[game_preservation] Article about proper SNES emulation

[István Fábián]

Hi Devin,

Unfortunately it's not so easy.

As I see it, the major problems are:

1, Get everything imaged properly. This would need to be done as soon as possible. That would require lots of funding to obtain the disks, but even if the disks are donated, it takes a lot of time of processing the disks afterwards to check the authenticity and integrity of the content.
Hoping that every disk image made is correct is just wishful thinking considering the age of the media and how common it is to find modified content. 
In my experience a 30% success rate for the Amiga platform, and 60% for other platforms is closer to reality - the latter figure is only higher because of the amounf of disk images available as of writing this. 
Naturally, when the preservation of a new platform starts, you'd encounter the more common titles, with much higher chances of finding a suitable copy for preservation. The more the titles you have preserved, the more effort (as in time and money) is needed to find the remaining ones.

2, Funding such an effort.
This is where I go back to your previous question: the only funding we (SPS) have is our own earnings from our day jobs, plus the academic licensing price.
So far we've spent 7 digit amounts to preserve about 3600 titles and to develop the necessary technology - and about 10 years.
It is however not something that we can really afford to do far longer...

Yes, we do have the technology now, so I can safely say, full-scale preservation is technically possible, but whether that would happen to the extent we'd like it to be is a different matter.
Right now I'd say we could get very close to 95+ percentage of finding fully authentic copies of everything ever released commercially.

This percentage decreases each year.

Kind regards,
István

http://www.softpres.org/

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Devin Monnens 
  To: IGDA Game Preservation SIG 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 10:03 PM
  Subject: Re: [game_preservation] Article about proper SNES emulation


  That was a pretty fascinating article, especially outlining problems with the preservation.


  One question I had is what the bottlenecks are for preservation. We've identified decaying floppy disks and other magnetic media as one of the most pressing concerns, but Kryoflux technology has been allowing us to solve this problem.


  However, the problem then becomes how to accurately run the software again. From the sound of it, emulating the timing of the machine would not be possible for early computer systems. To run the software on the original hardware, it is possible to use Kryoflux to refresh the data onto a floppy disk, effectively extending the life. Another option could be floppy disk emulation, but I'm not sure how accurately this is, either. However, the new problem becomes the life of the original hardware. Here, I wonder if saving electronics schematics might be a good solution to the problem so someone could manufacture a new copy of the machine.


  Are there currently any good strategies for overcoming these limitations?




  On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 11:52 AM, Mike Melanson <mike at multimedia.cx> wrote:

    Byuu -- the author of the hyper-accurate bsnes SNES emulator program --
    has written a lengthy piece for Ars Technica:

    Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator
    http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator.ars

    If you've tried bsnes, you know that the 3 GHz figure is no joke.

    Great quote for the preservationist:

    'Video games are a piece of our history, and we need to respect the fact
    that there is a "true" form they had when released. Imagine if we only had
    a JPEG of the Mona Lisa, a RealVideo stream of the moon landing, or a MIDI
    rendition of "Walking in the Air." We have the ability to keep our past
    alive, and I feel like it's almost a duty to do so.'

    --
       -Mike Melanson

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  -- 
  Devin Monnens
  www.deserthat.com

  The sleep of Reason produces monsters.



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