While it’s true that some people would view video games as “entertainment items only” and not something that needs to be “preserved for all time,” just as many people would state that video games are treasures and should be protected. After all, the gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar business that makes almost untold amounts of money every year across consoles and mobile devices. That doesn’t even count the video game adaptations that happen on the big and small screens. So when two groups state that many “Classic Video Games” are close to being lost, that should get your attention.
The groups in question are the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network. Their names should tell you rather quickly what they do. They look at video games from previous generations and not only record them but try to preserve them. As you might expect, that’s not easy to do when multiple game developers and publishers don’t ensure that console and handheld games from certain generations aren’t openly available for preservation.
For example, how many of you remember the Commodore 64? It was a system within one of the first console generations. Yet, if you wanted to play some of its games, the teams state you could only find about 4.5% of them, as noted by VGC.
Or how about the Game Boy? The all-time classic handheld that set the tone for many to come later? Across all systems, you’d only be able to find about 5.8% amount of its games. That’s a shockingly low number, and you have to imagine that the numbers continue to fluctuate as you go from system to system:
“Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape, and maintain your own vintage equipment so that you could still watch it,” the study noted. “And what if no library, not even the Library of Congress, could do any better — they could keep and digitize that VHS of Titanic, but you’d have to go all the way there to watch it. It sounds crazy, but that’s the reality we live in with video games, a $180 billion industry, while the games and their history disappear.”
While it’s true that not all of these titles are “Classic Video Games,” that’s not the point here. Each game is a part of video game history and should be preserved. If not? Then it’s lost to time, which we should try to avoid.
