Video games are a relatively young hobby, medium and industry, but some data are already worrying purists. While digital sales are exploding to the detriment of physical versions, forcing some shops to close their doors, now an association is sounding the alarm bell that echoes this new mode of consumption.
There Video Game History Foundation just recently published a report claiming that 87% of video games released in the United States are critically endangered. It means that only 13% of games are easily accessible on the market, and for everything else, you have to go through more complex options : having old hardware and keeping your old cartridges, going to a museum or illegally pirating a game. Hardware always ends up giving up the ghost, and going to a museum or a library to find an old game, is not ideal, Video Game History Foundation warns against the disappearance of cult titles.
To carry out this study, the association selected more than 1,500 games at random, as long as they were released in the United States before 2010, when the digital market began to expand. She also looked at a variety of hardware, ranging from consoles with a market deemed abandoned (like the Commodore 64), neglected (Game Boy) or active (PlayStation 2) to ultimately having 4,000 games to study. And among them, 87% are difficult to access, despite the ports of cult titles like Final Fantasy VII, Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. on modern platforms. Another element to take into account, the nature of the ports: if the titles mentioned above are obviously very well preserved, this is not the case with the remake of Yakuza, Yakuza Kiwami, considered too different from the original. The latter is a PS2 game released in 2005, much harder to find than its 2016 remake.
Moreover, keeping your old hardware (television, consoles, controllers, cartridges) or praising the work of museums and libraries that preserve old games is not everything. There Video Game History Foundation take the example of the movie titanic by James Cameron : it would mean keeping your old VCR and an old VHS tape to see Leonardo DiCaprio alongside Kate Winslet, or going to a museum to see the film again, without the possibility of viewing it at home. Unthinkable for a movie, and yet that’s what happens with video games. And, yes, the issue of piracy is therefore addressed, it is still the easiest way to get your hands on old games, but still illegal.
Despite the alarm bells, that theESA (who organizes theE3) had already fired several times in recent years, things are struggling to move and even video game researchers have to go to theU.S. Copyright Officein Washington, in order to get their hands on old titles. Not to mention exclusively online games, such as MMOswhich permanently disappear when the servers are closed.
The ball is obviously in the court of publishers and developersbut with the desire to offer more remakes and remasters which have been sprouting up everywhere in recent months, the trend could be reversed. For their part, museums and libraries can work on better ways to share their collections with players around the world, without having to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles.
Nostalgic fans can find the Atari Flashback Gold Special 50th Anniversary Edition with 130 retro games to 88 € on Amazon.
| Clint008 Writer – Tester |
