How Will Games Be Preserved? | Capturing the Frozen Flame
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 พ.ค. 2024
- In light of publishers obstructing our access to their old video games, we take a step back and look at the long term for our present. How long does a game last? Should we truly rely on physical media? Who decides what games are worthy enough to keep around? What happens to the games that fall in between the cracks? And most importantly, how are our feelings around the matter being exploited?
00:00 Opening
05:40 Chapter I: The Legacy of the Digital Revolution
18:01 Chapter II: The Worst Tragedy of All Time
41:43 Chapter III: Physical is not forever
1:06:13 Chapter IV: Playable Games | Transcending Form
1:18:28 Patreon Credits
Special thanks for providing your voices!
KawlunDram from @AllSourceGaming
@hotcyder
@TBSkyen
@eurothug4000
PATREON: / transparens
TWITTER: / transparencyboo
#Preservation #LostMedia #Nintendo
BONUSMEME:
One day Minecraft will be lost to time, and no one will remember the old relic Fortnite. Can you imagine that? Me neither, but it is true. Anyway, what I wanted to say is basically that people should remember that we need to preserve all video games, not just the ones that are widely seen as worthwhile and good. That includes mobile games for example, which commonly have been seen as just random bullshit games by a lot of gamers. That doesn't matter, we need to save AFK Arena wether you like it or not. About that - did you know that Markiplier was in that freaking game? Yeah, and he was basically a character giving you what can basically be called lootboxes. He even had his dog with him! Like, fine if he wants to do that himself, but the dog can't even decide for itself. Feels kind of mean if you ask me.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chocobo tower, because we sure did. - เกม
Hi, thank you for watching! If you like what we do and want to support us in our efforts to make more videos in the future then you can do so on Patreon. www.patreon.com/transparens
By doing so you appear in the credits, get access to our Discord and get audio companions with every video. What fun!
As a preservationist of 64DD, and as a developer of Satellaview emulation and documentation, this is a good video :)
If anything the only thing I'd probably want a mention on... is rights issues. Rights that went in limbo due to pretty much how capitalism works that prevent the rerelease of games, which may also be a reason why some Satellaview games were never rereleased, or why Pilotwings 64 was never rereleased officially because a company closed down. I believe this is, in legal terms, one of the biggest problems of culture at large. (Outside of legality, people will, rightfully so, not care.)
And it is pretty darn true that people will do things without someone telling them so. 64DD wasn't preserved at all in a public manner until the end of 2014 where I was involved without knowing literally anything technical about 64DD previously. But what matters the most in my opinion is interest, from regular people but also developers in the game industry.
To this day, I'm the only one doing 64DD work, with some help from other people sometimes. I fully believe there are systems that will be lost due to lack of interest in its time, and I won't talk about how Satellaview preservation is utterly fucked due to its myriad of ways to handle content where the only way to fully preserve it is if developers actually kept all of the data themselves, or if by some wild chance Nintendo has actually archived them (which, to say the least, Nintendo is the one that does the most work about archival that it makes it even more baffling that they're not doing anything much) and someone got the data out through various... not necessarily legal or even moral means (see the Gigaleak).
And thank you for mentioning the very idea of how companies never rerelease every version of a game, because I doubt Nintendo would ever rerelease Super Mario All-Stars and its Satellaview counterparts in the slightest, even just as a bonus.
"These look ancient who would want to play these?"
When I was younger my mom still had her pretty beaten up NES that took a solid hour of fiddling with just to get a single game to run. Still played the hell out of it into my teens. It's really sad to see someone so influential in the industry write off an entire history of theirs... to see no value in what came before them
It is indeed sad. Sony has enough of a legacy to where they should know the reasons people play them. I think Jim is correct about backwards compatibility being more requested than used, because of course they have the data to back that argument up. But they should do it anyway, because it is just not that simple. Today the PS5 basically just having a huge ass library thanks to it being able to play PS4 games and the entire PSN store being available there from day one. And I think there is something to be said for that as well.
i was a baby by the end of its lifespan, and yet playing games on a dinky ol gameboy pocket i got from a pawn shop for dirt cheap is magical
@@voxel9470 Agreed!
Even as someone who is relatively young, I adore the way old games look. The low resolution may hurt my eyes and the lack of fidelity may be outright ugly at times, but there's something magical about how old games are. How games like ocarina of time and final fantasy vii could get away with so much more horror elements because of their lack of detail, something that becomes even clearer with the ff7 remake having to change one of the most impactful elements of the midgar section. Hell, the lack of detail helps to exaggerate horror elements at the same time as masking them. And the way old games would manipulate their limited graphical abilities in order to work seamlessly with CRT screens in a way that's genuinely stunning. Not to mention the way limited scope for music capabilities leads to beautiful use of synthetic music. Just, to me the ancient nature of those games makes them so appealing, not out of pure nostalgia, but because the way that older video games form themselves around their limitations is beautiful to me
@@nerdychocobo We genuinly need more PS1 looking games. It's a lovely look.
yup, I totally remember being completely anti-emulator when I was much younger, but have since outgrown that bit of propaganda. I hope whatever lingering stigma around emulators fades away for the sake of preserving games! great video!
