WANT FREE CHEDDIES?! 1. Head to your local Spouts and buy a box (or several but we can only reimburse for 1) 2. Text a copy of your receipt to: 2543585521 3. We’ll Venmo you within 24-48 hours! 4. Enjoy your Cheddies!!

Kelsey Lewin has been talking about video game preservation for over a decade now I remember watching a 45 minute talk she gave back in 2014. She’s definitely very passionate about it and doesn’t want to see games disappear, ROMs are literally preserving history!

It's nice to see you got a sponsor, you deserve it, keep the good work!

Love your guys content. My family visits our library at least once a week. I have noticed a slightly growing video game library everytime I'm there. I have seen wii, wii u, 360, ps3, ps4, ps5, switch, and xbox series games available. It's not much, but it is a start. We really need to draw attention to preserving this art form. And your channel is at the forefront. Thanks for all you do.

Since I was a teenager I have been a huge fan of Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga. Literally thousands of games were released on these systems, but merely a handful have ever been preserved in a retail system with the C64 and Amiga mini consoles and a couple of emulation packages for PC. This is why I highly value my Raspberry Pi that has the thousands of titles. These ‘Roms’ may be the work of pirates, but they are the ones who have helped preserve an entire history of gaming.

Glad you guys had the chance to cover this topic, I think it’ll bring a lot of awareness to the community about what’s going on. Awesome video guys!

Save the discs, save the tapes, save the cartridges. Remember, a hacker can't crack an analogue safe.

From a movie perspective, often times what you'll run into is that the movie itself is available; however, specific scenes and whatnot are often trimmed out over time. So the issue comes up of the "original cut" of a film becoming very difficult to track down and in some cases, lost forever. Thanks fellas for the great content and speaking of old film content, I'd love to see more on VHS if you guys are interested in that subject as well. There is a relatively untapped content goldmine with so few quality channels like yours putting on VHS content.

Love this channel sm! Def another reason why emulation is so important to gaming history and preservation, 87% is absolutely WILD!

Love this discussion, agree about selling off old collection for other consoles and games, done that very thing myself regrettably. (CIB NES and N64 Games)

Great conversation guys! Really crazy to think about. Glad they're are folks out there trying to preserve everything they can! Cheers!

I really like what you guys are doing, keep collecting as much as you can. There are so many game collectors out there and it is hard to find older physical copies of games you want to buy, but don't give up

This is why I want GameCube switch online not only does it preserve a good amount of the GameCube library but also Nintendo isn’t going to remaster 90% of GameCube games so they could easily put those on the service I know a service isn’t a perfect solution but it’s better than what we have now for GameCube which is nothing besides Nintendo remastering 3 GameCube games which is cool but we also need to preserve way more than 3

Wayne Gretzky’s golf is definitely one of the games of all time. A true masterpiece. Many memory.

We need Doc Brown to go back in time and archive EVERYTHING.

I’ve spoken with former Atari game designers and programmers. They had no thoughts one way or the other in the late 70s and 80s about making games that people would be playing 30-40 years later. They had deadlines to meet, and then they started work on creating a new game. The distant future, preservation and so forth never occurred to them. They hoped they were making games that would be successful in the moment, but never thought along the lines of, “I’m making history.”

Hence why i'm collecting a reference library of Wii games.

My library system has games to check out. Switch, Wii, Wii U, Xbox, etc.

GOTG getting sponsored, HELL YEAH🤘🤘🤘I'm getting me a box of Cheddies🔥🔥🔥 Also, it's so true that ROMS are preserving history. We have already seen what has happened to movies and TV shows from the past. If there was no VHS/DVD, or if the content has not been put on a digital or streaming platform, the movie/TV show is essential lost for good. We should NEVER let that happen to video games‼️‼️‼️

It's so crazy to think that companies are so against emulation for games they won't provide commercially. Like you would think that companies like Nintendo would either try and make money making it all available or just shut up

I always appreciate hearing y’all’s perspective on these topics. Thanks.

22:05 that's the point of emulation. Preservation. Because the companies have no idea what they're doing and sometimes don't have the source code anymore.

