If the conservation of video game heritage largely involves the safeguarding of codes and data, we must not forget the whole physical aspect, in particular by securing cartridges, CDs or diskettes. But it also involves jackets and manuals, just as important in this short but dense history of the medium. Very little developed at the level of national cultural institutions, even if the BNF works hard in France, this desire for protection often remains the prerogative of associations, foundations or individuals.
This is the case of a certain Kirkland who took the – immense – time to scan more than 1,900 PlayStation 2 title manuals with 4K resolution, i.e. the entire US catalog of the Sony machine. Questioned by Kotaku, the latter explains that he wanted not only to highlight the act of preservation, but also to keep accessible the indications necessary for the operation of each game: “The goal is to raise awareness of game preservation efforts. So many games have shaped the way we see and experience the world […] there have been great efforts to preserve the games: The VGHF, the Strong Museum, and popular actions like MAME, redump.org, No-Intro, and Cowering’s Good Tools before that. I always thought, “That’s great! We’re going to be able to keep everything.” But without the manuals, we won’t know how to play it.“.
A work of titan, made available on the famous Archive.org storage site, accessible to everyone. Kirkland states all the same with a certain bitterness that it would be much easier and more efficient for the companies concerned to archive their products (or that they did so at the time), but there too, this awareness has very took a long time to set up. It remains a minority. Kirkland therefore continues its expensive collection, now having 7500 manuals, spread over different consoles, with 3000 of them already scanned.