Thanks! I think a lot of people have a sense of justice when it comes to emulators and what not. They saw the "you wouldn't download a car" thing and just ate it up. Sad times, but we push on!
The fridge gag was something else.
Top five elaborate Transparency gags for sure!
Shout out to Serge's clown pants!
Big ones.
If I own an original copy of it, then I have the right to emulate that same piece of media.
Heck ya!
For sure. But also, don't feel any guilt for emulating something that is just not for sale anywhere through 'official' means. If a publisher treats their history like abandonware, then it's all fair game if you ask me. The original developers aren't gonna see any of your money anyway.
@@RobinOttens Same for if you're going to buy an original cartridge or disc after they've all already been produced
And if a company refuses to give you said game then you also have the right pirate it.
**cough** Mother 3 **cough**
Transparency video day is a good day.
Poggers good day indeed
Thank you, TB, we love you!
POG!
the BEST day
This is going to sound radical but I've realized something;
When we talk about the medium of games and games preservation we're going by the assumption that a game will only have a select amount of copies on the planet. Comparing this to your average book that has millions more. Why would that be the case? Well with the fact that books are treated differently and that the physical book is treated with a lot more reverence. Another possible explanation lies within the fact that a lot of stories that are important to us are public domain, and if something is more easily accessible then people and publishers will feel the need to print more copies and editions and versions. So lets say the story of Snow white gets created and is within the public domain, people begin to create more and more copies over decades and then hundreds of years. You have over hundreds of years of copies of snow white, and therefore are safe and confident that more copies will be printed and the copies that already exist are out there and available in pretty much any form.
This is because it's within the public domain.
If we put games within the public domain more people both publisher and fan will feel safe and confident to redistribute, and make new copies of classic games.
But that's the issue isn't it? Many games are tied up with publishers and licenses. This is where many people would say piracy is the answer and for a lot of reasons it's ONE of the answers.
But the true answer is to remove games from the hands of people who aren't going to do anything with them and to actively make it accessible for anyone and everyone.
Capitalism is the fault of many of these preservation issues and anything we do will be in spite.
Even though its been expressed plenty within this wonderful video;
Don't buy into FOMO marketing
Don't buy into Streaming only games.
And more importantly, Don't Maintain the cycle of supporting giant strangleholds on IPS and fight to make games available for everyone and anyone.
Rewatching this after the recent Radical Dreamers announcement. Such a great video-comprehensive and funny-and an important conversation to have about this medium we love. And that fridge gag is legendary lol.
We love the idea of the fridge gag being with us forever as a top tier Transparency meme. Now if only this video got a bit more attention, haha
Y'know, the Celeste video is that one that led me to this channel to start with (at the mercy of the Algorithm several months after you'd released it), and I was wondering if you'd do 1h+ videos again. I'm glad to see your powers haven't dwindled but in fact grown!
Haha, we mostly make videos as long as they turn out to be. They sort of have a life of their own. We can't make videos like this all the time though of course, because it is really quite taxing. But once in a while is fine! Thanks! :)
Another fantastic video! ❤
It was a treat to see Kiki's art and the IRL gags were great! 💖 Speaking of which I'm surprised you were able to get such a rare console just to use as a prop in this video! 🌟 I mean how the HECK did you find an XBAX!?!?!? Especially in that great of condition!? Must of cost a fortune! 💰
The animations for Kiki's Radical Dreamers art was really fun to work on. Especially the shattering of the frozen flame. The Xbax was a lucky find in the second hand store by the way.
@@Transparencyboo A lucky find indeed! 👀
Glad to hear you had fun animating those parts! They turned out fantastic! ❄❤💔
Oh hype a vid that's over an hour long from Transparency. This will be good.
Hope you'll enjoy it! See you in little over an hour ;)
In the very large picture, physical games copies are going to be a geologically lasting archive of lumps of meaningful plastic and metals, like those ancient Roman stacks of stone, whereas emulator copies and emulator software, kept up as long as they're culturally relevant, are like the theatre plays, philosophy and visual motifs left to us by ancient Rome.
I do wonder, though, if there'll even be computer processors or electricity a hundred or so years from now, to run these games on, given the current trajectory of slow global collapse.
Maybe videogames are more like aquaducts or Roman concrete; people will forget how to repair or use them, and then a millenium later they might reinvent some vague likeness of the old videogames.
We didn't want to go too far into the doom territory, haha. But yes, it is a valid concern that we at some point just will lose video games anyway for one reason or another. That is a lot harder to tackle in a video like this though. Phew.
@@Transparencyboo : 3
The doom territory is where I live. I do like imagining how one would even go about preserving videogames in the mad max world we're headed for. I imagine extensive interactive theatre and mainstream LARPing. Some desert tribe unwittingly acting out Ms. Pac-Man, to choose their next valhallan chrome-reaver warqueen.
@@michelottens6083 I like this vision of the future. I'll be over here starting my tribe of moogles to keep the mythical stories of the Quina and the Manderville alive
@@RobinOttens Keep safe. And hidden. The warboys would just steamroll over a defenseless moogle tribe.
Lots of Jimquisition vibes with Nintendo stores being Nintendo stores, online-only content, Stadia, premium editions, etc. and I loved to hear your taker on it! Also, Radical Dreamers is neat.
