Are Retro Video Games Disappearing?! 

Your click bait title made me celebrate retro games crashing prematurely, if you wondered how people react to manipulation, I don't have the ability to look at that as my fault, since it's your influence and not mine.

Oh we have sociopaths in our family, thats basically the way everyone reacts to manipulation, it's only the manipulators fault, regardless of the damage caused

I can't speak from the console side but from the Windows side? We need better Win 3.x/Win9X/WinXP emulation which is not going to be easy. a TON of games used hacks back in the 3.1/9x days like using the PC clock for event timers and the early DirectX was a buggy mess so trying to get games even from the 00s to work correctly on a modern 64 bit OS can be tricky as hell.

Damn as always Ian is right and Pam has no idea what he's talking about

sociopaths and narcissists are the people they're trying to catch on first 48, my sisters dads a sociopath and he destroyed our family for fun

VHS cassettes were at one point in the early 90’s considered obsolete due to the arrival of the cd but those cassettes are also very important too.

@@cherokeefit4248 There are some direct to video horror B-movies that never made it to DVD or Blu-Ray so, I agree that preserving these movies in there original format and backing it up on a digital format will preserve them. There are way too many movies from the silent era that have boon lost to time, because they were not backed up and preserved.

@@robertbussie9979 I see that those B series horror movies that never made it to theatre or dvd have gone up in value. Due to the rarity of it that people now inspect the fast forward/ rewind cogs to verify its authenticity lol

Under the DMCA, it is legal to pirate games for archive purposes if they are no longer commercially available... so if you want to use government resources to do some mass piracy with me... I will help you on your journey. I will teach you how to use emulators.... I am a computer scientist. I have been doing this for a minute BECAUSE OF this.

@@robertbussie9979May I learn from you??? I have searched the earth for a Master, I sit here in front of u… teach me Master teach me

Yes I agree with you! I also think that copyright on *specific works* should expire within a reasonable time frame that varies based on the type of media. Like the original NES release Super Mario Bros. would become legal to share as a ROM, but Nintendo would retain the rights to be the only entity to sell the work, as well as any characters and trademarks, etc. Also any ports or official emulation projects like Virtual Console or NSO would be their own specific works with their own copyright period. So sharing the NES ROM would be ok in this hypothetical world, but sharing the Wii VC .wad file wouldn't, if that makes sense.

There are tons of lost computer games, not just “PC”.

When I was a kid, probably 1991 or 1992, my Dad had a clunky black and white laptop (IBM maybe?) for his job at Prudential and besides some of the obvious ones like Duke Nukem and Commander Keen, I used to play a few that I think might be totally lost. I used to have a game called Zetris where the pieces moved from the bottom to the top. There was also a 1st person shooter (kind of like Operation Wolf style) where you were a tank shooting at giant spiders

Castle of the Winds baby. Great damn game I swear I thought was a dream. There were incredible obscure computer games.

No way can you go see it?

@philltendo1480 Everyone can see it. You might need to do more than that to check things out, but it is a library. I had a standing offer to check items out if they pertained to any subject I was studying at the time, and I'm not anyone special. If you have even the most remote academic interest in gaming history, the University of Arizona video game repository will very likely give you access to their collection.

"I'll always support people" but not financially so I'm really just filling the air with noise and pretending that it's support. "Games should be available but I'm happy and comfortable with never paying for them."

It’s only piracy if you pay someone not legally entitled as the copyright holder or if you make someone pay you for something you don’t actually own. Playing downloaded ROMs for free or reselling is in a grey area but is not piracy.

Dan, I'd buy ROMs if publishers sold them but they don't.

People are also recompiling leaks of source code from 5th gen games to make them compatible on modern systems. There's already a few N64 leaks and I just found out that the classic WipEout for PS1 has been open sourced and ported to Windows, Linux and web browser.

@@ccricers I believe WipeOut had a PC release way back in the day and people used that to make the open source windows port.

It is a job.

​@@D-Fens_1632not all jobs have to suck though

Idk if it will ever crash again

As a child who grew up in poverty and homelessness the library is how I kept myself sane. I would watch DVD VHS and surf the Internet and everything felt ok. If video games were there I wouldn't of wasted time playing shockwave games or roms with a keyboard. That is literally something that can change a childs life

I still remember the day that I stopped by my local library, and they were checking out some disc-based games. Then I went to Blockbusters, and they were desperate enough to be selling books.

Completely agree. Yeah we got it Pat the first, time. I agree with him on the controller side, but that's what retro museums do to scratch that itch. Also, these things have a nostalgia window, you mentioned the Spectrum; that's not in your window; but it is in mine; and not in my nephews.

