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Comment count is 10
Scrimmjob - 2018-03-13

Meet the man wasting his life collecting plastic garbage.


endlesschris - 2018-03-13

Yeah. Finding the first pieces of code Satoru Iwata ever wrote is useless. Let's throw out all of Picasso's early work while we're at it.

https://www.poly gon.com/2016/8/16/12502364/ \this-could-be-the-first-code-satoru-iwata-ever-wrote-for-nintendo


Two Jar Slave - 2018-03-13

Libraries are filled with wood pulp, film archives are crammed with worthless celluloid, and your brain is a literal microbial dumpster.

(But just yours.)


Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2018-03-13

Meh. I dont like how hes trying to sell his weird hobby as somehow this great public service that he deserves funding for. Having a weird hobby like that is great! Just dont try and turn it into a cause dude.

Games magazines from any era are total shite.

If you see the games out of context. Thats good. You can be objective. Like films during the mediums technical develop, a lot of games relied on gimmicky technical tricks to sell [eg. new graphics!], rather than being actually good games. Others didnt, eg tetris. Still a brilliant, elegant game thats super fun to play.

If youre *really* concerned about preserving games, an old game with an physical release is gonna be the *least* threatened. The games most under threat of disappearing forever are the modern ones on completely ephemeral digital platforms. They are disappearing in droves in fact and in many cases copyright laws and DMCA bullshit make it illegal to preserve them.

'Freemans mind' guy has a whole series on this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-gN-pvdaaU&t=512s


Kid Fenris - 2018-03-14

Game/book/movie magazines are fascinating documents of underexplored history and occasionally the only evidence that certain unreleased or uncensored products existed.

And obscure/unreleased old stuff is in much greater danger of disappearing just because no one was saving it when it was new. There are canceled games that were essentially finished and they haven't been seen again because nobody thought to hang on to them.


endlesschris - 2018-03-14

Dude. He isn't preserving regular retail releases. He is preserving games and ephemera that would be completely lost to time if not for preservation efforts. Just a few examples:

- Frank is responsible for finding and saving the code for the cancelled English release of Final Fantasy II.

- Frank helped organize a crowdfunding campaign to purchase a Satelliview unit containing four Kirby games which were otherwise completely lost to time. The only way to put games on the Satelliview was to delete the old ones, so to find a unit which still had these games intact was a huge deal.

- Frank has been diligently scanning extremely rare fliers and marketing material which give us real insight into the evolution of the industry: for instance, how the NES was pitched to retailers who were still wary after Atari's crash.

- The magazines you deride contain tons of information about games which were cancelled or how they looked before the final release. For instance, Super Mario World looked wildly different in original screenshots.

Like, do some research man. Frank is probably the only guy doing this sort of shit, and it's not because he wants you to buy him games. He's too busy scanning documents.


exy - 2018-03-14

Thanks for that counterpoint, endlesschris. It raised my interest in this fellow.


BiggerJ - 2018-03-13

Meanwhile, the ESA keeps screeching that piracy is piracy is piracy, the setting up unofficial servers for discontinued online games is akin to illegally downloading games outright.

Piracy is important. Piracy is necessary.


Caminante Nocturno - 2018-03-13

Everything Vice produces has the stench of trust fund babies all over it, and this is no exception.


The Mothership - 2018-03-14

As a trained historian, I am in favor of these efforts.


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