It’s kinda sad that PlayStation kind of screwed up with Backwards comparability after the original fat ps3. They have allowed us to play ps4 games on ps5 but that’s really all

As Gabe Newell once said "It's a service issue" in lue of other REASONABLE forms of purchase or ownership people look to piracy.

I put video games in resin, that way they'll never age!

Great video. The way you pronounce the word “compilation” has become a new phobia of mine.

Perhaps we should reconsider what constitutes "piracy" regarding software that is no longer being produced, or made accessible.

I would say that I agree with your video almost entirely. Especially the ending I wish more people would stress-- supporting the games that you enjoy as much as possible. In an age with hundreds of examples of developers closing their doors, companies shutting down, great games being commercial failures, and then seeing the shocked look on gamers faces as they admit they never bought or supported games in the first place, it's such an important point to make. This topic is difficult to ever have a discussion about, largely due to the opposition to discussing the negative effects that piracy can have and never wanting to acknowledge it. I have a background in game development, and a degree in the industry as well (not that that's needed for talking about it, but to add context to where my confliction comes from), and it's shocking how much pushback you get when you even try to mention that uncomfortable part. That discourse really affected my view of the issue dramatically and I have to catch myself too because of it. The discourse I mention above is whenever I see bad actors latch onto preservation as a cover or excuse for them just wanting to get free games and acting like piracy has never caused any sort of issue in the industry. I know it's all anecdotal and Twitter and KZfaq aren't the majority, but it's so difficult to make that separation. Interviews with devs how their games are just pirated and they lose money or their livelihoods due to it (I've seen indie devs literally begging for people to purchase their games with how overwhelmingly popular piracy today is). OUYA being a complete failure due to lack of anyone buying anything and it being entirely a piracy machine. Sony constantly referring to piracy being what killed their handhelds and drove away developers. Hell, ROM sites themselves posting how many currently-available games are pirated daily shows how dishonest so many are when it comes to piracy. But it's because of my background and those interactions that makes me have to catch myself constantly from just wanting to push back on those cases. It's so annoying seeing people just mass pirate games or "piracy is always okay" on every game even new releases, and then in the same breath argue what should be exceptions and not see the hypocrisy. Piracy does have its place, especially for games that are no longer accessible or sold. On top of that, such creative and fun unique ways to experience games in new lights-- Ocarina of Time completely revived interest to me with the Multiworld Randomizer projects out there. They're so much fun. Another way is fan translations. In an industry where localizations can alter a game so significantly that the game is essentially a completely different game, piracy is the only way for gamers to experience a game as it was originally intended. It was how I was able to enjoy Pokemon TCG 2 for Gameboy Color, or Radical Dreamers for SNES Satellaview. But it's just so frustrating how there can't be a middle ground on this topic, it feels like. It's important I remind myself that this kind of thing could be applied to any topic or community though. That piracy is a tool, and any tool can and will be taken advantage of or used in a way that you might find distasteful. This little spiel was just me typing as I was thinking, and probably didn't put my thoughts too well or organized, but I guess my tl;dr was that this video is one of the best essays on piracy that I can remember, and was appreciated to see the balanced and nuance the topic deserved. It was basically how I view piracy myself, and because of that, made me really lament how terrible my experiences with discussing the topic has been through my life.

nice points being discussed here, agree with everything basically. Absolutely relate with this kind of "academic thinking" around videogame. Like, isnt just about preserve the >software/code< objectively, but also the context around, how it was outputted, the feeling of hardware and media, cultural impact, etc etc. All of those little details that is the reason of why i just love deal videogames like if was a semiotic/artistic academic research. Anyway, awesome video!

Watching this with all of the miiverse stamps I collected in Twilight Princess HD 😅

On the thing with revisions of games, the first version of Castlevania 1 has a gamebreaking glitch where it can spawn too many sprites for the console to handle and causes it to freeze. The Castlevania legacy collection uses the first version so your options for dealing with for, example, the hallway before the death boss are a lot more limited. As always, emulating or using OG hardware + flashcart is more worthwhile

I mean, a GOOD and HIGH QUALITY PC port pretty easily keeps games preserved almost indefinitely. With Microsoft running Windows into the ground year by year, Linux is slowly picking up the slack. But overall it's a very good solution for most games. Though it's up to the publisher and developer to even make a good port, or make any port at all. For now we're kinda relying on pirates keeping games from vanishing forever lol.

