[game_preservation] Frank Cifaldi's preservation article on 1Up

[Martin Goldberg]

Well, I can say on the Atari related front there's a number of people
making efforts to those route.  Matt Reichert is probably the most
well known and active - http://atariprotos.com/.  He routinely dumps
and archives protos, unreleased games, and such and is someone I'd
consider an expert in those regards.

There's also my partner Curt Vendel, who has the largest Atari related
archive including mainframe backups, engineering schematics, internal
documentation, protos, source code, artwork, etc.  In fact the current
Atari has him on retainer for resources whenever they need it.  He
just provided all the cabinet artwork and other related resources for
the Atari games in Microsoft's just announced virtual game room.

That brings to mind another issue with regards to preservation - when
you're talking about older companies and brands, a lot of them simply
don't have the proper archives or their own material either,
regardless of 3rd party.

A related historical example - I remember a recent research spat
getting down the actual US release date of Super Mario Bros.  The
current Nintendo (where almost nobody is left form the "old days" had
it listed as 1985 and a US launch title.  This contradicted direct
interviews with Minoru Arakawa, Howard Lincoln, and Howard Phillips
were they stated it was not ready for the New York test market launch.
 I worked my way through NOA (both through the PR dept. and tech.
support) and nobody could give me an answer for the discrepancy other
than "that's what's listed here in the databse".  Apparently they have
a company wide database where they defer to for any historical
information.


Marty

On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org> wrote:

> I think (and I don't want to second guess him, he's on this list I think)

> but it's the scope and size of the institution, and the rigor of preserving

> the materials, and the fact that almost no game company actively preserves

> anything they make with a 3rd party, whereas film places I bet have

> agreements for providing a copy of their films when they are released into

> the archives properly, as well as the archives having copies of their

> digital and non-digital film stocks as necessary.

>

> I also think the game archives are a lot smaller, just the way it is really,

> and without a large amount of money there's not much that could change that.

>

> Andrew

>

> On 09/01/2010 20:09, Devin Monnens wrote:

>

> Well here's a question then: what exactly do we need to get to the level of

> a UCLA or ASIFA preservation and archive group? Stanford and UT Austin are

> getting there (as is the LoC), but what types of resources and recognition

> do we need? I also suppose, how does this compare with film archival after

> the first 30-40 of the medium (which is about where we're at in terms of

> commercial games).

> I mean, you look at commercial films (1890 is a good benchmark) and 25 years

> into that there was Birth of a Nation (1914) and then you compare that with

> games, we have Super Mario 64 (1996) (and in terms of narrative,

> say...Planescape and MGS? And hey, at least none of these are viewed as

> racist today!). You know, I think that's a pretty good comparison, but I

> think we could do a little better for making games that explore history and

> culture (kind of hard since games are made to entertain, part of the reason

> why I say Shigeru Miyamoto is more the Buster Keaton of videogames rather

> than the Spielberg).

>

> On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 12:26 PM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>

> wrote:

>>

>> "As much as I wish this weren't true, widely distributing an unreleased

>> game in pirated form over the Internet is the only method of preservation

>> that I trust, at least for now. There is no equivalent of, say, a UCLA Film

>> & Television Archive or an ASIFA-Hollywood for videogames. Certainly we have

>> the beginnings of equivalent institutions -- the archives at Stanford and UT

>> Austin for example are off to tremendous starts -- but the resources and

>> industry recognition just aren't there yet, at least to my satisfaction."

>>

>> A shame this is basically true still - there just isn't the resources

>> around, and the standards and concentrated effort just sadly isn't present,

>> at least as far as I know! (if it is present but hidden, that's just as

>> bad!)

>>

>> Interesting reasons laid down to justify it, although I don't think anyone

>> here would need convincing. :)

>>

>> Andrew

>>

>> On 09/01/2010 16:45, Devin Monnens wrote:

>>

>> Nobody's reported on this here, but there's an article on backing up beta

>> and unreleased games.

>> http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3177520

>>

>> --

>> Devin Monnens

>> www.deserthat.com

>>

>> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>>

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>>

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>

>

>

> --

> Devin Monnens

> www.deserthat.com

>

> The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

>

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