Our Video Game Heritage Is Rotting Away 492
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?"
Vectrex (Score:5, Informative)
Even if you could emulate the graphics you couldn't emulate the clear plastic templates you had to mount on the screen depending on the game
Re:Vectrex (Score:3, Informative)
You can't?
Ever see the emulations of Space Invaders that are colored? Space Invaders is black and white, the color was from plastic on the screen.
Re:Vectrex (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No fear. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Their evaluation of emulators (Score:5, Informative)
Zsnes is great, but not a model of accuracy. The audio accuracy is especially poor. It's also written partly in 32-bit x86 assembly, so it's only going to be with us for as long as x86 is.
bsnes on the other hand is written to be cycle accurate. Everything the hardware does is emulated, with no shortcuts. That is what we really need from emulators. Plus it's written in portable C++, so it will be around forever. The downside is that you need a fairly hefty machine to run it.
Re:No fear. (Score:3, Informative)
Electronics aren't as easy to custom-make as mechanical parts. Especially vector screens aren't something you can make with your standard workshop equipment.
I would argue that a projector screen ($50), a bright Semiconductor visible laser ($10) and a home made "MEMS" device (small mirror with X, Y analogue control) driven with appropriate analogue circuit could be used as a modern stand in ($100-200).
Re:Permanent archiving is impossible (Score:3, Informative)
At the time the Rosetta Stone was discovered, there was no such thing as archeology. The knowledge of Egypt that existed at the time mostly came from Greek writings. Nobody really cared enough to go digging around, looking for something that might let them understand the Egyptian writings. People tried to translate Ancient Egyptian languages, because many artifacts made their way to more convenient locations like Paris, but that was only the most valuable artifacts. There could have been any number of Rosetta Stones holding up some goat herder's roof and nobody really noticed or cared.
The Rosetta Stone became a symbol not so much because of itself, but because of the events around it. Napoleon invaded Egypt and actually started digging for stuff. He is considered by many to be the first archaeologist. His scientists happened to find the Rosetta Stone. Being scientists for once, rather than grave robbers, they noticed it might be important and got the information to people who were trying to understand the languages on it. The linguists who looked at it used it to decipher the Ancient Egyptian languages.
So he probably didn't know, but not because he had no idea what might be important to the future. Simply, he had no crystal ball with which to determine a rather convoluted series of events in the far future.
Re:Computer Games Too! (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting you should mention this, now. In the past five days, I've managed to get the original Myst, Myst III, and Civilization II working on Linux, under Wine. I'll be honest and admit it did require a fair amount of futzing, but once I did, but I was able to play a game of Myst all the way through. The only thing I haven't resolved, yet, is getting Intel's Indeo video drivers working, for Civ2. (The game is still playable, I just can't see any of the video portions, which aren't really that important for the gameplay, anyway.)