6 ms·

Reconstructing a lost NES game from 30-year-old source code disks

229 points by caution 6y ago

djmips 6y ago
"To those who are about to play, I salute you!" - Chris Oberth.
bredren 6y ago
It is really cool to see people go to such great lengths to recover lost software projects. I wonder about what other interesting failed products from this time will later be found important enough to attempt to piece together and display to people in the future. Perhaps an app that was prescient in its intent or the career of one of their makers seen as remarkable in some way that their digital detritus is dug up and placed under glass.
- mr-ron 6y ago
  At a glance there are a number of Daydream apps that are removed and unavailable anywhere right now. Likewise mobile games that get pulled for whatever reason.
- userbinator 6y ago
  With all the security paranoia these days, the future of "digital archaeology" seems pretty bleak. Even if you do manage to find the storage media, it's likely to have been encrypted with an algorithm that remains unbroken.
  - bredren 6y ago
    Perhaps, but it also may be cracking the password is a trivial endeavor.
caiobegotti 6y ago
The movie reference is buried in there, and it might not be obvious to some younger folks, so: https://youtu.be/AhUhuDW_jOw https://youtu.be/AhUhuDW_jOw
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  god i'm old
bluedino 6y ago
>> an unreleased NES game – an unpublished version of Days of Thunder done for Mindscape (a separate attempt done by Beam Software was ultimately published in its place I wonder how many other games reached playable or nearly-complete states, and were just cast aside because of schedules, contract snafus, etc? Imagine what we missed out on.
- jimsmart 6y ago
  There's actually a book about unreleased games, written by Frank Gasking, just about to come out (taking pre-orders as of today). Myself and other team members were interviewed by the author, some time back, about one of the unreleased games I worked upon (Chips Challenge, NES). [I have no affiliation with this publication, apart from being interviewed] https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-games-that-werent https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-games-that-werent
- einr 6y ago
  If you're interested in exploring further, https://www.unseen64.net/ https://www.unseen64.net/ has been cataloguing and writing about lost, cancelled and prototype video games since 2001.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  There's an unreleased Dreamcast game with a playable near-complete build leaked, called Propeller Arena. It's probably in my friend group's top-4 favorite multiplayer games for the platform, despite not actually having been released. Actually aside from MVC2 (still more fun for us amateurs than MVC3—and kinda looks better?) it might be the most likely game for us to play on the DC, just because the others have newer, better replacements, but I've not seen anything newer that's quite as arcadey and easy-playing as Propeller Arena in its niche (multiplayer propeller aircraft dogfighting, mostly)
  - exikyut 6y ago
    It wasn't too difficult to find, either (I think; untested): https://hiddenpalace.org/Propeller_Arena_(Sep_11,_2001_prototype) https://hiddenpalace.org/Propeller_Arena_(Sep_11,_2001_proto... Despite the game's concept being entirely arcade-focused that prototype date makes me wonder if the plane focus had anything to do with the cancellation...
kalium-xyz 6y ago
I have worrying thoughts about how many prototypes get trashed and lost forever every year, yet have no idea how we could go about systematic recovery of lost games such as these. Can we buy up old game studio assets somehow?
- corysama 6y ago
  An old friend of mine worked on an unreleased SEGA Genesis game for the movie Akira. The ROM was recently "discovered" on the internets. Pics and vids: https://hiddenpalace.org/Akira_(Prototype) https://hiddenpalace.org/Akira_(Prototype)
mensetmanusman 6y ago
So cool to see computer archeology happening already. Here is a quick glance of the game: https://youtu.be/63G9PrLLo_U https://youtu.be/63G9PrLLo_U I love the tron-esque music :)
tw000001 6y ago
Given IO errors and degradation of storage media, how long can one realistically preserve digital data? Is it possible with multiple disks and an extant error correction algorithm to prevent data corruption indefinitely, assuming some maximum error rate?
- derefr 6y ago
  > Is it possible with multiple disks and an extant error correction algorithm to prevent data corruption indefinitely, assuming some maximum error rate? This is the main thrust of the Dynamo paper, yes. You can solve all the technical problems. Put something in a "living system" like Amazon S3 (where data has 17+ clones; and where ops people are there to both replace individual hard disks as they fail, and to gradually port the system over to new storage layers as new technology displaces old), and then—presuming the company providing the service is still there—it'll be vanishingly unlikely that your data will have degraded on a human time-scale. What's left in the way of "indefinitely", though, are political problems. "How do I preserve data indefinitely" gets into the same sort of hairy problems as "how do I enforce my will on my descendants after I die?" kind of questions, where you start to see people putting forward ideas like immutable autonomous trusts. The key question being: how do I ensure that the stuff I want to stick around, sticks around, after I'm dead, during a period when literally nobody else cares about it, until a later time when somebody else does care about it?
- agent86 6y ago
  For consumers, M-DISC media for DVD/Blu-ray might be about the best there is for long term storage.[1] In the enterprise/experimental world there are things like Microsoft Project Silica[2][3] where they are storing data on quartz slides. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC [2]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-sil... [3]https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/ignite-project-silica-superman/ https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/ignite-project...
- xeromal 6y ago
  Have you ever seen those laser glass sculptures you can have customized for a person? I've always though those would be a good way to store data permanently
voltagex_ 6y ago
Although at the moment there are other organisations you should be donating to, at some point you may like to donate to the following: https://gamehistory.org/donate/ https://gamehistory.org/donate/ https://www.gamepres.org/en/qamission/ https://www.gamepres.org/en/qamission/ https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/

229 points by caution 6y ago

"To those who are about to play, I salute you!" - Chris Oberth.

