Industry-Hated Game Emulators Save Two Video Games For Posterity
from the emulation-preservation dept
For far too many years, the video game industry struggled to assert its place as a true artform, one deserving of the kind of respect granted to movies, music, television, and literature. This has been a source of frustration to those of us who can recognize the powerful storytelling device that video games represent, as well as the way modern games contribute to art and social commentary. But by its nature as a relatively new medium, games have also struggled to preserve the industry's history in the way more widely and permanently disseminated artforms have accomplished. And that's where the gaming industry has taken a turn against its own artistic interests, often demonizing methods for preserving gaming history over intellectual property concerns. Emulators are the chief method at hand, where games that are ancient by gaming standards can be digitized and preserved for posterity, save for the threat of legal action over copyright infringement and the industry's attempts to stave off these useful tools.
Like so many issues in the intellectual property world, it's not hard to understand the gaming industry's consternation. There's no doubt that many people use emulators simply to play games from old consoles and cabinets rather than pay for physical copies. Still, there's also no doubt that these same emulators work to preserve the artistic output in the gaming realm. This was most recently evidenced in two games that might never have seen the light of day again, save for emulators.
The first is the discovery and release of Millennium Racer: Y2K Fighters, a previously completely unknown 2001 Dreamcast port of a 1999 PC racing game. The title was recently discovered intact on a Dreamcast development kit, altered a bit to get it into a playable state, and then released as both an emulatable ROM and a burnable disc image that will work in actual Dreamcast hardware...The second emulation-fueled release making the rounds recently is Primal Rage 2, the unreleased sequel to the popular prehistoric-themed, stop-motion arcade fighting game of the mid '90s. Only two prototype cabinets for the cancelled sequel are known to exist, and one of them has been playable at Illinois' sprawling Galloping Ghost arcade complex since 2014.
The moment we agree that games like this are a form of art, we must also agree on the impetus to preserve that art. And once that's done, we can only conclude that these efforts to digitize the history of gaming in this manner have to be more important than any legal hurdles that exist in the form of copyright infringement or DMCA prohibitions on tinkering with them. The stated purpose of copyright seems to make this quite clear. What could be more important to promoting the arts than preserving art that could otherwise be at risk of total loss?
Emulators and those that use and support them play a key role in this, one that goes beyond merely copying the game digitally to be played.
While both of these games were technically accessible on their original hardware when they were discovered, it's only the ability to copy and emulate the software on other hardware (often with crucial software tweaks) that has made sure they'll be preserved and playable going forward. That kind of preservation doesn't just happen, either; remember that an estimated three-quarters of all silent films ever made have been lost to history. Thanks to emulation and a committed community of video game preservationists, that situation seems less likely to happen as the video game medium grows out of its youth.
The future will judge the history of gaming by the actions of the present. If games are art, and they are, then efforts to preserve this art must be cheered on, not demonized.
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No one in their right mind would ever think games like Sonic the Hedgehog 1 are sellable and commercially viable games anymore these days. That's why even Sega doesn't sell it anymore.
There's only a small handful of Sega Genesis games that have retained their value today. But the people who own the copyright on them don't sell them anymore, it's just collectors on Ebay who sell them.
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Actually, that's a very bad example;
https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Sonic-The-Hedgehog/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258 410864
But, for the majority of games you're right. Not only are they not on sale, the publishers don't even exist any more for a lot of them. They should be available regardless.
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What makes a work of art or a pop culture artifact worth preserving — is it the medium in which it is presented, the supposed quality of the work, or some other intangible subjective quality? Who amongst us has the right to declare what art “deserves” preservation?
In other words: What compelling reason could you possibly offer to justify why a video game considered by industry historians and average gamers alike to be one of the best games ever made (e.g., “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past”) deserves less of a shot at proper preservation than a film considered by all who have seen it to be one of the worst films ever made (“Manos: The Hands of Fate”)?
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1. Configurable controls. Ever try to play a flight sim game using a left-handed D-pad? It sucks! Using an emulator, you can plug in a joystick and use that instead. Or just change the button layout to something you're more comfortable with.
2. Save States. How many old games didn't have a save feature? Or they didn't let you save in the middle of a level. Or they made you enter ridiculously long passwords.
That said, I do have an issue with the "preservation" aspect as it relates to 80s game consoles. Most all the commercial games from that era have been dumped and archived. Whenever a prototype game is found, there are calls to have it dumped and preserved.
But what about all the homebrew games that have been created and sold over the last decade? Unless the author released the ROM file themselves, you won't find a single one of them anywhere on the net. I get that the authors want to make money from their creations and I have no problem with that, but many of these games were only produced in limited quantities and are now unavailable unless you're willing to pay $150-200 or more on eBay.
