Retro Gaming and Emulation for Archival Preservation

[innerspaceboy]

I personally left gaming behind in the MS-DOS 5.0 / 8-bit NES console era circa 1985-1995, but the preservationist in me waxes nostalgic for those halcyon days.

About a decade ago, I picked up a torrent of 6,666 classic ROMS to emulate most major titles released in both North America and in Japan for all major computer systems and popular consoles from the Commodore 64 to the Nintendo 64, as well as all of the most popular arcade titles of the era. I picked up a few USB retro controllers and enjoyed reliving my childhood, mashing an F-key to pump in quarters.

My brother recently shared an article woefully claiming that "87% of classic video games are critically endangered" and that "Preserving classic video games has become increasingly difficult, according to the Video Game History Foundation."

I responded to him calling attention to the fact that archivists around the world have risen to the challenge of preserving these classic titles. There are a number of compact flash-based hardware retro consoles available prepackaged with thousands of vintage games, though they don't explicitly have the rights to distribute them legally.

The largest preloaded library I could find with a 5-second search was the Super Console X King Retro Game Console which contains over 117,000 classic games and 65+ emulators.

Or if you'd like to build your own MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) console, several tens of thousands of these titles are available from The Internet Archive, and a handful of gamer curators have cherry picked the 20-30,000 best titles and compiled them into single-click downloadable libraries with instructions on how to emulate each classic computer system/gaming console based on your operating system of choice. (I'll omit direct links for the sake of compliance with forum policies.) It's a shame that the major gaming companies like Nintendo refuse to officially license their deleted titles for distribution. Consequently, the only way to enjoy many of the rarer titles is to emulate them independently without Nintendo's permission.

I've considered purchasing a full-size vintage arcade cabinet with a four-player joystick interface and modding my own free and open-source MAME gaming station, preloaded with every surviving title. (I have well over 300 mods of the classic Pac-Man game alone.) It would be fun to design custom vinyl graphics for the cabinet and would provide an even more authentic retro gaming experience.

I wonder if any other members of this community dabble in retro gaming emulation? I'd love to hear about your custom builds, ROM libraries, favorite titles, preferred navigational interface design to maneuver between consoles and games, and hardware controller selection like the popular X-Arcade Stick, (pictured below).

It's sad that many games are not available to the public in a strictly legal sense, but for archivists who wish to preserve these titles for future generations, in just a few hours' time you can assemble your own library of over a hundred thousand classic games.

I'd welcome the community's thoughts on the subject.

[Lexi Darling]

Aside from growing up with the Game Boy (I got mine for Christmas in 1995) and my across the street neighbor's SNES and Genesis (yes he had both haha), I had a big retrogaming phase back in college. For reference I entered college in 2008 at the arguable peak of Angry Video Game Nerd, who helped expose me to a lot of games from the pre-16 bit era that were before my time. During those lonely nights in my dorm I would play a lot of classics from the 80s and 90s via emulation. I remember playing Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, the NES Zeldas, and others back then. I actually had my dorm mate film me beating Castlevania 1. Not sure if I still have that footage.

Since graduating in 2014, I have rarely played video games at all, but I support archive projects for sure. I dream of a world with a legal platform for playing these formative games, good and bad. I think if Nintendo launched a Steam-esque service for their entire gaming history it would make so much money AND be good for historical preservation.

[Guybrush]

I used to be part of a retro gaming community before I joined MB and, although it's nowhere close to the sort of ambition for your proposed project, I have curated a digital collection of ROMs and had a system set up using XBMC (now Kodi) as a library GUI that would launch ROMs with the appropriate emulator etc.

As with many such things, I found the joy of setting up the system more interesting or fun than actually using it. A handful of old games are fun and I occasionally play them again. Zelda: A Link to the Past or Dr. Mario are good examples. But by and large, I prefer playing more modern games. Lots of great little titles are coming out, like Inscryption and Dredge, as well as the occasional triple A wonders like Elden Ring. Overall I have more fun with that and my time is more precious to me now that I'm a semi burned out parent. I also wanna support good developers.

I do have a modern hardware C64 system, but what I'd most want to do is play modern C64 games on it. People and studios are still making C64 games and some of them look great.

Check out the trailer for the modern C64 game MW Ultra f.ex:

Or Sam's Journey:

Although I haven't played them, they and other modern games look impressive to me, also in making the most of the limited hardware they run on. I assume it's tough for them having to compete with all those old titles.

[Lexi Darling]

As with many such things, I found the joy of setting up the system more interesting or fun than actually using it. A handful of old games are fun and I occasionally play them again. Zelda: A Link to the Past or Dr. Mario are good examples. But by and large, I prefer playing more modern games. Lots of great little titles are coming out, like Inscryption and Dredge, as well as the occasional triple A wonders like Elden Ring. Overall I have more fun with that and my time is more precious to me now that I'm a semi burned out parent. I also wanna support good developers.

That's so interesting! I much prefer classic games, modern massive open world immersive experiences are too much for me. I've never really delved into indie games though, the mister is my main exposure to gaming and he's a capital G gamer who mostly does big mainstream titles.

But ultimately I feel the time management thing most of all, I have so many duties and gaming is something that's very difficult to multitask with, so I just had to make that sacrifice for my current lifestyle. I've been getting back into Pokemon lately though, the mister is letting me use his Switch and we're playing the newest Pokemon game as a Nuzlocke run. Pretty fun so far!

[Guybrush]

That's so interesting! I much prefer classic games, modern massive open world immersive experiences are too much for me. I've never really delved into indie games though, the mister is my main exposure to gaming and he's a capital G gamer who mostly does big mainstream titles.

But ultimately I feel the time management thing most of all, I have so many duties and gaming is something that's very difficult to multitask with, so I just had to make that sacrifice for my current lifestyle. I've been getting back into Pokemon lately though, the mister is letting me use his Switch and we're playing the newest Pokemon game as a Nuzlocke run. Pretty fun so far!

Triple A titles are sometimes amazing and can be a lot of fun even when they aren't, like Rider's Republic or Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

But my favorite gaming moments the last few years have usually been smaller indie games. At best, they offer completely new experiences with the two I mentioned being very good examples 🙂