acts composed of multiple chapters and side stories representing hundreds of hours of a game that can no longer be played. Though Opera Omnia is officially gone, one person has shouldered the task to ensure the game hasn’t completely disappeared.

“On June 6th 2021 I began to work towards my goal of recording and rendering every Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia cutscene and upload[ing] them to YouTube,” wrote Hatok, a video editor and self-described video game enthusiast. “And now, 7 hours from the end of service, I’ve reached the end of this massive project.”

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In less than a week, Sony has given us two timely reminders of the tenuousness of digital “ownership” — and both reminders involve things on PlayStation.

Last week, Sony said that, because of content licensing “arrangements,” users wouldn’t be able to watch Discovery content they’ve purchased and that the content would be removed from their libraries as of December 31st, 2023. The resulting list of shows that will suddenly disappear because of corporate agreements is very long. Shows disappearing from streaming services is commonplace, but in this case, people are losing access to shows they bought to watch on demand whenever they wanted.

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When I ask Frank Cifaldi, the founder and director of the Video Game History Foundation, to explain the importance of preserving and maintaining old video games, he answers with a movie analogy. Imagine, he said, “if movies were only released on, like, VHS, ever. You want to watch Back to the Future? All right, you have to go on eBay, and you have to find an antique VHS copy that’s degraded a bit from use. You have to find a VCR that works, a TV that it plugs into — or the external scalers that make it look correct on your modern TV — and you might need a time-base corrector because the magnetic flux signal is out of sync.”

For too many games, this is the state of the industry. For the most part, decades’ worth of games now exist only in their original form: on a disk or cartridge that goes into a console nobody has anymore. Many of those games are going to be hard for players to ever find again — and if we don’t do anything to save them, they might disappear altogether.

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Atari is acquiring Digital Eclipse, a studio that specializes in preserving and rereleasing retro games on modern hardware. The releases are often rich in additional materials and historical content. Think the Criterion Collection but for video games. In a press release, Atari says it’s paying up to $20 million for the studio, including an initial $6.5 million paid in a combination of cash and shares and a further $13.5 million, which is due to be paid in cash over the next decade subject to Digital Eclipse’s performance. It expects to complete the deal in the coming days.

The two companies previously worked together on last year’s excellent Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, which included ports of over 90 classic games as well as unreleased prototypes and neat extras like short documentaries and old photos and magazine articles. But Digital Eclipse has also produced a number of other well-received rereleases of classic games including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection and the interactive documentary The Making of Karateka.

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“Sega had their own console?”

That was a devastating comment I heard as I sat playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on a Sega Genesis Mini at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo (PRGE) this weekend. The Sonic games on Genesis were my favorites as a kid; one time, I played so much Sonic that I peed my pants. How could this person not know about Sega consoles?

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Fresh off the launch of The Making of Karateka, retro game studio Digital Eclipse has announced a remaster of the original action RPG title Wizardry. Even better — it’s out now in early access on both Steam and GOG.

First released in 1981 and developed by Sir-Tech Software, the first Wizardry — or Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, to give it its very long full title — was a first-person, party-based, D&D-inspired RPG that proved incredibly influential and kicked off a long-running franchise. Here’s the official description for the uninitiated:

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The first game you play in The Making of Karateka, a release about the making of the cinematic action game Karateka, is an Asteroids clone. It may seem strange, but the attempt at recreating Asteroids was a seminal moment for Karateka creator Jordan Mechner, a humble beginning for a designer who would go on to create some of the most influential action games ever made, including Prince of Persia. The clone appears early on during a long, winding, and interactive timeline, which takes you through Mechner’s early days of experimentation before getting into how Karateka was developed and released.

For studio Digital Eclipse, the team behind the interactive documentary, it’s another attempt at telling the story of classic games in a way that’s completely native to the medium. As classic games become increasingly endangered, this approach is an important tool for keeping them alive. “I think it’s the best way to tell these stories,” says Digital Eclipse president Mike Mika. “If you’re going to tell the story of an interactive experience, it better be interactive.”

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With advancing console generations and the slow demise of both backward compatibility and digital game storefronts, the ability to play older games has always been tough. Through a new study from the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) and the Software Preservation Network, we now have a better understanding of just how difficult accessing older games really is.

“87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered,” wrote Kelsey Lewin, co-director of the Video Game History Foundation.

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One of the biggest challenges in video game preservation is figuring out how to actually present old games. In 2022, there are more ways than ever to play the classics, whether it’s mini consoles, updated hardware, subscription services, retro collections, or modern rereleases. While these can make old games playable to new audiences, they aren’t always able to put them in a proper context — which is especially important for really old games like, say, Adventure on the Atari 2600.

But an expansive new release, made by Digital Eclipse to celebrate Atari’s 50th anniversary, is the best attempt at a retro collection I’ve ever experienced. It’s available on just about every console out there right now as well as the PC, letting me put my PS5 to use for its intended purpose: playing Asteroids. The collection is huge, detailed, and does an amazing job of explaining why these games are so important.

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When Frank Cifaldi, founder and co-director at the Video Game History Foundation, finds an unreleased original NES game on eBay, it’s cause for celebration. Unearthing never-before-published games is his “research kink,” and according to him, such discoveries only happen “once every five years.” Yesterday, he found two.

One game, Battlefields of Napoleon, got so far along in its development process that it has finalized box art, but the game never saw the light of a retail store. The other game is even rarer. It’s a demo for the infamous Power Glove developed by Rare (yes, apparently that Rare) and is one of only five known games for the peripheral in existence (if you count the two games Nintendo announced but never released). Cifaldi is now working to raise funds to win both auctions so these never-before-seen pieces of video game history can be preserved and their contents shared with the public.

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Dragalia Lost launched in 2018 as a statement of intent from Nintendo in partnership with Japanese developer Cygames. Nintendo may have first jumped into the field of mobile games in 2016 with the launch of games like Super Mario Run and Miitomo, but this was the first original property the company had produced exclusively for mobile devices. This free-to-play gacha game (a game whose content is generally free to access while charging microtransactions for loot boxes and randomized lotteries for rare and limited-time characters) had a flashy multi-region launch campaign collaborating with major Japanese musician DAOKO, banking on the game’s success at home and abroad.

And it was a hit. Less than a year after launch, the game had already earned over $100 million, with a steady stream of merchandise following soon after. Yet, as of last month, Nintendo and Cygames published the game’s final update, and this week, it was revealed that the game would shut down on November 29th after just three years of operation.

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