Thread

1. criddell · 1789561579 · focus · HN ↗

   This will be great for preservation of PS2 games. Well done!

   It seems like preservation of games for later consoles is a lost cause. If I pull out my PS5 30 years from now and pop in my Cyberpunk 2077 disk to play, I'm going to have a barely playable game.

   It's better than nothing, I suppose, but I won't be able to re-play the excellent version that I played through last year.

   1. telotortium · 1789573841 · focus · HN ↗

      It is sad that consoles much newer than the PS2 will be very hard to preserve. On the other hand, I feel that the classic video game era ended by the 2010s or so. So maybe there won’t be that much interest in preserving the newer games, partly because they had so much DRM, required online play, and such, such that they’re harder to preserve.

      This may seem a little bit arbitrary, but this is not uncommon throughout history. For example, in a normal English literature class, you’re going to be assigned Shakespeare. You will be assigned a bunch of novels from the 19th century, but not very much in between. Yeah, sure, there are a few works, probably, from the 1600s and 1700s, but not many compared to those other ones that I mentioned.

      Video games might be the same way, where the games that were made from the NES to around 2010 are the ones that people care about far into the future.

      1. mywittyname · 1789574452 · focus · HN ↗

         Games from the 2010s are still "new". There are several major game series where the most current entry came from the 2010s. Think Skyrim & GTA5.

         Game companies still have the source code an tooling sitting around. With some minor texture brushups, they can release a "remastered" version and get $20 out of people again.

         Nintendo games are the odd ones here, because their love of novel gameplay means that a lot of first party games need to run on OG hardware for the full experience. Think Wii, DS/3DS.

         1. alt227 · 1789579432 · focus · HN ↗

            > With some minor texture brushups, they can release a "remastered" version

            Unfortunately these versions are usually inferior to the originals, so I dont think they can really be referred to as preservation.

         2. chocochunks · 1789580699 · focus · HN ↗

            Game companies maybe have the source code and tooling around. And can maybe get a remaster. Look at titles like Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD. Square Enix lost the source to KH 1 despite it only being ~12 years old at release and had to rebuild it. Developers close all the time, they get bought and sold and bought and sold and nobody is entirely sure who owns the rights to X title anymore or where the code is. Then you also have licensing rights for cars, sports leagues, music etc.

            1. manytimesaway · 1789714848 · focus · HN ↗

               Square Enix is known for having little to no archive of its past : KH1 is not the first occurence of lost source in their library.

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