Almost as much as the fridge gag.
We had so much fun with the fridge gag and we're very happy you enjoy it!
Media preservation is literally so sexy
Big green flag, to be honest!
This is interesting timing considering I was just debating with jan Misali last night about whether or not Sattelaview games still "exist"
Sounds like a fun conversation!
Some of my beloved childhood memories include playing my way through MegaMan X and Earthbound on ZSNES (seeing the snowy backdrop in the video brought such a pang of nostalgia), "playing" Halo 2 on PC at, like, 10 frames a second, and watching Bleach/FMA 03/Lucky Star on TH-cam in 10 minute chunks, so the idea of someone complaining about...the last chapter seems vaguely silly to me. Granted, that's just because I've fully normalized that early in life, but I very much doubt we are getting a rerelease of *spins the wheel of old games* Terranigma anytime soon.
The shot of the bsnes site also got me emotional, given recent news. Rest in peace Near.
This is Alicia speaking, Kiki will have a really different experience so she can maybe answer herself if she likes; I remember emulating Pokémon Gold in japanese before it was even released in Sweden, and it kind of blew my mind at the time, haha. Even made it all the way to Goldenrod and accidently killed Sudowodo because I thought it was a grass Pokémon, lol. Also had a disc my dad brought home one day that basically had a shit ton of Mega Drive games on it, so that was how I first experienced Sonic the Hedgehog. What a trip.
Oh yeah, we totally put the bsnes site there over the words we said for a reason. We contemplated dedicating this to Near, and I suppose in a sense it is a tribute to them even if not said outloud. We thought about it a lot while making the video too.
Oh and we really need a re-release of Terranigma.
hot darn this one is good.
And you should feel commended! Heck, we should probably have mentioned more kinds of preservation, like people who preserve paratext by scanning in box art, obscure manuals and promotional materials. There is so much stuff here that we think dedicated and cool people are doing for the greater good!
yes that is respectable.
i also once saw a translation project happen for a story mode in a japanese arcade game that wasn't even playable anymore under normal means in japan.
How is this channel consistently release bangers! :D
With too much work and a lot of dedication I suppose. And of course wonderful supporters!
@@Transparencyboo As long as you're satisfied with the hard work, it's worth it at the end.
I think this might just be my favorite video I've watched all year, I love everything about it. In parallel universe where physical and digital media were more equally supported, I would ask to buy a copy of this video on VHS for preservation.
Haha, a VHS copy of this video would be hilarious and a weird way to support us. I like it. For now we just have to stay with other avenues for getting support and trying to preserve our videos, haha.
God, I'm so glad I found this channel. Unerringly brilliant, witty, and downright poetic.
Thank you! :D
I think me having a broken DS cartridge of a fire emblem game when I was 10 has shaped my thoughts between the fluid and temporary nature of mediums in a weird way? idk. this video was good and I have no coherent thoughts left
Once you have a game fail on you it is kind of a wake up call, especially with newer stuff. Glad you liked the video :)
@@Transparencyboo That may be related to my own lack of faith in physical media for preservation as well, actually. I have two Final Fantasy Tactics Advance carts... because the first stopped working, so I had to get a second.
We totally should think more about those who by countless unpaid hours strive to preserve the past for the future of everyone. Great video!
Great stuff! I think there is something got be said about how companies have a vested interest in allowing certain games to die, which I think is a testament to how we are conditioned to see art as a thing that must have a function to be deemed valuable
We are thinking about possibly making a video talking about Nintendos motivations for not releasing their entire catalog of games on Switch at some point. Because we have a lot of speculation and thoughts about it, especially in relation to people seemingly saying that Nintendo don't know what they are doing and so on, always asking "why" but never even trying to answer the question.
サテラビューは画期的で素晴らしいシステムでした。データ送信用として使用されていたBS放送セントギガのチャンネルは当時、日本で人気があった芸能人やタレントなどのラジオ番組が放送されていまして、よく聴いていました。番組表や配信されるゲームを特集した専用雑誌も販売されていまして購入して読んでいましたね。懐かしいです。
Great vid! Going to enjoy my games to the fullest and do what I can to support and preserve these pieces of fun history for the future.
Taking a break after chapter 1, but this video is fantastic! One of my favorite of yours yet
Chapter 2 is even better! Loved learning about Radical Dreamers, which I was unfamiliar with!
Another fantastic video, excellent awareness raising. I hate seeing media be lost, I'm really glad to see more conversation about it.
Thank you, glad you liked it and found it informative
This is awesome! Just like the channel, this video just kept getting better and better!
This was an amazing video, thank you for creating it.
Thank you for enjoying it! :)
In light of recent events, congratulations AND condolences on making a video that will apparently keep being relevant every couple of years
Eh, it's a pretty nice video. Hopefully more people we see it as we move forward. :)
@@Transparencyboo Ah yes, of course! The congratulations are for the video, which is (as always) a certified banger, and I'm sure lots more people will see it. The condolences are for...... the 3Ds and Wii U eShops.
@@imogenmangle I lost my 3ds at an airport in December, great timing right!
