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Our Video Game Heritage Is Rotting Away
eldavojohn writes "There's been a movement to preserve virtual worlds but MIT's Tech Review paints a dire picture of our video game memories rotting away in the attic of history. From the article: 'Entire libraries face extinction the moment the last remaining working console of its kind — a Neo Geo, Atari 2600 or something more obscure, like the Fairchild Channel F — bites the dust.' Published in The International Journal of Digital Curation, a new paper highlights this problem and explains how emulators fall short to truly preserve our video game heritage. The paper also breaks down popular SNES emulators to illustrate the growing problem with emulators and their varying quality. Do you remember any video consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey that are forever lost to the ages?"
Lost amidst all of the desire to permanently archive and hold on to every bit of past memory is the idea that we're supposed to forget. It's built into our DNA. I'm not convinced that it is a practical or necessary goal to hold on to and remember every little thing, especially video game heritage.
Some people may choose to make it a hobby, or an obsession, and that's their prerogative, but as a society and as a species there's certain things that once they're lost they're just gone. And future generations will not be robbed of some great cosmic truth when there are no longer any more NES machines capable of playing an NES cartridge. We will keep this memories in our own minds until we ourselves perish, and then the next generation takes over and creates something new themselves. I don't feel there's any sense pining over this eventuality.
There will ALWAYS been crazy collectors that keep these things working, even if it means having parts custom made. If people can still own old automobiles that are drivable, they can still own old gaming consoles kept in tip-top shape.
Living With a Nerd
Copying a game you own in order to run it on a different machine is fair use and doesn't require permission from anyone. The writers of this paper seem to take Nintendo's word as to what type of emulation is actually legal.
But then again, what do you expect from a paper that uses the term "128-bit system"?
It's funny how the ones who fight hardest against the spread of their works are, in effect, ensuring that their efforts will be forgotten and they will not leave a mark on gaming history. They are cementing themselves into a tomb of their own making, burying themselves alive.
Thanks to emulation, many of these older games have secured their spot in the memory of a digital society. Shame that the current generation of consoles is locked down in every way imaginable; perhaps historical obscurity is getting what they deserve. They will be remembered for their litigiousness rather than their art.
If they properly document the systems they create (along with their eccentricities that programmers take advantage of) then it wouldn't be such a big problem... but when you get cases such as the PlayStation 2, which Sony can't reliably emulate, that's where you have a problem.
Hell, I'm even worried about computer games. I collect old Macs and games to play on them. While the machines are still out there, various accessories for such are getting harder to find as are the actual games. While on the PC, theoretically, they'll play on a newer machine, the Mac platform has had a couple of changes of processor types that make sit hard to carry software over. Classic isn't even an option on the Intel Mac. There are tons of old games for the Mac toasters alone that formed a good deal of early computer gaming history and are still fun to play: Net Trek, Lunar Rescue, Ancient Art of War, etc. Every now and then I find a copy to buy, but I don't even have the games I played on an those old Macs, let alone the ones I never got to play.
I bet that even really old PC games have lots of issues, if you can track them down. I don't even want to think about what has happened to hardware and games for the old Apple ][s.
There's only one emulator out there which does it right, in my opinion, and that's MAME. Their goal is preservation, not playability, which they still maintain is a nice "side effect" of the code.
Most emulators have it the other way around, and use whatever code hacks or tweaks they can to get the most popular games up and running, replete with all of the glitches and inaccurate emulation which inevitably follow. Instead, they should follow MAME's example, and code for 100% perfect emulation relying solely on hardware guaranteed to be consistent (meaning the CPU). The tradeoff is that more technically advanced games take extremely powerful hardware to run - see Gauntlet Legends or similar games - but when they do they run perfectly, preserving the experience for future generations.
Preservation first, playability second.
There exists a wide gulf between the problem ('how do we store this stuff in a museum') and the proposed solution ('make it playable in the future'). It isn't as if the any of the aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum, for example, is ever taken out and flown by the museum guests. Does anyone really expect us to believe that seeing the Spirit of Saint Louis hanging up there is anything at all like the experience of crossing the Atlantic in it?
An adequate solution would be to record samples of the gameplay onto more future-proof media, blow up huge screenshots, and otherwise fabricate museum exhibits out of what we have left. This would mirror exactly the way we preserve everything else.
Typical geek silliness, if you ask me.
But we replaced those things for a reason. They weren't good. It's like people complaining about how games are so easy now and how we used to not have saves and only have 3 lives.
Those things were terrible. We replaced them because they were frustrating and annoying and reduced the gaming experience. What you remember is the joy of being younger, and while remembering that system might help YOU with that, it doesn't mean that society as a whole needs to remember them and put them on pedestals and more than we need to keep our old betamax tapes and laserdisks.