The authors have made all the money they're ever going to make from these games and there are a limited number of copies floating around. Most people will never get to play these games because they can't afford to spend that kind of money for a game that might only hold their interest for a few minutes.
Don't these games deserve to be preserved and enjoyed by all? Apparently not as there seems to be a world-wide ban on dumping them. Either that, or everyone who knew how to dump game cartridges has now lost that ability.
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So how would it help to have them dump a copy of the cartridges and then not make those dumps available?
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The "continue" system in Super Mario Bros. 3 is actually really interesting, especially in 2-player mode, and very generous—particularly for an NES game. I may have noticed as a child... but then I got good enough to never lose all my lives (1-ups are all over the place if you know where to look), and was mostly playing alone, so I forgot.
You're missing out if you only play with save-states. Some things to pay attention to:
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Source Code & Hardware Designs
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When I started looking at emulating some of my game library (I have a habit for hoarding most of my old games, with titles going back to the ZX Spectrum), I found that the original disks were not usable in an emulator due to the disk formats. There were, however, complete collections from each of the original piracy crews available to download. Thus, without access to an original machine, any game not pirated was consigned to history, whereas I could play any game that had originally been pirated, albeit in a modified format.
This will only get more prominent as disks die and original machines are harder to come by - the pirated / emulated games are here to stay, those not will disappear.
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The source code MIGHT still be available but back in those days many fixes were made directly in the game's machine code. Couple that with a lack of VCS and whatever source code has remained may not even be representative of the original game.
It even happened in more recent times. For an example you need not look further than the Silent Hill 2 & 3 HD re-release for the PS3.
There's your argument for preservation.
With a lifetime of 75+ years, copyright on the earliest ATARI 2600 games won't expire earlier than 2052.
Curators need exceptions. We shouldn't let those games simply be lost to the mist of history.
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This was recently noted for Apple II software, and the preceding link has a call for original disks. (You may want to email about sending software for other systems too.)
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You...don't...get...it...
Similar to a lot of music copying, the problem is not that people are depriving the industry of selling old original games. The problem is that all the time and effort people spend on acquiring and playing old games is not spent on acquiring and playing new games and the necessary hardware.
And worse: if they can enjoy navigating a 16x16 8-color pixel character (rather than 500x1000 16777216-color pixels) through some maze competently handled by an 8-bit processor at 4MHz rather than a GPU, they get a wrong understanding what "fun" is about.
The only redeeming quality of physical arcade games is that they are a rare commodity.
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They control the IP and completely ignore what seems to be robust demand, then bitch when people work around them as they take a few decades to figure out if they have clearances for the chip tunes.
Then there are the games that have changed hands so many times and the papers are molding in a warehouse because no one wants to bother to go through it... unless someone else might try to make a buck off of it. They they issue threats, without even knowing if they have the paperwork trying to kill off any development.
If only they didn't keep expanding the time people could own IP, we could hit a point where the games could be saved and given new life legally. Not having to be edited because the contract was missing the term "in the known universe forever" when acquiring the rights to use it in the game.
Perhaps it is time to demand that code & carts be submitted to be stored for the day when the public finally gains new additions to that public domain thing I've heard of but never seen.
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When copyright law respects me I will start respecting it.
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What could be done is to have DMCA exceptions for the backup of games for systems that are no longer manufactured.
Re-releases of games would still be covered by DMCA because their DRM exists on hardware still being manufactured.
Additionally, museums and archival institutions should be allowed to obtain, hold onto such games.
That would at least be a start.
Sure it would be great to get rid of most of 17 U.S. Code § 1201 but that's practically impossible at this point.
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The Constitution allows copyright but doesn't require it. So why couldn't we decide that out-of-print stuff is public domain?
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That's pretty much how I see it. There are no 'lost sales' if it's not for sale, and the idea of 'well they might want to re-release it again in the future' is a weak excuse at best.
The (theoretical) purpose behind copyright isn't to provide a steady stream of revenue to companies and individuals, it's to benefit the public by giving them more stuff to work with and/or use, so if a company isn't selling something the in a manner the public can actually make use of it the public should get it's half of the deal, as the company clearly doesn't think the game is worth supporting themselves at that point.
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Yeah, a real sign of how crazy things have become that if culture is to be preserved it will be in spite of the laws, rather than because of it. Things will be preserved not because those that own the rights bothered to do so, but because other people were willing to ignore the laws and do it themselves.
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Copyright infringement baloney
The US Constitution under powers granted to Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
The writings and discoveries are protected, not the method of interacting with them.
This extension of the DMCA is clearly unconstitutional.
If you bought it legitimately, and you did not copy it, the method of display should be immaterial.
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