Really liked this one and it's been on my mind these days too! I really enjoyed the radical dreamers throughline and I was very fascinated by what I could read and what you mentioned. also, this video has my username on it, so it's a rare gem now, I should put it on VHS
Using Radical Dreamers to tie everything together and as a sort of metaphor for everything was really a great move on Kiki's part. Very proud of her. Glad you liked it and we are happy that we got to read your name in the credits
Haven't quite finished it yet but I really appreciate how thorough this video is. Really grants clarity to even cases I thought I knew well enough. Like I didn't realize that there was still losses taken in preserving the satellaview games or even the method in which it was done. Or the details in the Ruby/sapphire remake scare. Kudos to y'all cuz it really feels like a comprehensive view of the situation here while remaining engaging.
Thanks, Kuma!
Your videos are always so high quality!!!!!! 1 million subs for you!!
Haha, we wish. Thanks!
Video games are dead and we have killed them. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? Who will wipe the mountain dew off of us? What gamer fuel is there to clean ourselves? What E3’s of atonement, what sacred gods shall we have to invent? What shall we play now? Must we not become video games ourselves simply to appear worthy of it?
Turns out we were the video games all along.
Thank you so much for this!
You're so welcome!
Man the Californication video mid video sure was nostalgic and loved the Metroid dread joke.
Also that Radiohead disc bundle I'm so jealous! I saw it when I was in high school and it was so pricey in my town, I've been looking for it for so long but alas.
Glad you enjoyed it! :) Kiki has a lot of CDs and LPs which is pretty cool.
So this is one of my favourite videos [literally in my faves playlist] and I find myself rewatching it a lot. Not only do I want to thank you for this channel, this piece of art, but I have a slightly shitposty-but-still-serious question relevant to preservation.
If I want to preserve the save battery in my old Pokemon games for as long as possible should I actually be storing the carts in the fridge, I mean we have more than enough space in there for a few gameboy games
It's been a year since I wrote this video, so I don't fully remember the exact conditions, if there's like a point where it gets TOO cold, but primarily a spot that's constantly cool and dry is always preferable. Think wine cellar conditions.
Yes yes, your videos are litteraly the best videos out there for me ! They are smart, and well researched, and perfectly edited well written and you are captivating and i love listening to you, but can we PLEASE SEE MORE OF THE CAT
Thank you! We'll try to add Jucika more in the future, she's just a little baby princess so its up to her when she decides to grace us with her pressence, haha. You can also see her more on our Twitter accounts, she appears from time to time there!
Thanks for this very detailed and nuanced look at this issue
Thank YOU for watching! 🧡
This video is insane! First time finding this channel, and the quality is out of this world! You get an easy sub+like+comment from me!
Thank you for the praise, friend! Glad you enjoyed it! :)
Fantastic video.... I love my physical media a lot.... But yeah, we need to preserve things ourselves.
I'm here because of Adam Millard giving your channel a shout out and after watching this video in one sitting you have a new sub, great stuff very thought provoking
Awesome! Thank you! And really glad you mentioned Adam, because before you said this we had no idea where all the views and subscribers were coming from, haha!
I learned to solder to save my copy of Harvest Moon 64, so this essay hit home.
That's pretty cool though!
AWWWWWWWWWWWWW YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
...okay this comment on its own devoid of apparent context is really funny but in case anyone missed it: _Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition_
"A remaster of Chrono Cross will arrive on Nintendo Switch on April 7, 2022. Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, as it is called, will include such updates as the ability to turn off encounters and an enhanced soundtrack. The game also includes the Radical Dreamers text adventure that was previously only available on Satellaview."
YEEEEE
The whole Radical Dreamers part/bit of this video is so crazy to think about cause if this video was made a few months later, that section may of not been as impactful because it finally came out to everyone outside of Japan. In fact out of all game companies as of late, Square Enix has been on a pretty good track record of making their old games playable. Live A Live is another great example of this. What was once a Japanese only game only ever re-released on the Japanese Wii U e-shop, it's now finally coming worldwide. There are other older games Square has made more easily accessible over the past few years but even then the point still stands. I hope in the future emulation and downloading older ROMs will just be commonplace and not seen as thief. I know I said earlier about how Square has a better track record but before that Live a Live announcement in that Nintendo Direct, the only way to play it was emulation with a fan translation. While I'm thankful Live A Live and Radical Dreamers are getting that treatment now so many other games do not have the same fate. Either way this was a wonderful & enjoyable video to watch. I just hope that companies will take games preservation more seriously but sadly I do not think they will. I'm thankful for anyone who has strived to make it possible to play any of these old games cause they are important to history plus they are just fun games.
Love the vids, keep up the great content!
Thanks, will do!
That fridge gag was awesome! (it was a gag, right? Cause I can see people do that in real life, and to be fair to them I do have a portion of my fridge sectioned off for unexposed film and photographic paper)
It is indeed a gag, glad you liked it :P
I really like buying games on GOG for this reason. I am able to create my own backups and preserve them.
And when compatibility becomes a problem in the future, there are tools for this (e.g. VMs, Emulators, Wine).
This is such a cool video! It explored a lot of the vague questions and concerns I had about the topic that have been bouncing vaguely around my head for forever. Ive been feeling to urge the collect physical games the last couple years and now I understand why. And Im glad you could end on a positive note :)
No matter how capitalism fails us, passionate people will be there to pick up the slack
Sometimes it is just fun to collect things, especially old ones. It just feels kind of special, haha.