"We're not letting you download games that we'll never give a re-release!" -Nintendo

This is such a comprehensive analysis of game preservation. You really go in-depth and approach the subject from practically every angle. Amazing work. Definitely looking forward to more of your videos.

I’ve been preserving my GameCube games and are on my PC to be played on emulators and I do agree that physical media can be better than digital. I support gaming preservation and will do to this day.

Game preservation is Vital to our history. Emulation and privacy is not wrong, it’s just…Logical. A friend of mine told me she was scared of getting arrested because she had old game roms on her computer for emulation, I told her No…you’re perfectly fine, you won’t get arrested just because you’re emulating games. It really upsets me when companies like Nintendo Say emulation is piracy, Like…No…it’s not, We are just preserving YOUR games that YOU fail to keep preserved. If I had the power to open up a video game archives (Like a real life library for gaming) then i absolutely would do that. Make it available for everyone to play retro games.

Really awesome video, never knew about the planets remake that looks super cool!

10:57 shovel knight dx is aiming to rectify this by being the ultimate version even including stereoscopic 3d

gosh this is the video on the topic I've wished existed for so long, you covered a lot of stuff that I never found addressed in other videos in the subject A thing I wanna add is that some of the stuff lost in translation when remastering a game is just as likely to happen if it was getting ported too. There's legal reasons like you mention, but also the task of taking a game made for one piece of hardware and moving it to another and having it run and look the exact same as before is not a easy thing to do, even if it's on a more powerful hardware, the difference in architecture means it's never gonna be as easy as changing a few lines of code. That can be see in the ports made with decomps too, for one the decompilation by itself doesn't immediately lead to a pc port, that takes a extra while (and interest too, Paper Mario has been fully decompiled for a year, but no pc port has been in the works), and ports for other (particularly 6th and 7th gen) platforms do have certain quirks in its visuals And then on PC and Mobile, this ends up affecting same version of a game due to newer hardware and operating systems, and updates made to fix those issues can also lead to details being lost labels like port, remaster and remakes, as they are used by game companies, fluctuate a lot in meaning, and at times might just be treated like marketing buzzwords, but the process in making them tend to overlap more than its led to believe

saw the post, couldnt wait to get home to watch!

Exactly. I see so many people not capable of understanding a lot of games are impossible to play without piracy.

Fantastic video! I also like the long form content too. Very excited for the next video!

The algorithm hit on this one. This was a good watch

I personally would love for criterion to rerelease the old burnout games for pc, I would personally buy them.

The one reason piracy is good 👍

Excellent analysis! You didn't senselessly ramble one bit. As someone who's been emulating for 17+ years, this was well worth a watch.

Another stellar video 👍

18:00 on top of these controllers you mentioned, i think a perfect example is dreamcast. the vmu is not only super charming but also a necessity for certain games, such as re code veronica and sonic shuffle. its really hard to recreate playing dreamcast thru emulation imo

25:54 the new PS2 emulator for PS4/5 actually just launched with a couple games last week. It’s pretty barebones but upscales resolution, and had rewind and save states which is nice.

alright boys, how long should we let him get into the video before someone tells him how to pronounce "compilation?" YES

I’ve been wanting THQNordic to re release the Tak and the Power of Juju trilogy (Tak and the Power of Juju, Tak 2 the Staff of Dreams and Tak the Great Juju Challenge) fans want them but THQNordic is just doing nothing with the license, it’s frustrating I’m lucky to still have the GameCube games but not everyone does

I wish the video game industry starts a preservation effort for old games and port them (de/recomp or using existing source code) to current platforms. They can still make money from past games and it will be a win-win for everyone.

One thing thats never talked about is the importance in teaching newer developers about the past. As there are some great gameplay ideas stuck on old machines. And with the rise of homebrew development. Its more important than ever to get the emulation and games represented properly. As even something simple like how colors bleed can make or break a homebrew project if left inaccurate. Heck I had to use my GBA sp to test my game on for specifically the stretch that you can enable only on original GBA hardware. As i want to design a mode that can take advantage of the odd stretching.

