Interview – TotalBiscuit on Games Preservation

While covering the Red Bull Battlegrounds Grand Finals for StarCraft II, we had the opportunity to interview YouTube personality and games critic TotalBiscuit, who was a caster for the event. I am currently producing a documentary for the site about games preservation and the current legal challenges conservationists face, so given TotalBiscuit’s academic background in law and outspoken persona, I decided to have him field some questions on the topic. Though we didn’t have nearly enough time before a PR person snatched him away to his next appointment, we got the chance to analyze some of the statements the ESA has made, discuss the concerning future of increasingly digital consumerism, and evaluate the importance of multiplayer as a core functionality of games. Give it a watch below – and if you have questions around the topic, sound off in the comments or shoot me an ; I will be interviewing major industry figures in the coming weeks and your questions may just be answered!

Emanuel Hoogeveen

It’s worth noting that there’s actually a pretty old example of a digital preservation nightmare: the Japanese-only Satellaview for the SNES. This was an attachment for the SNES with a satellite modem that let you download games from an online service. These games would sometimes change over time to offer new content, and IIRC some even required a connection to be fully playable at all.

As you can imagine, this is a huge problem for digital preservation efforts – we can emulate the SNES, but a fair amount of content from the Satellaview service is lost forever, and other stuff is only partially available. The only reason we can even play *any* of it anymore is due to some very dedicated enthusiasts trying to make as much content available as possible, to help fix emulation bugs and figure out how to make things work (which sometimes requires romhacks to fool the SNES into thinking it has a connection).
- GeneralSpecific
  
  What about the SEGA Channel and the games that were released exclusively on that platform in North America?
  
  Golden
  Axe 3, Pulseman, and Mega Man: The Wily Wars are the big 3 games that
  were SC exclusives in North America(They do not have existing North American physical releases that are NOT bootlegs/repoductions) and the NTSCU versions of those games
  were lost forever and were not preserved. The preserved versions are of
  the PAL and JP versions.
  - Emanuel Hoogeveen
    
    Thanks, I didn’t know about that. Sounds like it was discontinued even earlier (1998) than the Satellaview (2000).
DSB_IV

Wow, this was awesome. Great interview. I can’t wait to see the documentary.
invaderalex

Great interview. If u get the chance you should really push this topic of Games Preservation to publishers.