The problem with emulating the Vectex is that it is a vector based console, not raster based graphics. No matter what you would do in an emulator, you would have to translate the vector graphics into raster and that would take a way the one thing that made the Vectrex unique.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
If you can't show how that worked in a realistic manner, then all that remains is the rose-colored memories of old-timers who are forever fond of the games they played when they were young. If you just want to play Space Invaders, an emulator with color graphics will do. If you want to preserve the heritage, then the handling of the actual devices can't be omitted.
The article mentions attempts at simulating CRT display artifacts, but it doesn't mention the most serious problem. CRTs light up each pixel for a very short time as the beam crosses them. LCDs keep all pixels lit constantly. This makes a big difference to motion, especially scrolling as found in 2D games. The CRT will always look sharper because there is no error with respect to time for each frame. Each frame is shown as single point in time, and the human visual system is very good at reconstructing motion from that kind of sampling. With the LCD style sample-and-hold display you can think of each frame as being composed of many samples spread over time, all except one of them being incorrect (shifted into the past or future). Visually this shows up as blurring. It's completely independent of the response time of the display. Even with instant pixel switching speed you'd still see this kind of blur.
You can see diagrams explaining the problem here:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/temprate.mspx
At a sufficiently high resolution, the raster construction of a vector image is indistinguishable. I don't think a display with such high dpi currently exists, but, given enough time, it will.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Our rich heritage of sidewalk chalk art also quickly disappears, as do sand castles and Buddhist sand Mandalas... why can't people just accept the fact that everything is transitory -- including video games?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What imagination is required to play mario? Megaman? Sonic? They were just pattern recognition and learning through rote made arbitrarily more difficult via level cap. YOU used more imagination because you were a kid. Just like I used more imagination because I was a kid. I loved Contra when I was little but that doesn't make Contra better than Bioshock. Give someone who has never played any videogames, and therefore has no nostalgic investment in anything related those two games and I all but guarantee they'll say bioshock is better.
it doesn't mean that society as a whole needs to remember them and put them on pedestals and more than we need to keep our old betamax tapes and laserdisks.
But my laserdisk holds the proof that Han shot first.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
But most art is lost. And for good reason: because it's not worth saving. The idea that because all these obscure systems are fading out and the more popular ones are harder to find fully working versions of that history will forget video game origins is insane.
Mario will be remembered for hundreds of years. Emulators recreate the experience of the game. We can make a perfect replica of a Genesis or a NES if we need one for some gaming museum... but these obscure systems that most people don't remember? They're the other artists working at the same time as Van Gogh that nobody cares about because they aren't worth remembering. A lot of our childhood was shitty and of no merit and just because it holds special value to us personally doesn't mean it needs to be preserved by society as a whole. The important things will be remembered and preserved and the rest will land exactly where it belongs: by the wayside.
I don't need to ride a Roman chariot across cobble stone roads to visualize how primitive it used to be.
Or to imagine playing Space Invaders or watching Star Trek in black and white. It's why I got rid of my old Atari and NES consoles and just emulate them instead. Less space needed for storage, fewer parts that need constant dusting, plus it's portable (fits in a laptop or phone).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
But we don't put terrible paintings in museums (modern art notwithstanding) to "gives context to the goodness". We forget it and remember the stuff worth remembering.
But we don't put terrible paintings in museums (modern art notwithstanding) to "gives context to the goodness". We forget it and remember the stuff worth remembering.
False. We put the early works of great painters in museums all the time. Look, here's an article about how some Ansel Adams negatives could be worth 200 million dollars because they are "images that didn't fit in anywhere, that show he is trying to discover his voice, to fully realized Ansel Adams masterpieces.""
That is EXACTLY the same thing as showing how we went from crude games to more sophisticated ones.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Ok, that thing is awesome!
Mod parent up!
No, to you they were just pointless frustration. For some it was a great challenge that, if the game was solid, made you want to play longer, get better and beat the game. Something that because of the difficulty was actually an accomplishment that was "cool" to use lingo from back in the day. It was actually something that a small percentage of those who owned the game had been able to do. Unlike today where if someone says, hey I beat blahblah, 90% or more of those who played or owned the game say yeah, me too. I completely agree that there are many things we have gotten away from in games because they are outdated, etc. However I completely disagree that is the case with difficulty, especially in certain genres of games.
>>>have you sat in a dark room and played Doom 3 on a large screen with surround sound?
I think Doom is boring. Most FPSes are boring - pointless button mashers. The person who survives is the guy who sprays the most bullets. If they have some kind of compelling story, like Goldeneye and the first Red Faction had, it makes it worthwhile but for the most part I get bored after ten hours.
Give me IK+ anyday. Or Populous. That was a cool game.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And getting to the end without dying ever proves that exact same thing without a life cap frustrating the 5 year old with poor manual dexterity who just wants to see what the 4th level of Contra looks like.
