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UK Opens National Video Game Archive
BBC News reports that the UK is acknowledging video games as a "key component of modern culture" by opening the National Videogame Archive inside the National Media Museum.
"'The National Videogame Archive is an important resource for preserving elements of our national cultural heritage,' said Dr Newman. 'It's not just about cartridges and consoles, it's also about video game culture, the ways in which people actually play them. Unlike film and music, it's very difficult to walk into a retail store and walk out with a bunch of games from the 1970's,' said Dr Newman. He feels that games should be archived in the same way that music, books and film are preserved, as we often use them as markers in our culture and history."
There's a similar archive at the University of Texas at Austin. What games would you put on display?
So how do we archive all of the fantastic hardware that the likes of Sega and Atari produced? What about pinball games and crane sandboxes? What about the machines that would cast a souvenir for you out of plastic on the spot? There is a lot of gaming history that is sadly endangered.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
"What games would you put on display? "
Getting First post on Slashdot. :)
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
No "Mega Man 2" tag yet? =P
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
Pretty much every variant of every game made in the past two decades is neatly archived on various sites. They are easy to find, you just have to look.
Why not put all of them in storage, and have a computer to browse it displaying the most popular ones by default? Let people play them. Record their games and put up some good past recordings on a few big screens for others to see.
Well archiving ROMS and disk images for emulation would be all fine and dandy if COPYRIGHT DIDN'T STILL EXIST on most of it.
We had this discussion in regards to the Digital Dark ages not so long ago. Copyright needs a massive overhaul in order to preserve most of this gaming history, and bring it out of it's current legal grey area. ..otherwise all these obscure Commodore 64 tape games will never see the light of day.
What about games crippled with DRM? Will they "die" ?
Manic Miner / Jet Set Willy : Disturbingly Addictive
Elite : 3D in 32Kb
Sabre Wulf : First (I think) forced-perspective 3d
Daley Thomson's Decathlon - for single-handedly killing more Z and X keys than anything else on the market. Ever.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
...is M.U.L.E. This game was a true landmark.
Daikatana.
Why? So future generations may know how exactly not to create a game.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I have no clever point to make. I just think it's a good idea.
And Duke Nukem Forever!
Elite on the Commodore 64 ..
that was f**ng awesome
He feels that games should be archived in the same way that music, books and film are preserved, as we often use them as markers in our culture and history.
This only applies to the destructive elements of games (packaging, artwork, instruction manuals, etc), and the actual computer or console hardware the games are run on. However, the whole 'stick videogames in museums' mentality this projects reeks of reflects a much greater ignorance of the preservation of software in general. What we really need in order to 'preserve' video game culture is not some expensive museum space full of trite screenshots of software still under copyright that nobody is legally allowed to play themselves, but we need a relaxation of copyright and a strengthening of fair use so that old cultural artifacts that are no longer profitable and would otherwise be forgotten are defaulted to the public domain. Then the 'preservation' and archiving would happen on their own for free by people who still love the old games and enjoy taking part in the preservation of a culture they were a part of. Just look at projects like MAME and the massive ROM archives collections that are passed around the Internet underground and continue to exist despite all of the legal obstacles.
Where are my mod points when I need them.
Good old Games is actually a sort of museum for games. For a entry fee of $6 to $10 per title you can re-experience some of the (PC) classics on current systems (running WinXP or Vista.
Just having a digital copy of the software is sadly not enough, you need to be able to run it. DosBox helps a lot, and in some cases virtualization software can also help. But there are still quite some things very difficult like the games that used 3Dfx (or games that rely on an older version of DirectX, specially the versions prior to 7 are very incompatible).
So it's not just legal problems, but it wold help a lot of the "abandonware" concept could have some legal backing. Because technical problems are easier to solve when more people can help, instead of just the few that were lucky enough to buy a copy of the game.
Back to the Future 2 & 3 for NES. Best game ever.
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It belongs in a museum
He feels that games should be archived in the same way that music, books and film are preserved
Let's hope he changes his mind. Today's music, books and film are archived in proprietary formats, often requiring proprietary for-profit DRM services and software to access, legal (copyright) restrictions on making backup copies; and in the case of movies and TV shows the original films are often changed to suit the fad of the current day while the original copies sit literally rotting in storage. Books are often stolen or vandalized in libraries (including more restrictive academic libraries), and many are just banned and even burned because of PTA (think-of-the-children) activism.
Once knowledge becomes commercialized and given moral value then archivism will deal more with political science rather than library science.
What we really need in order to 'preserve' video game culture is not some expensive museum space full of trite screenshots of software still under copyright that nobody is legally allowed to play themselves, but we need a relaxation of copyright and a strengthening of fair use so that old cultural artifacts that are no longer profitable and would otherwise be forgotten are defaulted to the public domain.
You're right about copyright etc but there's more to a museum than just displaying old stuff. The curators have an important job of putting everything in context, finding the really interesting stuff and giving it prominence, and providing the historical and cultural background behind each gaming milestone. And make it interesting for old gamers and people who aren't old gamers.
So I would expect the museum to show me stuff I'd never think of looking for on my own, to talk about who made the games, who was playing them, where they were played etc, and to help my kids to understand more about how I grew up.
Which gibbering simpleton tagged this UK-based story yourtaxDOLLARSatwork?
