[game_preservation] update

[Simon Carless]

Hey Istvan,

You know, that's a good idea. I have a couple of things to announce/update.

- firstly, there were some fairly major server/structure changes at the 
Internet Archive, and some problems that are still being resolved, but 
the game videos collections got moved across without TOO much trouble: 
http://www.archive.org/details/gamevideos . Items are still being added 
to the speed runs and machinima collections, but we haven't had too much 
time to do any other major additions - we can add a lot of the Kikizo 
videos again when we have a chance, because we're allowed to archive 
those a month after they're posted.

- secondly, I'm very, VERY excited about a new commercial project called 
GameTap (http://www.gametap.com) from Turner, the AOL Time Warner-owned 
folks who also do Cartoon Network/Adult Swim and Turner Classic Movies, 
etc. Here's the pictures from their E3 assets CD:
http://www.breakmanx.com/E32005/GameTap/ . Basically, the deal is - this 
is commercially-motivated, but extremely intriguing game preservation. 
Turner are putting 75-100 people into this service, which uses proper 
emulation and officially licenses arcade, Atari 2600, Intellivision, 
Sega Master System, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, and more (Commodore is 
rumored to be coming, possibly!). You'll pay $15 per month for an 'all 
you can eat' monthly fee to play any of the 300 games the service 
launches with, and there will be games added each week. The big deal 
with this is that - well, one of the reasons the Internet Archive's 
preservation efforts for actual games (as opposed to game footage) has 
tailed off is that there's nowhere to go with them - you have to wait 75 
years for them to become legally available under PD. Well, the Turner 
guys are using the original ROMs, as far as I know, and they're putting 
care into getting additional material to run alongside it, and most 
importantly, they have the money to make old games available again. It's 
not the answer to anyone's problems, and you can't keep the games that 
you download forever, but it _is_ good news for people who want to play 
old games legally - also, these guys really care about games. For 
example, despite the fact they're all American, I spoke to them about 
Team17 at E3 and they knew all about the pre-Worms material and all 
sorts of obscurity. And they seem to really care about getting emulation 
right. So... I like em. Doesn't mean we should stop doing other things, 
but having a business model for re-publishing old games easily will make 
a big different for companies actually saving these games themselves, I 
reckon.

- thirdly, it looks like I really do not have the time to develop this 
SIG any further. What it would be _great_ to have would be someone who 
could keep updating the SIG weblog (which we have very basically ready 
to go) with news of game preservation-related efforts. Mail me offlist 
if you can help.

Anyhow, that's my update.
s!


István Fábián wrote:

>We'll have some new things to announce soonish.
>Since this forum has been quiet for quite some time how about an update from
>the others?
>
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