Library of Congress Considers Archiving Games 79
GamePolitics reports on talks at the U.S. Library of Congress concerning archiving our digital cultural heritage, including games. From the article: "The initiative is called 'Preserving Creative America,' and plans to compile (with industry help) a list of the commercial digital content most at risk of loss or degradation. The initiative will also develop ideas for preservation, business models to help maintain archives, and promote discussions between the archives and commercial content producers so that the archives are kept up to date. CM: Hopefully the Library of Congress will consider that many PC games were rushed to market before they were ready. Critical software patches should be included in the archive. That's right Sierra, I'm talking about you."
copy protection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:copy protection (Score:2, Informative)
Re:copy protection (Score:2)
In the US there is, legally speaking (Score:2)
Runs only on closed systems (Score:1)
Re:Runs only on closed systems (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, now they have the ultimate solution to that, good luck even finding a drive to read them
I shudder to think how many games are all but gone just for having been stored on old floppies that were hard to copy and have since degraded.
I actually talked with an old apple 2 game developer once. He described how he used the ability to control the stepper mo
Re:Runs only on closed systems (Score:2)
Re:Runs only on closed systems (Score:1)
Re:Runs only on closed systems (Score:2)
Re:Runs only on closed systems (Score:2)
Apple 5.25" floppy disks used 40 tracks, but the media and the drive were capable of 80 tracks in theory - so the half-steppers put some stuff on the non-tracks between the regularly used tracks, and included code in the game to half-step the drive to go read that code. Without a way-cool hack to copy the disk, you couldn't replicate the data that was in the non-tracks (you could possibly read it,
Re:Runs only on closed systems (Score:2)
DMCA violation (Score:2)
Re:DMCA violation (Score:1)
Re:DMCA violation (Score:1)
Will they be playable in 100 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Will they be playable in 100 years? (Score:2)
Re:Will they be playable in 100 years? (Score:2)
Re:Will they be playable in 100 years? (Score:1)
Which means preserving the emulators (and cracks) we have now, and actually encouraging people to write emulators too. Fortunately, that sort of thing has mostly taken care of itself up until now, but what about the coming generation of consoles, for example?
Re:Will they be playable in 100 years? (Score:1)
Re:Will they be playable in 100 years? (Score:1)
Ahem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ahem (Score:2)
Re:Ahem (Score:2)
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Sierra? (Score:2)
Re:Sierra? (Score:2)
You think wrong. Sierra might be dead, but copyright holders still exist and sometimes they do care.
Here's an example: there was a great space trading game called Elite, created in 1984 by David Braben. It was such a success that it was ported to many platforms of the time, many sequels were made, and Elite has become a cult game many still play. It's such a good game in fact that many people tried to clone it. However, one of the clones'
Re:Sierra? (Score:1)
Re:Sierra? (Score:2)
Re:Sierra? (Score:1)
Well yeah, they've certainly been dead inside since about then anyways.
Re:Sierra? (Score:2)
Anyway, I was a passionate Sierra fan since its inception and have played every single adventure game they've released (at least the graphical ones -- the text based stuff were never released around here). I know they e
Re:Sierra? (Score:1)
Hardcover edition of Krondor: the Betrayal came with a copy of Betrayal at Krondor. At least back when it was new. Don't know if it still does. (Not the best possible version since it didn't have CD audio tracks - though in my particular variant of the budget edition they even managed to mess those up - but it did have something the othe
Re:Sierra? (Score:1)
Not anymore, the link, that is. =) (I removed it on grounds that Wikipedia is not an abandonware guide, and it was a misplaced external link anyway.)
I don't see where the article says it's free to download, though. The article has stated the following for quite a while now:
Too good to be true? (Score:3, Interesting)
Abandonware sites often claim they just do it "so those games don't go into extinction". With this reason gone, there's no reason anymore for game companies to shoot with big shells their way without getting bad rep. Because, they're no longer the "guardians of game culture", and game studios that want to shut them down are dirty, greedy corps that would rather see a game get forgotten before allowing it to exist for free.