My opinion, emulation is the best thing to happen to video games in a long time, maybe ever This is coming from someone who has a collection of over 3000 physical games and 50+ consoles Always love the content guys!

Great vid guys and very eye opening… crazy we ever came to this and I’m glad I’ve been collecting since the early 90s . All I can say is is take great care of your collection to be one of the few showing the future the past and let’s all come together as a gaming community and try to stop this. Cheers

You guys have become priority viewing for me because of videos like this. Fun AND informative.

The point about games being toys in their origin is on point.

Great conversation bros, I agree, companies need to make these games available. Most of my collection is physical, maybe 10% is on emulation. Appreciate you guys, cheers!

Don’t think anyone realized how big the number was of games you can’t get anymore. I have no I idea of how we can fix it but Sega needs to release collections of there Saturn and Dreamcast libraries. That’s easy money for them. Great video! Cheers 🍻

Old physical copies and emulation is the only way to keep to keep them alive...

Basically it’s all the obscure hidden gems that are gone in the future. I think games like, Super mario, Zelda, Castlevania, Metroid etc will always be available.

My counter argument to the mustang is, you’ll be selling it to one person. As with emulation, you’d sell it to thousands of people.

A very substantial amount of Neo-Geo games are available through Hamster's Arcade Archives on PS4/Xbox One/Switch for $8 a piece. Still, I miss what the Virtual Console was doing in the Wii era. I really thought that was the future of retro game sales in digital format.

The video game industry wanted to turn video games into fast food and never care about physical gaming and wanted to sell the next game in there menu. To this day the video game industry never call video games as "ART" as they rather wanted you to see them as disposable gaming.

Random, but Robert has the vibe of a Wayne’s World character. Keep up the great work guys!

Can you imagine being a 15 year old today, coming across a cool looking gamecube game that was long before your time that you wanna play. How do you get it officially? You don't have a job so you have to ask mom/dad to buy you an old CRT, the console, at least one controller AND the game, all of which might not even be in working condition AND a parent might not even want to make room in the house for a big setup like that.

Thanks for the video! If video game companies don't make games more commercially available then it will only increase the use of emulation.

In regard to libraries, another important thing that they do is have online databases for research purposes. You can access many books and other forms of media through databases, but not with video games. It's ridiculous that people can't access a video game archive database for research purposes like you can with books, movies, or music. The FTC is arguing that copyright is the reason that can't happen, but that hasn't stopped all other forms of media from being available in library archives.

I have a virtual boy that i have had since 95 with like 15 games but it took a crap last year, still turns on but it makes a loud noise and the screen flutters, i cant find anybody who will touch it for repairs. Sits on a shelf in a closet

Really enjoy you guys - just love the format of you you two just talking about issues. I don’t have time to play games anymore but it’s fun to relive stuff with you guys. I stopped gaming with the Wii and have thought about getting a Switch someday and your buying guide was very helpful!

It's always great when you guys do discussion videos like this. And I've been thinking about this topic. About a week or two after your PS3 PSN video I actually got lucky at my local thrift store and found a good PS3 for 10 bucks, and the first thing I did was get a PSN card and bought persona 2. Great game, but I started to realize that if you want to play Persona 2 the only way you can is on PS3. For some reason Atlus refuses to re-released it. And once the PS3 store shuts down, there will be no option to get it. Which sucks because is such an awesome game. Keep up the good work guys, you're one of my favorite KZfaq channel.

Hey guys, huge fan of the channel! In the case of Neo Geo, pretty much every game is available on all major platforms! It is actually one of the best consoles to try to go back and play because you can get so many of the games, including Japanese only games, as part of the ACA series.

Great take on the topic. Not an emulator myself, but have several friends that are. We both are amazed at each other's game rooms for different reasons. One of my favorite parts of MGC is the playable gaming museum, played CDi, Colecovision, Sega CD, and Atari Jaguar all within an hour! Where else is that possible?! Cheers boys.

Thanks for highlighting this important topic, guys! It's scary to think about all of the games that have been lost to time. There are so many reasons for a lack of preservation, but I will say that rights issues hampering backwards compatibility efforts caused me to finally order an original Xbox last week. I had one back in the day but it broke. In hindsight, I should have tried to fix it instead of throwing it away. But that hardware is aging and there is only so much that can be done to keep it going. Games across all platforms, quality or not, ought to be preserved as historical artifacts at the very least. Cheers.

