Study finds around 87 percent of games are unplayable without resorting to piracy, scavenger hunts, or travelling to an archive
A study by the Video Game History Foundation, a «non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games», has found that most antique games are beyond the reach of fans unwilling to brandish the black flag on the digital high seas.
«87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered,» claims the study. «Just 13% of video game history is being represented in the current marketplace. In fact, no period of video game history defined in this study even cracked 20% representation.»
Their methodology, which you can read the full breakdown of here, used a randomised sample of 1,500 games released before 2010, «which is roughly the year when digital game distribution started to take off.» They also collected further, more targeted data on different consoles, or «ecosystems»: «Abandoned», «Neglected», and «Active»—giving the examples of the Commodore 64, the Game Boy, and the PS2 respectively. In total, over 4,000 games were included in the study.
Whether a re-released game counted as «accessible» was based on how much of the original had been preserved. For example, the foundation considered the remaster of 1987's Jinxster to qualify for still being «available,» while Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of Sega's 2005 action classic Yakuza, was considered too different to qualify the original as being «in print».
The study mentions «libraries and archives can digitally preserve, but not digitally share video games, and can provide on-premises access only,» which is an important distinction. You can still technically play many of the games the study states are «endangered», it's just impossible if you don't live close to an archive.
It does, however, make a
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