Official decompilations actually exists, when Kingdom Hearts 1 was remastered to the PS3 they had to reverse engineer the game because they lost the source, it's also how they added enhancements like skippable cutscene and the reaction command. I heard FFVIII was also decompiled when they made the remaster

7:46 I will give you an even better reason as to why the Zelda Collector's edition is important: It is the ONLY official way to play those four games in PAL territories at their correct speed, as they work only at 60hz instead of 50hz. This is doubly important for Majora's Mask, as the European release comes with several languages. Never after that has Nintendo provided a way to play that N64 version again. There's so much that would be lost if it were left on the hands of corporations to salvage or preserve the culture that videogames are...

I didn’t even watch the video and I had to like it bc omg this topic needs to be talked about more, please guys y’all need to buy more physical copies, even if it’s through eBay or Amazon

Heading the sonic mega collection music takes me back to the mid 2000s in the afternoon sun is setting my Ps2 running and my room door open light pouring in my dad in the next room on his Mac computer playing music off iTunes. Me right up in front of my tv going through the menus with my younger brother beside me or playing die the first time sonic 3 and just falling in love with the music of angel island act 2 and astounded by the level changing mid act with the forest on fire. This takes me back and since we haven’t really had a collection that can capture that same feeling don’t think we ever will nostalgia plays a big part but man I miss those days. Also is there anyway to play a lot of the Mario’s/zelda or Metroid games on none Nintendo consoles I’ve only ever had PlayStation with the occasional Xbox consoles so I’m guessing no but I figure I still ask?

27:45 Oh shit, It's that image I made. Wasn't expecting to see that. Looking back, I feel like I could've done a much better job with that image, and I regret the usage of the terms "mistake" and "replacement", especially the latter since it implied the original versions of these games could or should be replaced, which was not my intent. Anyways, very good and interesting video. I will say, the topic of licenses and legal issues preventing games from getting official rereleases reminded me of how fucked the Pac-Man series is in this regard. Bandai Namco not having the full rights to Ms. Pac-Man, one of the franchise's most prominent and iconic characters, has resulted in the majority of the games in the first 3 decades of the franchise's history being in limbo, unable to be rereleased unless alterations are made to remove Ms. Pac-Man. This isn't too hard for some games like Pac-Land, which require simple sprite edits, something they've already done for Arcade Archives and Pac-Man Museum+. But what about games that have Ms. Pac-Man in a more prominent role, with more elaborate sprites, or 3D models, or appearances in pre-rendered FMVs? Bandai Namco probably won't want to go through all that effort and would rather just remake the game from scratch, like they did with Pac-Man World, or forget about it, leaving it alone and not rereleased. This would already suck if it were just a game or two like with Sonic 3, but like I said, this one issues effects the majority of games in Pac-Man's back catalogue, *especially* the games from the 2000s, which also happen to be some of the most beloved in the series. It really sucks.

Disk decay is apparently a thing as well. Keeping a clean/closed physical copy won’t matter in the future

Without piracy, projects like RVGL would be impossible. A game from a long-dead studio had its sourcecode leak, and the community took it upon themselves to update the game to run natively on the new generations of computer hardware, and even add new, all-original maps, cars and even game modes for people to play. Not to mention creating an online mode, and keeping said online mode alive for far longer than any for-profit corporation ever could. However, the RVGL website directly distributes every piece of the puzzle necessary to run it. No part of the original disc is required, the new version doesn't even test its original DRM. It doesn't matter how much of a mess it causes, the laws will never change. Same as with the climate. The corporate world would rather die. Since they made their choice, join in the rebellion, for the sake of future generations!

21:27 Super Mario 64 DS is the BEST videogame 🎮 remake ever made.

great music selection!

10:25 since you mentioned Resident Evil 5....RE5's PC version actually has the same PS Move Controls Scheme available for Keyboard/Mouse users. (you'll lose out on QTE Waggle, tho) potentially: you could create a Keyboard/Mouse config with your Input Remapper of choice with any controller with Motion Sensor functionality and it can play 1:1 to the PS Move Controls scheme. I know this; *because I've done it before* . Even made a entire video (now a bit outdated) and a guide that teaches you how to get that desire.

