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an analysis of historical video game availability shows that only 13% of classic video games are currently commercially available across consoles and time periods, and only 3% of games prior to 1985 (social.coop)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by jonny@social.coop to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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an analysis of historical video game availability shows that only 13% of classic video games are currently commercially available across consoles and time periods, and only 3% of games prior to 1985

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https://zenodo.org/record/7996492

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[-] Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 year ago

As much as I support and endorse game preservation, this doesn't seem like a shocking number. I wonder what percentage of those games are actually worth playing?

[-] bilb@lem.monster 4 points 1 year ago

I'm actually a bit surprised by how high it is.

[-] jonny@social.coop 3 points 1 year ago

@bilb
@Mugmoor
that's fair. I think they are approaching it as archivists rather than as gamers - preserving cuktur artifacts regardless if they're good or not

[-] bilb@lethallava.land 1 points 1 year ago

@jonny@social.coop @bilb@lem.monster @Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com Right, "commercially available," "freely available," and "safely, but privately archived," are different things.

I think one set of examples that really push the boundaries of "is this really worth preserving?" are all of those GBA cartridges that just had really compressed videos on them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Advance_Video