With this, abandonware sites are just pirates sites to be shut down soon. So start leeching now, as long as it still works!
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the point of Abandonware sites (like the-underdogs.org) is that they only host games that aren't being sold or have anyone to complain about them releasing them.
Technically, you can't sue someone over a copyright you don't own.
So game companies can't just sue someone they don't own the rights to whether they like it or not. If they can aquire the rights later down the road... Then yes they can sue.
I don't think this will take any steam out of the abandonware's argument.
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:1)
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
Abandonware sites often claim they just do it "so those games don't go into extinction". With this reason gone, there's no reason anymore for game companies to shoot with big shells their way without getting bad rep.
What good is a game no one can play? What good is a law designed to encourage producers to produce that forever makes a game unavailable to everyone? Copyrights should expire the day that a company stops selling the copyrighted material at a reasonable market price. Otherwise they are just a
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:1)
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
If there is something that the general population (as "general" as gamers can be) wants to have, and if this commodity is not distributed or offered for money from anyone anymore, who gets hurt by offering it for free? Who is damaged? Who loses money?
If "abandonware" ga
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
You'll get no argument from me on that front. Where my argument lies is with the general replacement of laws with anarchy. 'I have the unlimited right to copy, distribute, rip, burn, etc... anything, anytime, anywhere' is the attitude so often espoused.
Re:Too good to be true? (Score:2)
I don't demand an unlimited right to copy. What I do question is whether it is "right" (not by legal, rather by "moral" standards) to disallow the distribution of something that is not distributed by the legal owner. If a game is offered at a store, I can go into that store and buy it. No problem. I want to play it, I pay the price, everyone's happy.
But what if I want to play a game that isn't offered by its creator anymore? Am I disallowed to play it? Because the rights owner says so? There ar
It's a little late... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's a little late... (Score:1)
DOS Version: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=2159 [the-underdogs.info]
Re:It's a little late... (Score:2)
Re:It's a little late... (Score:1)
The DOS&Mac links were obviously for the anonymous poster wanted Shufflepuck Cafe.
The link at Apple2.org.za is for an Apple][ game named "Floppy", which looks like:
http://img326.imageshack.us/img326/1176/picture16a j.png [imageshack.us]
If that's not a little "marshmallow guy", I'm not sure what is.
Re:It's a little late... (Score:2)
I've seen the amiga version and the Mac version. I loved both of them.
-Roger
Re:It's a little late... (Score:2, Informative)
Awesome, thanks (Score:2)
Virtual Apple has it. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Virtual Apple has it. (Score:2)
Re:Virtual Apple has it. (Score:2)
Half Life 2 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Half Life 2 (Score:1)
I was thinking about this last time I saw one of those articles championing games "of the future" that download on the fly as you play them.
Even now I wonder where my purchased copy of Geometry Wars will go after the Xbox 360 gives up the ghost or if MS ever closes shop on Xbox Live. I can't play any of those games without being connected to the MS servers. I know it probably wont happen to MS but what about down the road. I'm sure we'll see some downloadable only content come around for
Re:Half Life 2 (Score:1)
Re:Half Life 2 (Score:2)
LOC: Beat at its own game! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Right next to the Ark of the Covenant ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Right next to the Ark of the Covenant ... (Score:2)
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Mod's, S3ms, demo's (Score:3, Interesting)
Entire parts of the digital, pre-internet history are being lost with new technology.
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Scene Music [scenemusic.net]
Might not be a good idea... (Score:3, Funny)
I like this... (Score:1)
A lot of talk here (Score:2)
Re:A lot of talk here (Score:2)
Welcome retrogamer. Spare a quarter? (Score:1)
As you embark to build a collection of arcade, home console, and home computer components that I'm sure will one day surpass my own, please remember to maintain a proper ima
hardware (Score:1)
Universities have it already (Score:1)
Whoa! (Score:2)
If we've been using Libraries Of Congress as a unit of measurement for the capacity of DVDs, what happens when games shipped on DVD are added to the Library of Congress, man?