Big Big Gang

Yeah… Ian’s point was pretty straight forward but Pat couldn’t get past the point of view of “himself”.

@@leeartlee915 Pat has an issue anytime this topic comes up. Last time he said, "Well should companies keep these around forever? That's not a good business decision" When selling roms on a site like Direct2Drive wouldn't cost the companies anything. He seems to refuse to understand the idea that preservation is having issues and that companies are doing an awful job of keeping games available.

For research, even the controller might be totally irrelevant. If the researcher is studying level design, enemy behavior, art styles, character depictions, etc, the control method is not always as important. I’d say that for the majority it will be less important. Just like a film scholar doesn’t need to watch a silent movie in a gas-lit theater with a piano accompaniment.

Mobile devices simply make old video games disappear? Not sure I follow.

The culprit is mobile devices? Console/PC games are not disappearing because of mobile devices, I think that’s a separate issue, but mobile games are even worse for availability with the vast number of phones, new phones released every year, and OS updates

@@TheRealCaptainFreedom No, no. I mean that games made FOR mobile platforms are disappearing. Like games for old flip phones or games that worked on iOS 32-bit. Granted, a lot of those games are kinda trash but game preservation isn’t just about good games. It’s about all games.

@@PatrickThomasBrady Yeah, you got it. Example: there were multiple versions of Resident Evil 4 (For Mobile) that are just gone unless you have it still downloaded on an old phone that works. And emulation for mobile phones is kinda tricky because they’re just so many of them. And that version of RE4 is VERY different than the one originally released on console (i.e. it’s bad… really bad). But that’s the thing, a lot of people don’t seem to notice/care because so many of those games are kinda trash. But I’m of the mindset that ALL games need to be preserved. Even the bad ones. Maybe especially the bad ones. It really incapsulates where society was at a point in time.

@@leeartlee915 I’m with ya, it sucks because so many mobile games are probably gone forever and we’ll be able to preserve only so many as long as people having working cell phones that haven’t deleted them, that’s why I think emulation is so important, preservation just naturally happens My reasoning for separating mobile game from console/pc is in a legal sense, the point on this study is provide evidence for why it’s necessary if a video game company attempts to challenge it in court, and the IP/copyright laws could be interpreted differently between the two, the focus should be on traditional games first and then mobile games

I could see someone else doing that and then Tommy claiming that he did the whole thing

Don't forget Todd Rogers having documented world records on all of them the moment they're listed.

Right!? Its on the launch pad just need some extra money you know

Silly Bitchell?

Lol. With world record high scores built in

IT's basically like claiming that every author from 100 years ago has to have relevance in the year 2023 to kids born 6 years ago. That is not how things work, sure big name authors from that era still get recognition but hundreds were lost to time.

@@monopoman Yes, this is exactly it. Kids WILL NOT care about random authors from 100 years ago. Kids WILL remember a J.R.R Tolkien or a William Shakespeare due to how prominent their works were. This is the narrow lens by which we remember history... only "the greats". It's just how we work as humans. However, we live in a time NOW where we can go a step further and record our current history in high quality video, audio & digital format, something people didn't have 50 or 100 years ago. Games can also live on via various emulation efforts.

You’re right, the context should be preserved, too. It’s so important to a proper understanding.

Id say - I agree they wont care about the physical media - but Pat is correct that that completely changes the experience as well. Ill go a step farther -- kids wont care about these games at all! Zero. ....05% maybe. Give them emulation access or not. Not only is my 7 and and 15 year old niece and nephew completely not interested in "retro games". I got them Switch Online to get access to the old libraries and she reported they played about 15 minutes and dont need it again. But I picked up the Atari 50th - boy it was a great documentary, id buy another about another company -- but i played about 30 seconds of each game. Some I have nostalgia for, some i never saw. but i didn't want to go back and I'm a 42 year old with a large bookshelf of old games (which I dont touch). Kids will not want NES games in 20 years. Period. No debate. You do say you see it as" 5% doing research and study" and I think thats correct, but thats not what these two are saying. They are equating 100% availability to some sort of gaming renascence or revival. So historical preservation like the Atari 50th -- 100% awesome. Preservation is one thing. Just making the games be around so that kids will love them again in 20 years, meh, I dont see it.

Yes, but most kids are buying digital which as you said will eventually become retro. Meaning, years from now those same people that were kids are not going to look for "the physicals" of what they grew up with in 2023. They will be finding a computer to stream or download them of whatever else.

