[game_preservation] Game preservation videos?

[Captain Commando]

Hi, all,

Been following this for the past couple of days and enjoying the
discussions.  Archive.org and Speed Demos Archive are two of several
speedrun archives out there.  Two others I know of have different
specialties that might be of interest:

TAS Archives (Tool Assisted Speedruns) - http://tasvideos.org/
This site uses glitches and mechanical tools to beat games faster than
humanly possible.  It's interesting because I've seen some comments about
this type of work that call them cheaters for it, when I just think it is
finding a way to complete a game as fast as possible (and to make it look
interesting while you're doing it).  So this is another aspect of speedruns
and game playing that should be noted.  The downside is that this uses
emulation, so legality becomes a bigger problem.  However, their engineers
might have a solution to a lossless recording through emulation, and they
also have recordings of button presses used in the videos.

SuperPlay - http://www.super-play.co.uk/
This website specializes in shoot 'em up and action arcade games.  These are
speed runs done by very skilled players, and has some great video including
footage of a guy single-handedly playing as both players in Ikaruga.

There is another type of speedrun I have played a little bit with.  I call
them 'speedy speedruns' and are essentially a speedrun that is played back
at a faster rate.  They can be enhanced by adding new audio tracks.  I have
uploaded a few videos to YouTube, of which the Super Castlevania IV video is
the most popular (though also a bit long -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpC7-A4Ye-Y ).  These use video from the TAS
Archives and I don't think the idea is completely unique.  Sometimes the
videos are a bit mesmerizing to watch (even moreso than the originals), but
I think they also can have commentary on game narratives and the nature of
speedruns.  If a speedrun's goal is to beat the game as quickly as possible,
then a speedy speedrun can in some ways make fun of that by completing the
game in an unrealistic speed.  A lot of other (normal) speedruns have also
made it to YouTube, of course, though in a lossy quality.

There are three other important resources I would like to point out.  The
first deals with recordings of videogame endings.  Some good resources for
this are are MamEnd (http://www.vazcomics.org/mamend/index.htm) and GamEnd (
http://www.vazcomics.org/mamend/gamend/index.htm), as well as the VGMuseum (
http://www.vgmuseum.com/).  They are screenshot collections of the endings
to the games but again use emulation to grab the shots (as someone once
said, while technology has made it possible for us to do things more easily,
it has made it harder for us to do it legally).  Interesting enough,
gamerevolution.com is building a video collection of endings, but as far as
I know, MamEnd is the only place to find collections of arcade game endings
(even though the site is in Spanish, I don't think there's a lot of
commentary).  Recording game endings is an excellent resource, and for
MamEnd in particular it is very valuable for compiling information on
developers of early arcade games (I've used it quite a few times for this
purpose).

The second resource is a save file archive.  A save file archive is
invaluable to researchers because some times, we just aren't good enough at
a game to get to the end of it.  Playing games also takes time.  The ironic
thing about videogames is that they are digital technology but for the most
part, won't let you jump to different points in the game (in some cases they
will let you do this, but only after you complete the game).  A lot of this
probably comes from the algorithmic nature of games (they are state
machines, after all) and the arcade paradigms of basing games on skill and
play time.  The problem is that if I am doing research on a longer game like
Final Fantasy VII and I want to see a scene that is 20 hours into the game,
then I have to play through the game for 20 hours to see it.  If this were a
book or movie, I could skip right to that point in a matter of moments.
Save file archives would allow us to do the same with videogames, so game
archives, and perhaps even research papers, could make use of save files and
save states.

The third resource is a game manual archive, of which there is a nice one at
Replacement Docs (http://www.replacementdocs.com/news.php).  I think this
type of collection is pretty much self-explanatory, though it does also get
into copyright issues (but if there is an issue, why doesn't the company who
has a problem with it simply make their manuals available through their own
channels?).

I believe some of these types of resources have been covered by the SIG (and
I know Archive.org is trying to maintain a collection of some of these), so
sorry if this has been old news.  I just figured I would bring them up again
and put it all in the same location.

Best regards,

Devin Monnens
University of Denver
www.deserthat.com
-- 
"Until next time..."
Captain Commando
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