I love your guys' input on video game preservation. It's not easy compared to like downloading music into MP3 files back in the mid 2000s.

87% DAMN ✊ Thank you for continuing to fight the good fight and raise awareness 🏆 311 days no alcohol 🙌💥 🥇

One mayor problem is that digital games doesnt support cloud save that will forever loose your old data.

Great article guys it is very important to preserve games it is so sad that greed destroys everything i agree you should be able to go to the library and sign out games

12:50 you should do a video on top 5-10 games you purchased 2, 3, or even more times. I purchased MTX mototrax 3 times, ssx tricky 3 times, the punisher twice, MGS 2 twice, MX rider twice, MX unleashed twice, NBA live 99 twice, Croc twice, SOCOM 1-3 twice, Devil may cry OG twice, Super offroad the Baja SNES twice, DKC 1-3 SNES twice, Quake II ps1 twice, NBA street twice, Thunder strike ps1 twice, oh god....

Thats why emulating games will always be right

Emulation can be as complex or simple as you want it to be. EmuDeck is your best bet in getting emulation up and running on a PC or handheld. They have a windows version on their Patreon. It scans your device for ROMs and files then it automatically connects those games to the right emulator.

Great topic. Please more about this. But do no underestimate how many works of other art forms/media are lost. Countless book and movies have been lost to time or are unavailable. The topic is very hot in the the movie collector sphere as well. I can recommend the Cereal at Midnight channel for that. They have a recent interview with film historian Amanda Reyes who explains that loosing movies is not exclusive to the streaming services removing content and old movies not getting a physical media release. Countless TV movies and shows that are beloved and/or historically relevant are gone forever.

I sold my collection like a fool. So now I got a nice pc and a set of 48tybte collections of all the systems and mame. And it plays like a dream. I still collect switch and PS5 stuff.

At least with physical copies games have a chance to be preserved after they are discontinued. The modern digital age will become the dark age of games and most of the content will be lost in the future. This has already been proven with the disappearance of Adobe flash, flash art and flash games. Flash games were a huge segment before Adobe discontinued flash, and most of those old flash games are completely gone forever. The servers and distribution system disappeared completely within a couple of months of the Adobe announcement. The support structure disappeared so fast taking all of the data with it that many developers did not even have a chance to capture their statistics or backup copies from the servers. Casual games still exist, but the entire history of flash games is gone forever. The same fate awaits all of the modern digital content when the licensing ends. Titles that you mentioned with big names such as WWF would most likely require new negotiations for the companies to reproduce them. Just remember the fate of flash games which were some of the first digital only games that reached wide spread distribution, and think of how game companies are pushing for digital only content distribution..

Do some research on the history of lost movies. It is shocking.

I love the content great conversations on here not sure what anyone can do one touchy subject I just wish there was a way to satisfy everyone needs for theses games

15:21 my local library sadly only does books

I was doing yard work, decided to crack a beer and take a break. Low and behold, GotG drops a surprise video!

I'm surprised that broken cartridges, disc/disk rot, and eventual media decay weren't touched on.

Remember the switch also offers other old games spread out throughout nes, snes, sega genesis, GB, GBA besides N64 they also put arguably the best N64 games Mario 64, Zelda, Goldeneye. They have to balance it out. Im more confenred about the quality rather than quantity of the games. If you want to play every game that badly on every console you have to the emulation, roms options for all games regardless of the company.

"We've got plenty of games to play for the rest of our lives." I'm afraid this is the main reason a lot of people don't care. We already have our collections and our subscription services with a big enough backlog of games to play, who cares about playing a game from 30 years ago? It's sad, but...

I think the way we solve game preservation is by creating a decentralized network to distribute Roms digitally. As long as it isn’t on one server in a given country it would be hard to take down.

Great discussion, fellas. I would say 98% of all games put on ROM or disc have been preserved by the community. I understand the vast majority of the public don't want to download a rom set and emulator and play on their PC, but even streaming commercially (like a games Spotify) would have it's own issues. The licensing problems alone would make it dead in the water. There are things like Antstream, but it's a fraction of what is available on the internet archive. Tbh, music has this issue too. There's artists I could download on Napster back in the day that aren't available commercially today.