Just because one person has all their retro games does not mean everyone else will in the future or now in some cases.

​@LittleBigKid707b but this is about the games being available in any form. So it actually includes digital already.

I feel like retro is a word that needs to be adjusted in our lexicon, because it’s imprecise and misused.

Vinyl might have. But many other media formats are still basically dead. 8-track? Laserdisc? Minidisc? Betamax? VHS? The list goes on and on.

Also licensed games. Not all of those are loved either.

I also see inferior ports being more rare for a re-release. Why play the gameboy version of Pac-man when you can play the arcade version on virtually any modern system.

@@DiceRobo Totally. Even good games like Link's Awakening. Why play the original GB release when you can just as easy play the color or Switch remake.

Haha yep

Didn’t you just describe steam?

Not just that but there's tons of middle of the road games that most folks won't care about even collecting just to stick on a shelf, like the countless yearly sports games or videogames based on board game and other pre-existing properties. What kid nowadays is going to seek out the NES version of Othello?

This is why the industry whining about research libraries is so fake. There will be future generations of researchers that this access matters to - the general population will have other diversions.

It's all relative to age. People in their 30 and 40s that are retro gamers like myself, will continue to enjoy their retro physicals. However, the vast majority of people in their 20s and younger couldn't care less for this stuff. It's just people in our age group. Once we stop and/or eventually pass on, nobody is going to care about this stuff. Gramophones were very collectible in the 50s and 60's. Selling for a lot of money. Now they go for pennies on the dollar.

Eventually more and then eventually less

Streaming is failing major studios right now, they would've loved to have kept selling retailers and consumers films individually like the old days. Physical media is making a huge comeback in the music market right now.

@@Clay3613 as it has for the last 10 years. But it’s nowhere near what it once was.

But that's not what this is about, it's not about making people interested it's making sure they are available for people who ARE interested.

@@trailersic Hardcore is pretty big in the Bay area right now. A lot of bands embracing the old sounds and creating a lot of buzz again

Eventually all these consoles won't work anymore, and there will be no spare parts either. But preserving the entire library in digital form that is easily accessible will be important. Emulators can be created and refined to run how the original hardware does. Can always create a new control input that feels exactly how it would have otherwise. But there's still games lost to history, same as books. Who knows how many games for DOS or other older computer systems aren't available, the small games created by 1 person and perhaps distributed locally. But there will always be those 1 out of a 1000, or 10,000, or even 1,000,000 whose interest are peaked with something historical and wish to experience it as best they can, and for those they need to be able to access the archive that hopefully will be created.

True. But that’s the nature of “experiences” to begin with. I’m sure there might be a theater somewhere playing silent movies silently with an organ player playing along with the projected film (in fact, I believe the Tampa Theater might do that on occasion). And that’s cool, just I’d argue a greater proportion of the Earth’s resources should be put toward preserving the Earth itself and inhabitants (i.e. animals) before things like video games even enter the picture. That’s literally the piece about being “human” that many don’t grasp. We all die. We decay, we fade away. It’s literally a law of the universe - what we consider reality itself is expanding outside itself right now, and will someday contract taking literally everything with it. Which is essentially the theory held about reality and how it’s composed. If we’re going to argue that every original piece of hardware should be preserved, along with every component to such said hardware, you’re arguing for things outside reality. You have “Athiest” in your handle. Even the Gods die.

noting if I was going to talk about gaming and games preservation i would start from the 1st available console to the failure points of each console including life improvements of each console and the rest then talk in how to preserve it assuming you find something to preserve it on..

I could totally see that. Rush now to get your stuff graded guys! Pfft suckas.

Could also be lack of demand... they aren't selling as well as they were due to those high asking prices & waning interest in old physical media. More & more ppl are emulating or using FPGA solutions these days. Collecting retro games is slowly becoming more niche again. Prices are going to slowly drop due to this imo.

@@skins4thewin Wish they would. I been to a few video game cons and they were both packed. So the demand is there. Definitely a generational thing though. I was going for turbografx and sega cd stuff. Everyone else seemed locked on to gamecube and around that time period.

I totally agree and only have held on to my full collections of my Dreamcast and Ps1 games and if I could sell a valuable game that Iccan play elsewhere or emulate I definitely would sell it for the right price nowadays

What are you babbling about? You're making a flawed report into a conspiracy as if the VGHF is in cahoots with Heritage.

DIgital way? For most but not for every old game there is. How can you make a emulator if you can't get the original game itself? That's the question right here.