Posted on 09/16/2015 5:18:34 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
We now recognize the late Yasujiro Ozu as one of Japan’s finest film directors, but his early works are lost to history, victims of a time when cinema was seen as disposable entertainment and not an art form worth saving. Joseph Redon doesn’t want the same thing to happen to video games.
“You wouldn’t classify opera as ‘old music.’ It’s classical music. Video games are the same. These titles are classics and should be valued as such. Even a lousy game hints at how the medium evolved so we must preserve everything, not just the best sellers.”
A network engineer by trade, he has a broad smile and a way of speaking that’s as measured and methodical as a clean line of code. When the French native moved to Tokyo in 2000 to research and archive retro Japanese PC titles he was shocked to find collections left to languish within an inclusive community. He wormed his way inside through online auctions and forums to contact others who shared his passion. In 2011, he established the Game Preservation Society, an NPO to save gaming from the landfill of pop culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at japantimes.co.jp ...
On his deathbed, will he wonder why he devoted himself to such a pointless cause?
It’s not pointless. It’s like a librarian saving pulp novels from the early 20th century. The exact reason they gave in the article. It’s anthropology. Showing how society changed an developed over time.
I suspect most of ‘em are saved. If you look for “abandonware” on the net, you can find a lot of them - for free!
If you save the code, it is no big deal to run MOST of these games through an emulator. The MAME arcade emulator is VERY good for everything that doesn’t take an exotic controller, vector graphics or tape loop audio (Stratovox, Crazy Climber). It is NOTHING to emulate a Z-80 or 6502 (Coleco, Apple, Atari) and I’m sure there’s stuiff out there for Commodore 64 and VIC-20 as well. There’s no need to have a warehouse of old cassettes and floppies.
But if the machine gets shut off. George will lose high score on Frogger! George doesn’t like this!
Vs. Ice Climber still gives me that far away look in my eye, like I am thinking of the very first girl I ever kissed.
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