Once again, Ross Scott becomes extremely relevant to the conversation.

Great video. I really liked how you looked at all sides of presentation. As especially videos from the "muh original hardware" crowd they really often downplay how good emulation is and overblow the experience of OG hardware. One question, how good would you consider Halo MCC as a form of presentation?

what never gets talked about within this topic is the impossibility of preserving dying live service titles as well as phone ports for stuff like old iOS versions.

Decompiles are Peak

The wallet balance flex 4:05

I think Capcom has done the best out of all gaming companies when It comes down to game preservation. Many companies should start doing what they do. I hope many companies make their classic games easy to find and play on modern gaming consoles and just to buy in general. There are so many great games stuck on original hardware and in the future It might still be like this unless gaming companies do their best to keep them on modern hardware or just do collection editions with many games in 1. Cool video. ^_^

Aye aye captain 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

13:13 I agree, I've met many people who have played dragon Valor from PS1 and loved it and wanted to buy but they don't sell it anymore, hell it's hard to find a used copy of the game. Thankfully I had a "friend" who broke back in the day my kingdom hearts DVD and from that day and on I converted the games I bought to ensure that I'll have them longer but many people didn't do that and lost their games due to disc rot

Games with licensing issues are my biggest fear and worry, I'm worried about Smash Ultimate having potential licensing issues in the future preventing it from getting rereleased because of the shit ton of characters and music (Disney is a risky ass company for licensing characters) guest characters in games or licensed cameos will be hell for game preservation, unless there is something in the contract to cover future releases.

I collect gamecube and ps2 physical games, but now I’m worried about consoles’ longevity. I already had to swap out the internals for my gamecube, and my ps2 now struggles to read ps1 games and blue disc ps2 games. It’s why i emulate them, to spare my physical games

4:32 The fact that so many people consider this as something that has to be (making every single console have only really small library of backwards compatibility) is sad to think about because on the PC you can just download the game through something like Steam (if they don't have denuvo), GOG, Itch or by piracy and copy them elsewhere and play it for many years to come. We need it when a game isn't sold anymore for it to be in the public domain and open sourced (That's at least me trying to be more realistically hopeful then the copyright law being abolished).

My man talked about fan remakes without spreading a single syllable about AM2R!

There is a perfect solution: the studio has to release the source code under MIT when software is EOL.

Reproduction copies not official aren’t legal anyway. Even if those games cost $1, there factually isn’t enough stock for everyone who wants to legally play them.

A company could just sell the roms in their website. The buyers (us) could use any fan created emulator to run them. Of course Nintendo would never do that, but there so many others that could.

Remakes point is also to introduce mordern cancer such as microtransactions while not living up to the standards of the original game since there is no frame of reference for most people buying the remake and they definetly will not care about either of these things or them being something that will dominate the rest of the remakes and new games based on said remakes.

I agree with a lot of the sentiments here. If there were such a thing as a perfect preservation, I would say it would be along the lines of a universal automatic decompilation tool, but such a project is not only wildly infeasible but it would also open Pandora’s box in terms of digital security. An aspect on this conversation of game preservation that I feel has been left in a blindspot is preservation of games outside the console space, namely PC, Browser, VR, and even Mobile. There’s an awkward era in PC history starting in the mid-90s and ending sometime in the 2010s where games made for that era were designed for hardware and OSes that are simultaneously rudimentary and near impossible to emulate, making it so that playing those games as they were intended natively on modern hardware is impossible without becoming a computer historian and borderline wizard. In such cases, fan decompilations and recreations are the only means to make these games work as intended. Browser games also have the short end of the stick since not only are they ephemeral exclusively digital, but in many cases aren’t even downloadable. Adobe’s erasure of Flash has done irreparable damage to browser game preservation and HTML5 has not filled in the void left behind. It’s fortunate we have projects like Flashpoint, but I don’t think people have really considered how much of browser game history has gone down the drain. I won’t rant much about VR game preservation because I’m genuinely not sure why it’s in such a bad state as it is, but Mobile preservation has always stuck out to me as an absolute nightmare. Not only are they digital storefront exclusive, not only are some games stuck on obscure and outdated hardware, but in Apple’s case they will literally make applications unusable if they’re delisted off the storefront but you’ve still downloaded them. I’ve lost so many of my iPod Touch games that I genuinely can’t remember the names of some, and this is an issue I don’t have for any other platform I’ve ever played on. It blows my mind that Mobile is still the most profitable sector of the gaming industry when its preservation is an unmitigated disaster.

