[game_preservation] Preservation Whitepaper Brainstorm Progress

[Captain Commando]

The only thing I know off the top of my head (and this was mentioned in the
brainstorm material I sent) is the art assets (and other materials) Konami
lost during the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995. That's why they haven't
produced high-resolution images of the early Castlevania game art - the
originals just don't exist for them to do it. I don't have a list of
everything they lost, but I know the original Castlevania art was
unfortunately a part of that.

In addition, there's plenty other cases of rare finds like this just
mysteriously showing up in places (though it's not as good an example as the
Castlevania one). A few years ago, the guy who used to run the Metroid
Database picked up the official Super Metroid developer's map off of e-bay.
Now shouldn't Nintendo have taken better care of something that was from
such a historically important game? Looks like he'll have to ensure it's
well-preserved now as its new custodian!

I've had personal losses of data and games. In most of the disk-based cases,
it hasn't been total devastation, as the games are still available on the
web, but a couple of the Amiga games I've got actually haven't appeared in
rom form on the web (The Logic Master, actually :P). This one is actually in
the search list for the software preservation group (d'oh!). Thankfully, I
know a person who was involved in their development, so I could see if she's
got a copy somewhere...

-Devin Monnens

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 6:25 AM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>wrote:


> Regarding the whitepaper, we need some concrete examples of videogame loses

> we've already had. I know there are some collectors on here, so this should

> be easy; a list of videogames which were produced, but are now lost (all

> copies gone, masters deleted, whatever), and unreleased games which were

> lost and will never be recovered (betas, alphas, whatever).

>

> Doesn't have to be a long one, I'm all for brevity.

>

> However, I'm sure there is a ton, especially from pre-CD days, and from

> companies which have become defunct (specific examples of companies which

> lost loads of material would be good too!).

>

> I've tried Google, but there is no specific pages answering to my queries

> ("lost videogames" comes up with...the Lost videogame, thanks Google!

> Nothing on Wikipedia specifically either). There is no site I've got

> bookmarked or RSSed which hosts such a list as far as I know, apart from

> I've not checked the Playstation archive which lists a few incomplete

> games/recovered games - obviously actually something else to list too.

>

> Also; while there are of course a long list of games which are of limited

> availability now (ie; no company or archive holds onto them, only

> collectors, and even then maybe only a few copies of the game, making it

> generally unplayable by historians), that's always going to be a problem

> until the archives really are well funded and the size of what film and TV

> archives are today, so probably are not worth noting just yet.

>

> Thanks if anyone knows any!

>

>

> Andrew

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing list

> game_preservation at igda.org

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>




-- 
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

"Until next time..."
Captain Commando
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20081010/df4c3a9b/attachment.html>