3 ms·

> when I feel like it's more the responsibility of previous generations to preserve and pass down history for them to learn from But everything has been preser

> when I feel like it's more the responsibility of previous generations to preserve and pass down history for them to learn from But everything has been preserved and passed down. The entire home computing phenomenon has been archived and is available on the internet thanks to the rampant 'software piracy' which was common at the time, and detailed schematics and manuals coming with the computers (which have all been digitized and are available on the internet). Even my obscure KC85 games I wrote as a teenager and 'distributed' on cassette tapes by snail mail are available as download because some kind person(s) digitized all that stuff during the early 90s and put it on some 'underground' game download portals. The 80s and early 90s home computer era will be better preserved than anything that came after it.

mrandish 1y ago
> The 80s and early 90s home computer era will be better preserved than anything that came after it. Indeed. Sadly, many more recent games will probably be lost to time forever due to DRM, online service components going offline or never being distributed on physical media in the first place. As someone into vintage computers and preservation, I worry that future generations may look back and see the late 2010s and certainly the 2020s as a 'dark age' when surveying the history and evolution of digital gaming. All we'll have are YouTube videos (assuming those survive future business model tectonic shifts) but no ability to actually experience the game play first-hand. Recently I've been exploring the back catalog of more obscure PS3 and X360 games via emulation and have found some absolutely terrific titles I never even knew existed. Some of them were only ever sold through the console's online store and never available on physical media. With the XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii stores now long offline, only the PS3 store remains available - and who knows for how much longer, since Sony already announced its closure once and then changed their mind. There's now a race to preserve many of these titles

mrandish 1y ago

> The 80s and early 90s home computer era will be better preserved than anything that came after it. Indeed. Sadly, many more recent games will probably be lost to time forever due to DRM, online service components going offline or never being distributed on physical media in the first place. As someone into vintage computers and preservation, I worry that future generations may look back and see the late 2010s and certainly the 2020s as a 'dark age' when surveying the history and evolution of digital gaming. All we'll have are YouTube videos (assuming those survive future business model tectonic shifts) but no ability to actually experience the game play first-hand. Recently I've been exploring the back catalog of more obscure PS3 and X360 games via emulation and have found some absolutely terrific titles I never even knew existed. Some of them were only ever sold through the console's online store and never available on physical media. With the XBox 360 and Nintendo Wii stores now long offline, only the PS3 store remains available - and who knows for how much longer, since Sony already announced its closure once and then changed their mind. There's now a race to preserve many of these titles