Stanford University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will soon embark on a two-year effort to digitally preserve one of the most extensive collections of classic video and computer games in the world.
The subject of this archival effort is the legendary Stephen Cabrinety collection. Stephen M. Cabrinety (1966-1995) privately collected software across computer, console and handheld devices from his teenage years all the way through his death. Cabrinety founded one of the first software preservation groups, the Computer History Institute for the Preservation of Software (C.H.I.P.S.) in 1989, his vision being to permanently hold his collection for researchers of the future.
Cabrinety managed to collect over 15,000 pieces of software (games and otherwise) before his death in 1995. Cabrinety's family donated the collection to Stanford in 1998, where it has been held since.
Archiving will consist of capturing exact digital copies of the data present on each game's medium, as well as digital photography of its packaging and included paperwork and ephemera.
Yet another reason why current copyright law is not beneficial to society. It locks up software, games, books, music, movies and other works behind walls that otherwise should not exist.
It is great that they are preserving this software, but if Software had anything like the Authors Guild, Stanford would be sued for this digitization effort.
There are multiple box's you can find online. I *cough* I mean people have already box's with 2-3k games inside. If you look hard enough you can actually find most of these. I mean if you fight for the rights of say.... action 52.... well lets just let that one stay on the shelf.
Piracy has its problems, and I'm not talking legal. Most rips you get of old computer games have intros or trainers or cracks that make the data not exactly identical to what shipped. And computers aren't the only platforms that have these problems...the version of Bubble Bobble running in MAME (and, I believe, some official compilations!) turned out to be a pirated version that altered the gameplay slightly.
Even if you have legit games, sometimes that's not enough for preservation. If you run a floppy disk just once it's forever tainted, as far as pure 100% preservation goes. What's great about the Cabrinety collection is that a lot (most?) of his games are still in their shrinkwrap, so in theory we should be seeing 100% clean reproduction fo the data.
Not to mention digitally archiving the artwork, manuals, etc., which is what I'm most excited for here.
"Most rips you get of old computer games have intros or trainers or cracks that make the data not exactly identical to what shipped."
There are countless initiatives to redump games and preserve the original data, there are also countless of initiatives to preserve all intros, as they are unique as well. Besides, to run games on anything today, it's often necessary to alter the data.
If a Commodore 64, Atari XL or ZX Spectrum game relies on Lenslok copy protection, you won't get it run in any emulator on a modern computer, the only solution would be to run it on original hardware on a CRT TV.
This copy protection relied on a lens with built in prisms. you have to put on your TV screen and get a pattern rearranged. Before every start of the game you have to calibrate the lens according to your screen, good luck with this on your modern 16:9 TFT display.
While this is an extreme example, chances are high, that the original Floppy drives will stop working over the course of the next years, these things weren't built to last 40 years and if you transfer the data to any other medium, it will be impossible to transfer the copy protection, that relied on certain characteristics of 5.25" floppy discs. One way or the other, it will be necessary to work with altered data, even for the Stanford University.
".the version of Bubble Bobble running in MAME (and, I believe, some official compilations!) turned out to be a pirated version that altered the gameplay slightly."
Yes and No, it's true part of the emulation in in earlier Mame versions was based on a chip found in a bootleg board, while the original board had a custom chip instead. But this has nothing to do with the game data, but with the hardware emulation, besides a complete reverse engineering of the custom chip was already done in 2006! So this problem has been overcome for 7 years now.
Source: http://mamelife.blogspot.de/2006/08/completed-at-last.html
" If you run a floppy disk just once it's forever tainted, as far as pure 100% preservation goes. What's great about the Cabrinety collection is that a lot (most?) of his games are still in their shrinkwrap, so in theory we should be seeing 100% clean reproduction fo the data."
Running a floppy disk doesn't taint it, as long as you don't write anything on it. On the other side, if the games are still in their shrinkwrap, there's no way to tell if these floppy disks still work, magnetic media doesn't get better, when not used over a long period, the magnetization faints up to the point, where the disk isn't readable any more.