Hell yeah, love to see a gamer on youtube promoting piracy. Really confuses me when I see nitro rad say "it's on ebay" at the end of the video. like bro what??? I swear, either people are just basing their moral compass on what the law says, or they are cowards.

10:47 hell yeahhhhh

new Welbig vid lets go!

21:15 You said the bad word 😲

Nice vid!

I never owned a Gameboy Advance growing up. I now own a modded GBA and saving up for a Everdrive so I can play games and I don’t have to sell a kidney to buy a handful of games

37:05 You have no idea how much I was pissed off about playing Resident Evil 5 on the Microsoft Xbox 360 after years of playing Resident Evil 4 on the Nintendo Wii Going from the Crosshair from the Wii Remote to the Lazer with Right Analog Stick was sad No offense to the Right Analog Stick on itself it works perfectly My Problem is with the fucking Red Lazer that blands in the Background with anything except with Enemys in Melee Distance No Wonder the only Weapons I was using was the 3 Sniper Rifles because They use Scopes rather than Lazer to Aim

Taking pictures of older artwork and sharing them for preservation is fine, but the same isn't true for video games that are no longer being sold? There is nothing wrong with ''piracy'' in this case, copyright law should be updated to reflect this. Video games are art and they deserve to be enjoyed by later generations as much as paintings or books do

cave story to me is the biggest offender of locking content behind a specific console version. almost every version has an entirely new and unique feature that isn't in any previous or new version. every console generation nicalis just gets to make absolutely sure that there will never be a true definitive version of the game

This is why i I'm thankful Piracy exists. I know people can be a little mixed about it, in which case i say "F\_/ck you nerd XD". It's just really great how rom sites and websites like that exist (Even if it isn't necessarily intended for Preservation but more so "Free Game go brrrrr", Cause let's be real honest, Piracy is a price issue AND service issue)

I had a collection of all Nintendo Console and Handheld also all of Sony Consoles but I sold all of it in 2019, why? Because I can't keep up maintenance on keeping them working especially the handhelds because of LCD Burn... What happened to the money I got in 2019? I bought something that can preserve the Gaming History...It's called PC...

Nintendo is going after sheet music now.

I’m still pissed Nintendo took down a huge amount of games off of vims lair one of the oldest rom sites

You can use Wii remotes on emulators??? My copy of sport resort broke a decade ago and I've been wanting to replay it so bad.

Cumpielations

I like your long videos. But if you can't keep that up for any reason, that's fine.

non native speaker here, it's the first time i hear "com pile ation and decom pile ation" pronounciations. is this correct? is it more formal?

"yeah, video game 'preservation', alright", says nintendo mockingly.

A really bad one you didn't mention, the faces in Final Fantasy X were ruined. They look so ugly in the HD remasters compared to the original PS2 version.

15:01 Before you glorify filters it would be best to have a real CRT next to the display with the filter for the best comparison.

Let's finally preserve some xbox one games with this new upcoming exploit.

Xbox 360 digital store closing soon sucks

Keep it real

27:46

I don't know if it's just me but there is no audio on the video

people in 2017: man, I don't want to rebuy my virtual console games. Nintendo should make a Netflix style subscription. 2024: This is bad for preservation also I don't own the games. Gamers will never be happy

I've seen people say that piracy is the answer to VG Preservation BUUUUUT.... There is a massive flaw with it and it's... Denuvo (aka DRM) The only person to crack DRM is Empress and she hasn't cracked games in over a year. Any modern game with DRM is impossible to preserve unless they also have a Playstation or a Nintendo Switch port since Denuvo doesn't really exist there. (Yes Denuvo has tried making console developers use Denuvo but no one has used it yet I think)

Piracy shall remain the only true way to preserve digital media

please stop pronouncing compilation like that the "pi" is pronounced like the "pi" in pill, not the "pi" in pie