"Hardware like the PESPgo". I'm only three minutes in and I've already shat my ass laughing.
...shitten? My ass... shitten my ass? Sh... shatten
Pretty sure it's shat.
Hard not to say it as pspgo, nevertheless.
I remember renting Alien Hominid back in the day because I was a Newgrounds veteran... or was a I Newgrounds survivor?
Perhaps both!
Great video
You're great!
the satelleview makes me so sad 😭😭😭
the fact that theres Mario games that ill likely never be able to play bums me out
Nintendo should just make a Satellaview Collection in a physical box and I bet the collectors would go wild for it.
While I mostly agree, I do have to say that different hardware architectures can make it rather difficult to do backwards compatibility - the easiest way of going about it if you don't just use "the same architecture but faster" is by bundling the old hardware inside the same package, but depending on the hardware, esp. more modern stuff, that can needlessly inflate the cost (not just momentarily, making them less affordable, but also regarding physical resources and required labour).
I don't think that always expecting backwards compatibility is reasonable if there is a big break for one reason or another. instead, I'm personally of the opinion that esp. games that aren't available anymore should simply be open sourced, allowing them to be ported or tweaked for emulation for any platform.
Actually played Radical Dreamers on the rerelease of Chrono Cross (because I'm the same kinda person who played EarthBound Beginnings first, in 20...uh, something something), and hardly got into CC itself. Took a year for CC proper to get patched for performance on par with the PS1 Classic I have installed to my PS3, so now it's just a matter of riling myself back into sticking with anything.
...Uh, hadn't seen that purple thing, though. Must be from the alternate endings; I'd only gone through the initial route so far.
REGARDLESS, I was not aware of the long, contentious history of distribution, rights-management, and even creators' authority that went into the independent preservations of this one game.
i love the crisp refreshing taste of a fridge chilled game cartridge
Almost like they're new out of the box!
I’m looking for a way to play Revolution 60. Any chance someone knows where to find and play it?
I just ordered Gran Turismo 3 and 4 a few days ago. And Ridge Racer Type 4. Gonna play them once I beat Gran Turismo 1. I remember this fucco's quote too.
These games are still fine, and honestly the PS1 games are just really interesting and look sweet. Love the PS1 look!
42:40 and even that one refund policy at Steam is extremely strict, requiring the customer to return the game within mere hours of purchase. Depending on your internet connection, that could be the amount of time it takes just to download the game, let alone come to an informed decision about whether it's for you.
Very insightful, lots of angles on a topic, we need to be talking about more.
But I really need to know: How much did Zingo pay you
It was basically the only thing they still had in stock at the grocery store, haha.
As a dev I'm curious how you feel about devs releasing source code, given that the actual assets needed to play the games aren't normally released.
This is admittedly more or less outside of the scope of our research, so we probably don't have that much insightful to say about the practice. However as it's own thing it seems to be really rad in a lot of ways - and could be useful for preservation purposes for sure. Would love to talk to you about it sometime!
@@Transparencyboo my Twitter DMs are open so feel free to hit me up to bounce thoughts around any time :)
you should do a video about drm! the history of it is really interesting, at least to me...
It is very interesting! We might have to take a break from this kind of stuff for a while though, but who knows, we may just return to the subject in the future.
I binged a couple videos in your own back catalog yesterday that I never got around to and this newest one happened to release as I was just finishing up your JK Rowling one. In some nebulous way, it is poetry in motion: looking to the past to bring about a bright future. Ok, yeah, it’s TH-cam videos and not exactly video games… but the moment is all mine! Anyway, fantastic work yet again with ceaseless laughter and near tears by the end. :)
Thanks! Glad we could move you
in the long run, game companies will be hoist by their fight against game preservation.
when a game is not preserved, it will not be recognised by young people, so it will be much harder to sell it to them.
i am already imagining that a lot of indie games will be much more widely recognised than Super Mario - especially FLOSS games.
Last year I lost most of my old game console's, handhelds, and games to a flood. Not to mention all the games that lost over the years while moving. I'm really glad I still have the means to play them via emulation.
That sucks, I am sorry about your games. Emulation is a bit of a blessing, isn't it?
@@Transparencyboo thank you, and definitely! It's nice going back to play games on consoles I really wanted as kid but we're out of reach at time.
As someone from Argentina (while it's not as prominent as before nowdays), the "buying games a generation older to save money" used to be a very common practice around these sides
Up to the PS4's release, the most common console for me and my peers was the PS2
On current times, most have a PS4 or just stick to PC, but living games such as GoW 1 and 2 or MK:A while the world was playing MKX and GoW Ascencion was quite an unique experience in hindisght
That's an interesting perspective too that I don't think a lot of people are aware of. Thanks for sharing!
@@Transparencyboo you're welcome!
Keep up the great work!
@@dante_02 Thanks, have a good one! ♥️
There is so many Super Nintendo games I would never have played if it wasn't for emulation.
Damn, there is even games that have not been released in Europe yet or cost a lot of money to even get a hold of.
Mother 3 says hi.
