Preservationists Are Saving Video Game History, One Upload at a Time

Games are key to understanding modern culture, but archiving them can be surprisingly challenging

Credit: The Strong

How much is history worth? In May, the video game world got an answer of sorts: $14,000.

That was the winning bid for a prototype of a cancelled game developed for the original Famicom — the Japanese name for the Nintendo Entertainment System from the 1980s, with its pixelated graphics. Indy: The Magical Kid was based on a series of Japanese choose-your-own-adventure books. The game had some early previews in magazines but was ultimately scrapped, making its reemergence on the auction block — a notable event for a community of preservationists working to save video game history.

But there was a problem. That community, led in part by Nintendo preservation group Forest of Illusion, hoped to win the game with $7,000 they had raised together — yet that winning bid came unexpectedly from a private collector who has no intention of preserving Indy for posterity.

Forest of Illusion co-founder togemet2, who asked not to use his real name because the process of preserving games is sometimes a legal gray area due to copyrights and other issues, tells OneZero that the loss came suddenly. (Archivists and…