87% is so high. I think video game companies should have streaming services available for their entire collections. Then we preserve them. I still have my 5 & a quarter inch floppy disks with games I played on my parents PC back in the 80s. I'm looking to get an PC so I can play them again.

Dang, when I watch you guys I’m reminded of what a hypocrite I am. I haven’t had DVDs in over a decade, but I’m super pissed when I can’t find a physical copy of a certain video game. But I really feel like the industry is strong arming us away from physical copies. Like the new Diablo, if you want all the perks of pre buying the game two months out (a mount, mount armor, the ability to take part in beta, etc), you HAVE to purchase it digitally.

I have 4 neices & a newphew. I've tried very very hard to teach them 1) Curiosity and 2) things exist outside of Goodle/Netflix/InternetMonopolies. I've shown them how Disney movies look better on VHS than Disney+ which is too "clean." Cartoons from "Fox-Family" which currently are *NEVER* coming out of the "vault." For video games the best example is probably Mario Galaxy *2*. It exists but is not in All Stars. The Mario Advance e+ card levels are another example of lost media.

Snatcher is a big one that is confusing to me as to why it hasn’t had a proper rerelease. It had such a limited release on Sega cd. Without emulation I feel like a lot of people wouldn’t have ever even played it.

The one game I regret selling off to get money to buy a new game was Zelda: The Minish Cap. Loved that game growing up, first Zelda game that I beat and saw the ending. When I saw the used prices when I wanted to get it again, I was blown away on how expensive it was now compared to the $10-ish dollars I sold it for along with some PS2 and Wii games at a used games store. Thankfully, I have it again (USA copy instead of my original PAL version) and managed to get it below the Ebay scalper prices, but it still wasn't cheap. Only childhood GBA I'm still missing is Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and I'm in no rush to get that soon. Glad I didn't sell WarioWare: Twisted. Love that game as well.

I got what I needed years ago on back up drives. DVDs n all different media. I don't think I'm losing anything.

The game industry has done an terrible job at preserving its history. The fact that it’s down to fans to back up game roms is disappointing. Publishers need to find a way to make games available in some form be it legally available emulators or streaming services.

Born in the 80’s and I’m happy with my mini consoles having the entire libraries for the nes, snes, master system, mega drive/32x/mega cd…plus I’m at the point where I have nearly every game physical I want from the 5th-8th gen…if next gen is digital only, I will buy everything when it’s on a deep sale, it’s sucks but it’s been coming for a while now…keep up the amazing work/content guys.

You've got a knack for picking the right subjects to discuss: keep it up! The first thing is that we need to stop the problem from getting worse. This can be achieved by having digital storefronts carried on from generation to generation - as is currently the case with PS4 to PS5, and Xbox One to the Series consoles. With every physical title having a digital version, this ensures preservation of current titles. Second - starting, restarting or expanding programs that bring older content to new consoles - like the PS classics and Xbox's back-compat program. Third, encouraging rights-holders to bring old games (either individually or as collections) to new systems - as remakes if necessary. Finally: vote with your wallets! If we buy the older titles that are currently available - companies are more likely to look into bringing more of them.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m just modding consoles because of this. If it wasn’t for Homebrew and emulation, I would of never played Clock tower, Silent Hill, and Shin Megami Tensei Games. I will always buy games IF ITS for a reasonable price.

I have accumulated my video game collection over a life time and you guys are right, people who are not into the hobby will look at you like you are insane. Those who do not appreciate the hobby, tune me out when I try to tell them that most of my games came from flea markets, thrift stores, Black Friday sales or gifts. As for emulation, if the video game is no longer available on a retail market, whether physical or digital, emulation is a great way for everyone to enjoy retro video games. Good luck finding a Truxton 2 arcade machine or a decent arcade for that mater. Thanks for the video guys, cheers.