The emulation games folder in my PC is growing by the day and im gonna be making sure those files are always in at least two different ssd's. If we doesnt preserve old games, nobody will
Good work, friend!
I never really worried so much about games being lost to time, because I thought the emulation scene pretty much covered all games, even if it was illegal. Maybe to a point where we can buy fan made copies and they’d work just fine on the consoles.
Up until like 2 years ago? I wouldn’t have known about the Satellaview, and it does suck that streaming games would just be lost to time, and there are still games lost to time. It hurts just thinking about it, how there’s a game that clearly exists but we’ll never be able to see it cuz it wasn’t successful at the time and so it is now shelved, forever.
It does make me wonder how would one even go about preserving games, without the hammer that is corporations. Like seriously, Nintendo shuts down a lot of emulation sites, what if some games just become lost because of that?
I at least think Nintendo has been kinda decent actually preserving the media and not just throwing it out after a project (even if it’s kinda scummy they don’t even share it for years on end) but it still sucks :/ I wonder why there isn’t more topics about this lol
There would basically need to be world wide movements and directives for preservation, and even then things would fall between the cracks. Like itch.io games and small projects that people just put on their websites. It is hard to know where to draw the line.
So this is why "Preservation is Piracy" should be a clownish tough! Also my roms came from archives.
My little PocketStation, box and all. Also tried to hack at it with an IR-enabled calculator, such as it was.
I'm here for the snufmin fridge magnet
A close friend made it years ago, it has a permanent honourable spot on the fridge.
Can you use more cat b-roll?
Haha, well, we do try to put Jucika in every video at least once. We'll remember the request, thanks! ♥️
This is such a great example of all the additional problems and bs work that is created because of capital. Digital could make everything easily accessible to everyone and easily be achievable but instead we get multiple markets and still needing people to do the free labor for the greater good
Hopefully in the future there will be bigger and better efforts to arvhive and record keep when it comes to video games. I think there are still a lot of blind spots and problems from all kinds of directions. It's a bit of a mess, and while we can't expect companies to do it I am glad there are people who do have the passion to do the gritty work in the end.
@@Transparencyboo It does feel beautiful and hopeful that there are people who put in that work regardless of how flawed some of it may be
Hot damn, this video made me think.
When I was but a prepubescent pipsqueak, my dad and I decided to sell off his N64 and his old games after we found out the video cable was broken. Of course, that would have been a simple thing to fix after a quick search online and all, which leaves me to regret okaying the decision back then. But nowadays, I understand that the console and cartridges aren't required to experience those games anymore, which compels me to be more open to emulation despite all the "ooh naughty naughty!!!" propaganda stuff that got shoved in my face at some point long ago. Despite my new outlook on how games can be played, though, something in my mind still thinks lowly of emulation in comparison to the "real deal" (i.e. the actual game cartridge running on real hardware and all that jazz). Something about the fact that I'm not inserting the disc into the machine, or that I'm playing the game on my super sharp laptop screen instead of a fuzzier old TV or a backlightless puke green calculator display puts a small seed of distaste in my mind, regardless of how much more reliable and customizeable emulation has become. It feel petty, but it's nevertheless something I have a hard time letting go of. Perhaps one day my prejudice will leave me entirely, but for now it's something I'll just have to deal with.
Does it make sense to find value in the tangential and analogue nature of physical retro games (or even physical games in general) even in the face of their inevitable doom? This is something I'm asking myself now, even as I'm set to recieve an IPS screen kit for my Game Boy (coincidentally another relic from my father lol). It feels like a silly question, but I will ask it regardless...
Oh, we get that completely. The thing is that while we dabble in a lot of emulation and whatnot we also like having physical things because it brings us a lot of enjoyment. We have a lot of physical games, consoles (some modded) and a ton of other crap that probably doesn't mean much to anyone else. There is just something fun and interesting about fiddling with them, reading manuals and getting a feel for old systems. We recently got a Famicom Disc System, and I gotta tell you it's a fun experience to first hear the thing whirr as it reads the floppy disc. It is obviously not as convenient as emulation, but it's just a neat thing to have experienced. And I think that's a pretty good place to fall, a good mindset to have - emulation doesn't necessarily have to be your entire experience. If you enjoy the little details of old games and consoles then that is perfectly fine, that just elevates your understanding and experience. Gotta make it a balance I suppose.
Yeah, you're right. Even though emulation is and will continue to be leading the movement to keep old games available for as long as possible, that doesn't mean that the personal enjoyment you or I can get from the little quirks and kinks of old gaming hardware (or its accompanying material) should be considered any less meaningful.
By the way, this video was amazing! Very high-quality and expertly paced, not to mention the on-point humor (thanks for reminding me to stock my fridge with more Clu-Clu Land btw). Definitely subscribing!
OK i used to write a ton of scripts that archived assets from online-only games and i agree with the video.
The company's job is to make money so we just want to pick this archiving part up ourselves i think, i'm ok with the situation since people are this damn good and persistent at it.
That's really cool of you, and way beyond what we could do probably, haha! Keeping online only games alive in a sense by archiving things is so important. I am deeply fascinated by old MMO games, and there is just so much there that is just absolutely remarkable, not only the games themselves but the cultures within those cyberspace worlds. Things that kind of just need to be recorded in some way lest it be lost to time.
what is the game at 28:59 ?
