[game_preservation] Disappearance of videogame homepages

[Devin Monnens]

Recently, I discovered that some of Nintendo's old game homepages have been
removed. As some of you may know, I help run the Metroid Database, and so my
knowledge is a little focused in this regard. However, the fact of the
matter is a large number of NOA's websites for their older games (pre-Wii
and DS) have been removed, but I don't know which ones and how many. As far
as Metroid is concerned, this means that the websites for Metroid Prime,
Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Zero Mission, and Metroid Fusion have been removed,
along with some notable interactive flash content. I have also heard that
NCL's 25th Anniversary site for Super Mario Bros. has also been removed. I
haven't received an explanation on this from Nintendo yet, but this
highlights yet another problem with game preservation that I would like to
throw on the table:

Preservation of game-based websites.

This was already an issue a couple years ago as regards fansites when IGN
dropped support of Planet Hosted sites (of which the MDb was a casualty).
However, this is the first major instance I have seen with regards to
official game homepages.

The problem is compounded by the fact that The Internet Archive's Wayback
Machine can't load some of these pages due to their flash content. As a
result, these pages have for all intents and purposes been lost, and even if
Nintendo archived them, they would be inaccessible.

I am not sure what sorts of solutions to this exist, but at any rate, it
makes preserving games much harder. While the MDb can't really be defined as
an archive, has anyone else run into similar problems with regard to their
preservation efforts?
-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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