I truly believe that not being able to preserve games will be the downfall of gaming in a way. It will make a lot of us turn away. This is the reason why I don’t care to own any new gen console. As a collector and preserver. I want to be able to re live the past and if I can’t with ps5 and so on I’m out. Why waste my money. This is a great topic guys! Much love and hopefully the creators and console makers will understand this and make the changes. 🍻 cheers

There's no law against restoring cars and selling it but there is the infamous C&D case where the wife of the creator behind a specific Mustang model that has been claiming all Mustangs with the specific "Elanor" kit in both name and cosmetic appearance from the Gone in 60 Second movies. The latest victim was a youtuber, B is for Build where his modern Mustang was claimed because he was in the process of converting his modern 2000s Mustang into a 60-something "Elanor" Mustang which looks virtually identical to the Shelby Mustang.

Its a valid video - but if you can download these games for free and run them on any PC made in last 15yrs then is there a great incentive to pay for the rights for those games and pay to distribute them. The Wii U had a good library of old titles from older systems but they haven't been brought over to the Switch. I don't think its massive issue - I personally think games older than 20yrs old should be free to download and play without needing digital rights management.

Great video guys! Very good topic! I think us gamers & collectors should make a push, start a petition to see if we can convince companies to reprint physical games especially if its presented in a way where they can see the financial gain.

Love the channel! Been collecting for the Switch for a while now.

Sticking with your mustang analogy… there are some parts that aren’t available aftermarket and you just have to pay what you have to pay for that OE part. (Mustang is a bad example cause you can build a whole mustangs and not use 1 ford part to build it but some GM vehicles are definitely like that) but back to the point, you pay whatever you have to for a original part (game) that’s not available from the aftermarket (roms) unless you “steal” it for free. Totally agree though, there needs to be way to emulate legally. This is a alarming problem that needs to be solved 100%

I was recently wondering if the companies have game archives where they store the games they've come out with in the past? I was recently wondering that?

Sega hardly preserved any Saturn game code… it’s ridiculous

Film's are given grants, funding, because film is, 1. Considered an "Art", which leads to 2. considered cultural artefacts which leads to 3. concerted efforts and means to preserve them (via independent and government based grants which gives funding for professional restoration, preservation and storage). The same needs to be said of games, they are an art form, when legally and culturally accepted as so, they could gain funding and protection laws to help preserve them more legitimately. I don't know how, but the gaming community would need to come together to petition laws to be changed regarding all of this.

The analogy with the Mustang is actually a really good one. Certain cars absolutely are art and there's a massive industry based around restoring older ones. I worked in the industry for awhile, and I think I have a good addition to the analogy: Licensing. My company primarily dealt with certain GM vehicle products, and in GM's case they have officially licensed GM Restoration parts for various things. As a manufacturer you'd have to pay big money to license those parts to be put through production... of course there were plenty of things being made in Taiwan without that. For example, we had a transmission bellhousing we sold that wasn't GM Resto, so on the part itself where it should be stamped with GM, it was instead stamped as CM. That being said, Nintendo shouldn't be able to have as hardline of a position on emulation as they do, considering they have no plans to make the content they keep striking down available. It'd be a different story if they were intending to make the majority of the back catalogue available, but they clearly don't. They're just being greedy in my opinion... very much like how Disney puts shit back in "the vault" only to be released arbitrarily for a limited time. I'm glad libraries were invented millenia ago, because with the way today's society is the concept of a library wouldn't make it. Virtua Boy is a sore spot for me. Years ago I was going somewhere with my friend, we just started driving out of one end of my neighborhood and one house had a bunch of stuff by the curb for free. Included in that stuff was a Virtua Boy, my friend claimed it because he thought it looked cool or something. He isn't even a gamer. And that's how I didn't get a VB for free.

Actually something scary happened in the UK recently. A huge store chain over similar to wal mart called Tesco has announced that they will not be stocking physical games anymore. The digital future will be here sooner than imagined. You guys should talk about that.

I'm afraid I can't agree with your legislation proposal Wes. What would effectively happen is the minute something goes out of print it would immediately become public domain. I do think the concept of public domain should return but it should not be instantaneous. Why would anyone buy anything at retail if it'll be free in six months?

Piracy is the way. Even Netflix and Disney release movies strictly digital and will remove the movies or shows from the service.