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
But there are still quite some things very difficult like the games that used 3Dfx
I thought that Glide wrappers were available from multiple projects, and several work quite well. I can't say personally since I haven't used one, but I have seen them being used on an older game and it seemed to work just fine.
Yes, because all of the world's scientific and economic resources have been taken off of all those important projects in order to dedicate them to building the gaming history section of the National Media Museum.
I'm glad to see you have your priorities sorted; Cure for cancer? Cure for aids? Clean energy? Nope, trolling Slashdot.
glad to see we have our priorities sorted. cure for cancer? cure for aids? clean energy? nope, preserving gaming "history"
Just so you know medical research got direct funding of about two billion pounds last year from government. I don't know how much of this will be diverted to the gaming museum, but if you're right it's gonna be awesome!
It seems that they will soon be asking for donations - just when I was looking to get rid of my old consoles and computers (Atari 2600, speccy, Master System, NES, Game Gear, some Binatone thing from the early/mid 70's, etc.)
Perfect timing! unless someone wants to buy them from me ;-)
A true product of cold war era.
Especially as a Finn I find it significant, for reasons highlighted in the wiki article. It was pretty funny to follow from sidelines...Talking heads on TV and all that about how computer games might affect our kids, relation to the USSR and so on. Of course we have since heard that same stuff again over GTA and similar games, but at least back then it was related to foreign politics instead of scoring random points for next election.
Allowing use of abandonware would certainly keep the good games alive, but I think you're missing the point of an archive: to make as complete a collection as possible, so that the non-popular stuff is preserved, and to make it available to researchers. The two complement each other, and shouldn't be treated as alternatives.
Fine... videogames is my unique culture... lol
Im from: http://www.laplegariadeunpagano.com
I'd like to see how they capture all the bigotry and name calling on Xbox Live. Hopefully they have some recordings of actually taunts while playing Halo 3 online with some 12 year old kid.
Will they also have a wax model of a 12 year old kid with cheetohs all over his fingers and lips?
Can I bum a sig?
i bet the Jeff Minter games will be protected by anthropomorphic goats and llamas with turrets
UK company: Banjo-Kazooie for the Nintendo 64. Before they got bought out by Microsoft. R.I.P.
fallout 2
final fantasy 7
>>>What games would you put on display?
ALL of them as playable ROMs at various PCs setup around the museum. As for the actual displays, I would get 1 of every console ever made, and display it in 5-year "segments" such as:
1970-1975 Odyssey, Fairchild Channel F, Pong and other dedicated standalones
1976-1980 Odyssey 2, Atari VCS/2600, Intellivision
1981-1985 Atari 5200, Colecovision, Famicom, NES
1986-1990 Atari 7800, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis
1991-1995 Super Nintendo, Atari Jaguar, Amiga CDTV
1996-2000 Playstation 1, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast
2001-2005 Playstation 2, Gamecube, Xbox
2006-2010 Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii
I would do the exact same thing for the portable units like Gameboys and Gameboy Advances, but in their own separate area, since portable and TV-connected consoles are not the same thing.
And I would do similar displays for computers since Apple IIs, Atari 800s, Commodore 64s, and Commodore Amigas were a huge part of videogaming during the 1980s.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Agreed. It is information you want to save. The obstacles are legal, not material.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I wish I could mod this up past 5, great post.
The Lucasarts point and click adventure games have a special place in my heart. Maniac Mansion, Zack McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Indiana Johnes and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max Hit the Road... all classics near and dear to my early gamer career!
I want to see one hallway that starts with "Adventure," leads on to an Infocom retrospective, then "Mystery House," the Sierra library, and so forth. Adventure gaming is a very distinct subset of the gaming canon that relies on narrative and immersion rather than action and graphics. Leaving it out would be like going to a museum that didn't bother exhibiting paintings because they were just 2D.
Asteroids...the only early game with no "pattern" or easy way to win. Just hyper-manic gameplay.
Sadly, there have been few versions, save the early Apple shareware Megaroids (system 7, for you youngsters) that measured up to the Arcade version.
For all you Apple // fans.
http://www.virtualapple.org/
Pretty solid collection too, plus you can play online or download for your own archiving.
Tetris and Duck Hunt. As long as those two are there I'll be happy. Without those games, who knows what gaming would be like today!?!
Duke Nukem Forever. It'd be pretty easy to display. Just stick an empty box under a sheet with a big question mark embroidered on it.
Too many good old CP/M games are already lost for good. The good games (Ascii action games, not text adventures), like Y-Wing, Y-Wing II, Arcadia Adventures. Those are gone for good already, you can't find a copy. Lost.
The Nintendo, Atari games, those we have a chance to save, to keep for future generations. This is long overdue.
Sierra adventure games like Space Quest, King's Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry were what drwew me into computers in the first place -- despite not being much of a gamer currently.
Your description brought up an image of Fahrenheit 451. With a dedicated group of "criminals" passing around the heritage of a media through an underground network, while the official powers that be hunt them down. When the official powers that be find a stash, the burn it to the ground.
I want to see oscilloscope pong.
Leisure Suit Larry
Pirates
Elite
Ultima
Civilisation
Railroad Tycoon
I could probably think of hundreds more :-)