"Not to mention digitally archiving the artwork, manuals, etc., which is what I'm most excited for here. "
People already have scanned any artwork, manual, etc, of any game ever made. I don't want to say it's useless, what the Stanford University is doing, but there are people preserving games data, manuals, artworks, magazines for years now, they do it in their free time, without being paid. The Stanford University initiative is just one amongst others, which are already in a much more advanced state.
I always wonder why i don't ever hear about kickstarter initiatives or donation initiatives for things like this? especially since I am signed up to the ESA newsletter. I would love to donate to a cause that preserves the history of our industry and I would hope other devs would too!
In this particular case they were able to find funding privately, but there were two video game history museums (The MADE and The Videogame History Museum) that got Kickstarter funding...
We should have FULL access to buy every game ever made at anytime(We can do this now). This is billions of dollars thrown away. You can't expect gamers to abandon old games they used to play every 4-7 years. Hollywood mostly doesn't do this. We shouldn't either.
Classics preserved without cracks, where DRM consists of entering the 4th word on the 8th line of the 2nd paragraph of the 57th page of the manual;
boy, I can't wait..
If you want to play cracked versions they're easily available. Meanwhile, for those of us who actually care about preserving our history, this is one of the most significant events that has ever happened.
Yet another reason why current copyright law is not beneficial to society. It locks up software, games, books, music, movies and other works behind walls that otherwise should not exist.
It is great that they are preserving this software, but if Software had anything like the Authors Guild, Stanford would be sued for this digitization effort.
Even if you have legit games, sometimes that's not enough for preservation. If you run a floppy disk just once it's forever tainted, as far as pure 100% preservation goes. What's great about the Cabrinety collection is that a lot (most?) of his games are still in their shrinkwrap, so in theory we should be seeing 100% clean reproduction fo the data.
Not to mention digitally archiving the artwork, manuals, etc., which is what I'm most excited for here.
There are countless initiatives to redump games and preserve the original data, there are also countless of initiatives to preserve all intros, as they are unique as well. Besides, to run games on anything today, it's often necessary to alter the data.
If a Commodore 64, Atari XL or ZX Spectrum game relies on Lenslok copy protection, you won't get it run in any emulator on a modern computer, the only solution would be to run it on original hardware on a CRT TV.
This copy protection relied on a lens with built in prisms. you have to put on your TV screen and get a pattern rearranged. Before every start of the game you have to calibrate the lens according to your screen, good luck with this on your modern 16:9 TFT display.
While this is an extreme example, chances are high, that the original Floppy drives will stop working over the course of the next years, these things weren't built to last 40 years and if you transfer the data to any other medium, it will be impossible to transfer the copy protection, that relied on certain characteristics of 5.25" floppy discs. One way or the other, it will be necessary to work with altered data, even for the Stanford University.
".the version of Bubble Bobble running in MAME (and, I believe, some official compilations!) turned out to be a pirated version that altered the gameplay slightly."
Yes and No, it's true part of the emulation in in earlier Mame versions was based on a chip found in a bootleg board, while the original board had a custom chip instead. But this has nothing to do with the game data, but with the hardware emulation, besides a complete reverse engineering of the custom chip was already done in 2006! So this problem has been overcome for 7 years now.
Source: http://mamelife.blogspot.de/2006/08/completed-at-last.html
" If you run a floppy disk just once it's forever tainted, as far as pure 100% preservation goes. What's great about the Cabrinety collection is that a lot (most?) of his games are still in their shrinkwrap, so in theory we should be seeing 100% clean reproduction fo the data."
Running a floppy disk doesn't taint it, as long as you don't write anything on it. On the other side, if the games are still in their shrinkwrap, there's no way to tell if these floppy disks still work, magnetic media doesn't get better, when not used over a long period, the magnetization faints up to the point, where the disk isn't readable any more.
"Not to mention digitally archiving the artwork, manuals, etc., which is what I'm most excited for here. "
People already have scanned any artwork, manual, etc, of any game ever made. I don't want to say it's useless, what the Stanford University is doing, but there are people preserving games data, manuals, artworks, magazines for years now, they do it in their free time, without being paid. The Stanford University initiative is just one amongst others, which are already in a much more advanced state.
boy, I can't wait..