Why so ? Preservation is not free for private for profit companies, why do we expect it to be ?
People should get access to older publications for free absolutely, but that is what museums, libraries and copyright law is for .
The taxpayer can better fund preservation. A modern government mandated archive like libraries do for papers of record is quite realistic and linked to copyright protection.
There is no reason for IP protection to be free , patents are not , trademarks are not , they all require filing fees there is no reason copyright can’t work the same way.
“And on the pedestal, these words appear:
I am Jordan Mechner, Game Designer of Game Designers,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Never bet against the sands of time… but more power to him.
A lot of the information here are present in the journal of Jordan Mechner which I found was a very interesting dive into the making of Prince of Persia including doubts and difficulties anyone who tried to create things can probably relate to. Thats a very good read and a great gift to anyone who try to make things on his own : https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1468093657/ref=tmm_pap_swatch...
I absolutly recommend it. There is also a comics that tell his grand father, his father story and himself that tells a lot of what a war is and also tells a little bit of the making of PoP.
So many games were vaporized in the 32-bit apocalypse, both on iOS and macOS.
But I note that other game platforms and handhelds have better ABI stability (though they break every 7 years or so due to console generation changes.)
Preservation is an interesting subject. In art it has been something we have endured for a long time. The Last Supper was painted, as I recall, in an eggshell based paints. This medium had required restoration artists to repaint various sections every X number of years where X < 100.
The Shoah Foundation has the problem of preserving the digital transcriptions of holocaust survivor testimonies. Preserving those without bit-rot is also a difficult endeavour. I can’t imagine what it will be like for video games in the future.
Great article. And if you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend Replay.
Warrior Within had such great gameplay, just some slightly cringe choices of tone, which particularly unfortunately, were especially apparent in the first half-hour of the game. It generated a load of negative talk for a really good game.
For me the tone is big part of why I love it. It’s such a perfect distillation of what it was like being an angsty teenager at that moment in cultural time. Even looking back I still think it is just cool AF.
The closest comparison I can think of how I see it is like Brandon Lee’s The Crow, which is also still one of the most badass films ever made.
I think it really depends which stage of your life your played those games at - beeing a very dark and brooding 15-year old who was into all kinds of "edgy" teenage media at the time, the metal soundtrack and darker themes of Warrior Within made it seem like the coolest videogame of all time.
I doubt that. Sands of Time trilogy was very well received. Jordan Mechner was also involved in production in those, I'm just not sure in what capacity.