It is really cool to see people go to such great lengths to recover lost software projects. I wonder about what other interesting failed products from this time will later be found important enough to attempt to piece together and display to people in the future. Perhaps an app that was prescient in its intent or the career of one of their makers seen as remarkable in some way that their digital detritus is dug up and placed under glass.

mr-ron 6y ago
At a glance there are a number of Daydream apps that are removed and unavailable anywhere right now. Likewise mobile games that get pulled for whatever reason.
userbinator 6y ago
With all the security paranoia these days, the future of "digital archaeology" seems pretty bleak. Even if you do manage to find the storage media, it's likely to have been encrypted with an algorithm that remains unbroken.
- bredren 6y ago
  Perhaps, but it also may be cracking the password is a trivial endeavor.

caiobegotti 6y ago

The movie reference is buried in there, and it might not be obvious to some younger folks, so: https://youtu.be/AhUhuDW_jOw https://youtu.be/AhUhuDW_jOw

metalliqaz 6y ago
god i'm old

bluedino 6y ago

>> an unreleased NES game – an unpublished version of Days of Thunder done for Mindscape (a separate attempt done by Beam Software was ultimately published in its place I wonder how many other games reached playable or nearly-complete states, and were just cast aside because of schedules, contract snafus, etc? Imagine what we missed out on.

jimsmart 6y ago
There's actually a book about unreleased games, written by Frank Gasking, just about to come out (taking pre-orders as of today). Myself and other team members were interviewed by the author, some time back, about one of the unreleased games I worked upon (Chips Challenge, NES). [I have no affiliation with this publication, apart from being interviewed] https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-games-that-werent https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-games-that-werent
einr 6y ago
If you're interested in exploring further, https://www.unseen64.net/ https://www.unseen64.net/ has been cataloguing and writing about lost, cancelled and prototype video games since 2001.
karatestomp 6y ago
There's an unreleased Dreamcast game with a playable near-complete build leaked, called Propeller Arena. It's probably in my friend group's top-4 favorite multiplayer games for the platform, despite not actually having been released. Actually aside from MVC2 (still more fun for us amateurs than MVC3—and kinda looks better?) it might be the most likely game for us to play on the DC, just because the others have newer, better replacements, but I've not seen anything newer that's quite as arcadey and easy-playing as Propeller Arena in its niche (multiplayer propeller aircraft dogfighting, mostly)
- exikyut 6y ago
  It wasn't too difficult to find, either (I think; untested): https://hiddenpalace.org/Propeller_Arena_(Sep_11,_2001_prototype) https://hiddenpalace.org/Propeller_Arena_(Sep_11,_2001_proto... Despite the game's concept being entirely arcade-focused that prototype date makes me wonder if the plane focus had anything to do with the cancellation...

kalium-xyz 6y ago

I have worrying thoughts about how many prototypes get trashed and lost forever every year, yet have no idea how we could go about systematic recovery of lost games such as these. Can we buy up old game studio assets somehow?

corysama 6y ago
An old friend of mine worked on an unreleased SEGA Genesis game for the movie Akira. The ROM was recently "discovered" on the internets. Pics and vids: https://hiddenpalace.org/Akira_(Prototype) https://hiddenpalace.org/Akira_(Prototype)

mensetmanusman 6y ago

So cool to see computer archeology happening already. Here is a quick glance of the game: https://youtu.be/63G9PrLLo_U https://youtu.be/63G9PrLLo_U I love the tron-esque music :)

tw000001 6y ago

Given IO errors and degradation of storage media, how long can one realistically preserve digital data? Is it possible with multiple disks and an extant error correction algorithm to prevent data corruption indefinitely, assuming some maximum error rate?

derefr 6y ago
> Is it possible with multiple disks and an extant error correction algorithm to prevent data corruption indefinitely, assuming some maximum error rate? This is the main thrust of the Dynamo paper, yes. You can solve all the technical problems. Put something in a "living system" like Amazon S3 (where data has 17+ clones; and where ops people are there to both replace individual hard disks as they fail, and to gradually port the system over to new storage layers as new technology displaces old), and then—presuming the company providing the service is still there—it'll be vanishingly unlikely that your data will have degraded on a human time-scale. What's left in the way of "indefinitely", though, are political problems. "How do I preserve data indefinitely" gets into the same sort of hairy problems as "how do I enforce my will on my descendants after I die?" kind of questions, where you start to see people putting forward ideas like immutable autonomous trusts. The key question being: how do I ensure that the stuff I want to stick around, sticks around, after I'm dead, during a period when literally nobody else cares about it, until a later time when somebody else does care about it?
agent86 6y ago
For consumers, M-DISC media for DVD/Blu-ray might be about the best there is for long term storage.[1] In the enterprise/experimental world there are things like Microsoft Project Silica[2][3] where they are storing data on quartz slides. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC [2]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-silica/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-sil... [3]https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/ignite-project-silica-superman/ https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/ignite-project...
xeromal 6y ago
Have you ever seen those laser glass sculptures you can have customized for a person? I've always though those would be a good way to store data permanently

voltagex_ 6y ago

Although at the moment there are other organisations you should be donating to, at some point you may like to donate to the following: https://gamehistory.org/donate/ https://gamehistory.org/donate/ https://www.gamepres.org/en/qamission/ https://www.gamepres.org/en/qamission/ https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/