BS Zelda leading into Chrono Trigger
@@Transparencyboo ty!
Algorithm and love frens!
Thank you!
You are underrated
That's what they say, haha
Oof. You know you've peeved Lord Algorithm when literally searching the title of the video still doesn't unearth it!
Just gotta hope people share it then, lol
The irony about that Radical Dreamers SNES Copy is that it is most likely just an Everdrive with an soldered SD Card (or eMMC Chip) inside of it. Which is like the worst way to preserve a game.
Super Nintendo Games (as well as all cartridge based Nintendo games before the Nintendo DS) were literally etched into the Silicone. Which made it very robust. So robust that even games from the first console with cartriges, the Fairchild Channel F, still works like a charm. Compare that to flash based Nintendo DS Games who already start to fail even if treated with care. And SD Cards with their re-writable Flash Memory are even less reliable.
Yeah, so there are repro carts which are basically reprogrammed original cartridges tailor made for you by own submission of material. From what I understand those are more reliable than the very cheap thing we ordered from China. It was mostly a question of budget and timing for the thing to arrive before filming, so it's definitely not the peak of quality products in that field, haha!
We initially intended to talk more about the durability of cartridges with the shift from EPROM to flash memory and how those differ, but felt it was a bit too complicated to easily grasp in an already bloated video, so we went with the more familiar CD's instead.
@@Transparencyboo Most Games were mask Roms as far as I know. Those are even better than EPROM.
Well damn it, seems like there's one more thing to cease from the capitalists and bourgeoise...
Cease the means of video game production.
Over an hour of fingers poking and prodding at old videogame plastic? Yarr matey, I enjoyed that!
What are your opinions on the eternal trend of 'remasters' like Square Enix rereleasing the old Final Fantasy games over and over again. But never in their original form, and always changed and altered in some weird new broken way. It's preservation in some sense, allowing new players to experience at least the stories, gameplay and music of the old games. I guess the HD remaster loop is a topic all on its own though. Adjacent to reselling indie games in shiny new boxes, it's preservation in a way that works for companies.
It's a bit hit or miss. Re-releasing games is a good thing in general, but the HD remasters of the old FF games for example are a bit weird to us. By all means making a version that is in widescreen will always be welcomed by us, especially because we are making videos in 16:9 haha. But they could have done that and still have used the original sprites... I don't know. Feels like they could have put the original game in there as a bonus too, at the very least.
I appreciated your more wholistic take on what preservation means! It'll be fascinating to see PC emulation become more and more prevalent- and how corporations will adapt to start monetizing it. I think it'll be good when Nintendo realizes "wait, people are willing to pay us to play Mario 64 instead of just downloading it" and finally make their games more accessible. :)
The Switch Online service is making them so much money right now. I suppose for the entire library that they got now it's a pretty fair deal if you just want to have access to these games now and then. Although, they will never provide true preservation as their goals are motivated by profit, and that doesn't vibe well with the alturism behind actually preserving games as art.
@@Transparencyboo Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I could see companies starting to put their older games on PC in the next 10-15 years. If emulation really is the future, surely some companies would see that and try to monetize it while they can, right? I'm not holding my breath, but as "retro" games get older and more out-of-touch with modern expectations, it may simply be more profitable to sell the roms to those who want them rather than try to officially support the games on consoles.
Although now that I'm typing it out, it seems more likely that the games will become full-on abandonware at that point. I kind of doubt modern day Nintendo would even realize they could monetize and officially support true preservation... and if they did, I doubt they would care. That's sad, but at least it'd make the perceived morality of pirating even less of a barrier.
@@edwheezer6231 The thing is that if you ask us big corporations are anti-thetical to preservation, capitalistic companies are basically incompatible with the entire idea. As I said, because they are driven by profit there is no sense in them making everything available and for that matter accessible. There are some games that are simply not worth their time and money to do anything with, their scope does not reach every single game created, and therein lies to problem. True preservation is all encompassing, it doesn't discriminate or leave things behind, it is about every single title out there, good or bad, high profile or low profile, obscure or common. This is where corporations will never be able to, or willing for that matter, provide this in a marketplace. Luckily for us the efforts of emulation of games, scanning of paratext and the like is done for the sake of all games being readily available and remembered as art, rather than products. To corporations these game will always be products first, and that's where they fail.
If you want to support the cause there is always things to be done. It could be programming or something as simple as scanning manuals, gaming magazines and the like. There are a surprising amount of things out there that still haven't been that well documented.
Try Lukie games if you want access to basically any game, their DS games are hilariously cheap.
Ha ha,
"in theory"
We only make the classy kind of Game Theory jokes here. ;)
20:41 BuT HEy, thaT'S JUst A theoRy, a GaMe thEory! But seriously, I never knew matpat shilled for stadia. I tried playing saints row on stadia and it ran ok but I could definitely feel the input delay. Until things like input delay is fixed, I'm staying from streaming games entirely.
I legit forgot piracy existed💀
Now you know ;)
ah yes, corporations can *certainly* be trusted to preserve entertainment media, definitely, right?
