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
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…