Actually guys LOTS of Dreamcast games are or were available on modern systems. Stuff like Sonic Adventures 1/2, Crazi Taxi (minus Offspring of course), Daytona, Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue 1/2, etc There is a line also called ACA Neo Geo that has HUNDREDS of games. I share your pov on many things in this video about music/movies vs games but if you dig deeper you'll see more and more games are getting reedited when liscencing is not an issue. For the rest Emulation...

I like a lot of your points! For me, the biggest worry I have, is that it's not only the games that are not being commercially available, but the consoles themselves are also not available in it's original form, and I get they are putting games on modern consoles, but that's taking away from it's original intent, and some games that move over to newer consoles but there's always gonna be something that's been taken away, an example I can think of is Captain Toad Treasure Trackers on the Switch, while that's a fun game on the Switch, it took out some levels that were on the original Wii U version, and while they did add new levels to fix that, it's still not the same as the original Wii U version. I love emulation, I think it's great, and is a good step for preserving games, but it shouldn't be the only way the preserve games, imagine if you guys made a video on Jackal and talked about how great it is and all this and that, and suddenly in 20 years, there's no way to play that game. Now you could say, "oh well you can emulate it" but what happens when these companies start cracking down on these sites and the roms become harder and harder to get? I'm not so much worried for nerds like me who won't be able to play these games, but I'm worried about the next generation of retro gamers. Again, great video, you guys made awesome points! Also real talk, what are the macros for those Cheddies?

Arcade games got it the worst. Some arcade game had such limited distribution or are so heavily licensed that they will never be seen again outside of MAME.

So preserved media is the way to go, that is why physical media is necessary. My library I use on Fort Hood here in Texas you can rent CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and video games for two weeks. Keep what you got cause it's going to be gone in the future. Also another issue is live service games. The ones now only operate if servers and dev teams behind it. Most will fail and fall and be forgotten for a unforseen time in future. If this didn't make sense my bad I haven't slept almost three days. Enjoyed the vidjya fellas

Love the info. Love the brotherhood. Thanks guys

Video games are kinda a decendant of pinball games, hand held games of the late 1970's like Mattel Football, PONG, board games, and vibrating field football games!

It's a bummer to see games dissapear. I love my Everdrive N8 Pro for NES. I would like a Genesis one someday, possibly SNES... but I think I'm gonna fight the urge to buy any gaming stuff now, I have a lot of debt, and I've also developed a strong love for building/moddifying guitars, and also want to learn to fix/mod pedals. I already have more games than I could ever play through.

Shoutout to HD-DVD. The Bloods to the Blu-Ray Crips of the movie format wars. Lol I still have an HD-DVD player and about 14 HD-DVDs. I'm kinda the same when it comes to modding stuff. I don't have the confidence to do modding in fear of bricking the console, but I have a longtime homie who's WAAAY more well-versed with modding than I am. I really do wish companies would be more mindful about making games as accessible as possible, especially when we're willing to pay! It could be a win-win for all sides!!

It's bad for both gamers and game creators when games aren't preserved. The game creators who had passion and love for their games and how probably had time crunches and did their best to bring a fun and amazing experience for those who game. Then have their hard work be lost in time and or forgotten. Then the younger gamers or gamers who never heard of certain games from back then and realizing the insane prices or If the game isn't available at all to play in any way and that sucks. I hope many game companies find ways to preserve their games for modern and future gamers. I'm happy some companies are already doing that but not for all of their games and not every company is doing that unfortunately. Neo Geo and Turbo Grafx 16 comes to my mind when thinking about games that if not preserved will be lost in time. Cool video. ^_^

I’m becoming less and less interested in modern games and movies. And part of that is always the rose tinted glasses that happens with every generation. And part of it is I genuinely think the quality is becoming rarer and less consistent. Am I wrong?

Libraries are great. Support your local libraries. Great video. 👊🏽

I fancy getting a couple of your drinks glasses is there anywhere I can get them from

Gaming Off The Grid As Per Usual Making Our Day Love The WWF Shirt Enjoy The Week Guys

sounds horrible all the classic and retros disappearing doesn't look like a good future imagine only having to only play games made by greedy companies