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87% of classic video games are 'critically endangered.' As a millennial, I'm worried it means a huge chunk of my childhood will disappear.

https://www.businessinsider.com/majority-classic-video-games-critically-endangered-gameboy-2023-7

Games don't stay on store shelves forever and are constantly falling out of commercial distribution.

87% of classic video games are 'critically endangered.' As a millennial, I'm worried it means a huge chunk of my childhood will disappear.::Games don't stay on store shelves forever and are constantly falling out of commercial distribution.

24 comments

Zarxrax

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87% of classic video games are no longer available commercially.

I'll just keep emulating them like I always have.

bastian_5

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But, but, but...

The nice creators won't be getting their money.... Oh wait, you have to buy from resellers...

The nice scalpers won't be able to get their money!

housepanther

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I am sorry OP but I am just not seeing it. I've found all kinds of emulators and ROM downloads for all the classics. What do you see as critically endangered?

DaFuqs

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Well, compared to books which have public archives that pretty much receive one print of each book in existance, all of those dumps come from private people. Even those emulators are created by hobbyists.

And then there are the always-online / drm ridden games that are unplayable again.

Movies have the same issues. Lots of old movies have been lost to time, only the most popular ones have been preserved. Yet again, mostly by private collectors.

housepanther

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All around fair points you raise.

MrBungle

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I didn't think of the always online games.

Fordiman

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Someone is.

asparagus9001

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I'd really love to know what the percentage is that is or is at risk of truly being lost - this article just completely ignores that piracy exists. Maybe you can't buy game boy games or Metal Gear or Unreal Tournament anymore but the idea that they are inaccessible is just plainly wrong. I guess you probably can't advertise that in business insider (if only to prevent some ridiculous lawsuit from Nintendo) but it changes this number drastically.

I actually do remember stuff from the 90s and 2000s that's truly lost, and it's a damn shame, but the black flag will always provide.

Landmammals

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I haven't researched this at all but I feel like a lot of the flash content like from Newgrounds is the most in danger of being lost.

ROMs get preserved by virtue of being part of a numbered collection.

Bianca_0089

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I do remember that one Accursed Farms channel on youtube that would sometimes try very very hard to find various "full versions" of old floppy-disk shareware demo games. Either by contacting the developers or going on these huuuge rabbithole searches to compile stuff together

fubo

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If you lived in the ancient times, some of the stories that you were told as a child would never be told again, because the storyteller died and nobody else remembered that particular story. Only some stories would be preserved, and be considered to be cultural lore that must be retold to every generation.

A lot of the games made in the 1980s were pretty crap, really. Many were highly derivative of other games. Whole families of games are mostly remembered for their single best entry: for instance, the entire Galaxian series is best remembered for its second entry, Galaga — but Centipede is better remembered than its sequel Millipede, partly because the former shipped for many more platforms.

sj_zero

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I'm not sure that's true.

I mean, which classic video games are endangered? As far as I know, virtually every video game for every classic console has backups online, as well as the overwhelming majority of PC games. There's even an overwhelming wealth of arcade games archived.

The things we should be most concerned about are the more recent games that require a central server because as Ross Scott likes to remind us, those are the games that can and will be killed at any time.

bastian_5

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Emulation?

That's the reason emulators are great: games that would otherwise die with the hardware they run on can live forever.

Shadow

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Weird, I have an analogue pocket and classic video games seem perfectly alive to me.

https://www.analogue.co/pocket

Kodemystic

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Those games will always be in your heart, those games will never die.

MrBungle

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Sounds like we just need to start a federated network of classic games sharing. Can't sue a protocol, right?

( I know nothing of how any of that would work)

drspod

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It's called Bittorrent.

schaffertom

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While I don't fear for the games I either own physically or which are widely available digitally (some will be forgotten, sure. But if you love them, you can collect them). But games as a service will be and are constantly lost. Basically everything that relies on servers or is massively multiplayer is only available for a couple of years at best. And few of those even allow for fan hosted servers anymore nowaddays. And they constantly change significantly. E.g. You just can't play the original League of Legends or PUBG anymore. Those worlds and games are immensely popular right now and at the same time already lost forever. Whenever a new patch changes something major or a map gets remade, that experience isn't the same anymore.

So I guess: play solo games from local copies of some sort and chill to avoid the problem? ;)

zobatch

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The Completionist does a decent job of summing it all up https://youtu.be/UyhsZE6QIJ4