The problem with emulation that aren't NES, Genesis, and SNES games, from what I've been told, is how even the most powerful PCs can't have them work properly. It's why it took a few decades to fully emulate Super Mario 64 without it crashing.
People were already emulating Mario 64 and Crash perfectly by the end of the 1990s. Certain games and systems are weird, sure. But the grand majority of games and consoles you’d wanna play are covered in spades.
I personally played games like Starfox 64 on an emulator way back in 2001, so it was definitely possible. The core problem with Nintendo 64 emulation in particular is the Oman archives SGI leak, which reveals the inner workings of the console. This WOULD be perfect for emulation to be made since we technically know how it should be done, but since that work is also copyrighted, it would be illegal to use it. More or less, because of what the leak exposed, the emulators have to explicitly emulate the hardware in a way that's not the original way, which makes it harder for emulation to be done 100% correctly. But in that light, software like Project 64 comes very close for being something that is intently "not Nintendo 64".
@@Transparencyboo Copyright law strikes again. Seriously, how brainwashed are we that, on the whole, we accept that ideas can be owned?
I very much don't have the best of gamer tech and have been able to emulate all but a few games smoothly, for any console except PS4, xbox 360 and PSVita. It's more about emulators having a dedicated gang of hackers than you having a super PC, I think. Nintendo emulation gets a lot of attention, and newer consoles are built more like regular PC's, so even the latest Switch games run perfectly on PC rips.
But yeah, older consoles with obscure hardware, and those games that use the tech weirdly (Mario 64, sure, and also Team ICO games, the later Halo or God of War games, and all of Metal Gear) will always be less stable and harder to maintain emulation for.
The liberal use of Klonoa DTP soundtrack gets a thumbs up from me :D
Videogame perservation is something everyone should care about
the future of digital liveservices where you only borrow games is true horror i consider myself very lucky growing up with og nintendo consoles & ps
Oh I love this! Thank you very much for saying all of this! But is Radical Dreamers a game? What is the difference between lost media/history and sketches/drafts?
It's funny to me that you included quotes from the director of the game, where he explicitly said that he feels embarrassed reading the game and believes that it doesn't reflect his skill or craft or even the direction he wanted to take that series in. I almost feel like something must be going over my head but I don't know if I can rewatch an hour + long video to catch a nuance like this. Were you simply being facetious when talking about Radical Dreamers? Was it simply a gag to make the essay more entertaining and not meant to actually inform the wider arguments you're making?
I mean sure, it was a finished and complete game that was published and made available to the public. But the creators did so under the understanding that what they were doing was temporary art. They expected it to disappear soon after publish. At the time, satellite gaming may well have been a theoretical future, but the satellaview was always meant to be analagous to radio plays. It's broadcast once and whoever tunes in gets to be a part of it. It is not necessarily promised to eternity.
If an artist builds an elaborate sculpture on the beach, they believe that it will be washed away by the tide. Do we have the right to delicately dig up and lift that sculpture and deliver it to dry land?
I just don't know how much of this is history or nostalgia.
you forgot the most important part of physical game superiority: you can lick them ;P
anyway ive been trying to get this one PC-98 game working. Well i mean it works, but whoever made the HDI version of it thats on archive.org didnt leave enough space for it to actually save all of the very cool and very 90s anime fairy artwork, most of which doesn't seem to be available anywhere. So i want to make my own HDI and play it and take 5000 screenshots but theres like 8 floppies and im using dosbox-x on mac and its making me cry because it hurts my brain. Someone please help me.
Oh yes, the licking factor is very important indeed. As shown by the Switch carts of course.
If you want a "We kill capitalism" simulator that deals in themes of pollution, genocide, slavery, the dissociation of classes from one another and is basically "the French revolution with robots from the people who made Dark Souls", try Armored Core 4 and For Answer, its sequel and the better of the two games. I do not expect a reading of it but its sat with me since 2008 and it made me make a lot of very uncomfortable and vast decisions. I bring it up because players have complained the game no longer runs on PS3 or 360 and an effort to make it run well in emulators and restore its multiplayer scene has just blossomed and exploded into lots of fan-games and fan-media over the last eight years or so and I'm deeply happy it is preserved.
Its a very strange and very beautiful game and seen by many as Miyazaki's "last hurrah" before Dark Souls which he supposedly didn't actually want to make: th-cam.com/video/HOvdIVWvAoQ/w-d-xo.html
I assure you if they exist a neglected market for games....they are going to be Guybrush treepwood business...
Like...my legal relation with games was...Atari...the game that comes with the Sega...and 20 years later... Steam...( I am from Argentina Btw) and believe it...every console is going to be filled with grog here...because...well...they are too expensive or we are too cheap....
I like the term "Guybrush Treepwood business", haha.
videos games
How do we preserve these videos of games? Should we? Should we be downloading these to HDD's or can we trust youtube and the internet to keep preserving them? Videos games, indeed.
Philosophical dilemma.
This has been an hour long validation session for me. I spent way too much money on ps3 and vita games in the sony store scare.
Still a shame you could not get Noby Noby Boy, because that one is a treat.
@@Transparencyboo I will never get to finish all of Keita Takahashi games now :'(
@@SilverSurfPunk I mean... there is a way... 👀
@@Transparencyboo a dubious implication. But not far out of the realm of possibilties.