You can still buy new NES and Genesis consoles from Asia. Obscure / difficult ones like Vextrex are right out, but a lot of this old hardware "rotting" away is actually quite accessible.
I'm reminded of old cars. There are many great old cars worth preserving from the 1930's. But you're not going to be able to keep the original leather and parts... those will eventually rot away. That's the nature of the beast.
Arcade units in the 80's were largely purpose-built machines with non-standard technology. Keeping old machines alive is quite a pain. Emulated versions can be very close, and accessible to everyone. You can't always keep the exact leather, but you can keep the soul.
The ______ Agenda
But most art is lost. And for good reason: because it's not worth saving. ...and who decides this? You?
No, we collectively decide what gets preserved with emulation or ports, directly by what we port, and indirectly by what we buy. If there's a game that no one ports to new generations of consoles, and no one emulates it, that's a reasonable indication that no one cared about it: it wasn't worth saving.
It's a little less arbitrary than what got saved in pompei. The amount of games preserved in emulation, at least for the moment, is pretty high. Especially the early generations, I mean you could fit the entire libraries of multiple early consoles on one $5 flash drive. Much more is going to be preserved than a city that was destroyed by a volcano.
Sure, it would be nice if we had the capability to preserve every game out there. Feel free to spend your time and money doing that for games no one is interested in. Until someone wastes money like that, preserving the classics and trashing the disposable works for every art form out there, and "what games do people want to see ported or emulated" is a generous standard.
Frankly It's a little pretentious to take GP's observation in the way that you did. He didn't nominate himself to be the one deciding which games were good and which ones were bad.
This way of thinking really bothers me and I'm surprised to see it on slashdot.
Of course some of the games are crude and maybe considered 'not worth remembering'. But tell me, who decides that? Based on what? The graphics? On that metric almost all of them aren't worth remembering. In movies, the story is king, but in videogames, gameplay is king.
Yes some of them are crude and basic, but others have amazing gameplay and are just plain fun.
I don't care what decade it is, defender kicks ass. Asteroids kicks ass. But most youngins today would look at that and dismiss it in 5 seconds.
When attempting to preserve history, ones opinion must be put aside and preserve the good with the bad.
>>>I probably won't use you as a reliable source for FPS reviews
Why not? I have modern consoles (PS2, X360, Wii) and newer games just like most people. The fact I also enjoy classic gaming (as far back as 1977) shouldn't diminish my opinion of FPSes...... on the contrary I would think it would enhance my opinion, because I and my fellow classic gamers have the longview of the genre, not just the recent past.
BTW another FPS I enjoyed was Metroid Prime..... mainly because it wasn't about shooting/button mashing. It was more of a hide-and-seek type game, just like the original NES and Super Nintendo games. Nintendo called it an "FPA" and that's probably the best description.
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>>>There were so many different types of gameplay that 3D perspectives just can't give you!
You're right. There are a lot of Commodore=64, Amiga, and Super Nintendo game styles that simply don't exist in the modern 3D world, because the companies figure anything less than 3D won't sell. So those styles died out.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Business blunders don't mean it was a bad system and the company didn't have awesome engineers. To regard an incredibly innovative entire platform created through blood, sweat and tears from the ground up as irrelevant because a few greedy execs f**ked up is retarded. Vectrex was leaps and bounds ahead of the competition as far as playability and tech went. Gimme a Vectrex over an Atari 2600 any day.
The system was great and lots of fun to play but expensive to produce among other things.
Atari is dead and has been a long time, someone bought the brand name. The Atari 800 and Atari ST's were incredibly innovative platforms that are long dead as well but still culturally relevant.
Not succeeding in a business sense doesn't mean your products are shit. Analyzing older systems to gain engineering insight and see how they solved strange issues is also fascinating.
And why the hell can't we preserve everything? We could if we cared too.
In fact, I think the NES was one of the most UNINTERESTING platforms simply because they were so common and not very innovative.
Pompei is an instructive example and I'm glad you used it. Archaeologists learned an ENORMOUS amount about how people lived in that era because the lava essentially flash-froze a city. The arbitrariness of Pompei was enormously beneficial to posterity because as it turns out the people between us and them had no idea what the future would want to know about the past or didn't care.
Humanity has a long history of burning, tossing, losing, and destroying its cultural history only to have scholars hundreds or thousands of years later lamenting that loss. It's unknowable what we lost when the Library of Alexandria got burned down. We nearly lost the ability to read hieroglyphs, but for the partially shattered Rosetta stone. The BBC Domesday laserdiscs were created and lost within living memory and there's no question that it would have been valuable to have kept them.
Accurate, robust, valuable archives do not work well with the stochastic market- and whim-driven collective approach that you recommend. Over and over again, the things that are uninteresting NOW become things that are extremely interesting in the future.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects