Stormy days The source code for the NES prototype on these discs remained in its basement for 30 years before it was discovered after his death. “/>When most people think about preserving the history of video games, they probably imagine a museum full of consoles and cartridges in boxes, or perhaps a huge digital database of emulable ROM files extracted from the original physical media. The Video Game History Foundation’s latest project is looking beyond these types of basic archiving projects, however, and toward the collection and preservation of the source code behind many classic games.
“For a video game historian, an archaeological dig in source material is the second best thing to do after a time travel,” said Frank Cifaldi of the VGHF. wall while developing a game. “
Exploring a game’s source code repository can help archivists discover previously unknown content and information. In 2017, for example, a VGHF analysis found art and animation from unused Disney characters in the 1993 Genesis source code Aladdin game (“Part of it was in a folder called trash,” Cifaldi told Ars). More recently, the VGHF team discovered the source code for Nuclear Rush– a game prototype for the Sega Genesis virtual reality headset – and remade to work on modern VR hardware.
But it’s not just about finding and restoring “lost” content. Looking at the source code can allow an experienced historian to “understand the creative process much better than you would otherwise, because it is the purest form of the game,” said Cifaldi. “It is the gross building block that makes it up.”
As an example, Cifaldi talked about his time looking at the source code for The Secret of Monkey Island and learn the language and tools behind LucasArts’s famous SCUMM engine. “Now, when I play a SCUMM game, I understand a little more. I speak the language a little better,” he said. “Knowing SCUMM, I just have this intuitive understanding of why creative decisions were made or not in your game, and I don’t think I could have that level of understanding without access to the SCUMM language.”
Before it’s too late…
Unfortunately, games like Monkey Island (where creator Ron Gilbert kept and generously donated the source code) are the exceptions. For games made before 2000, Cifaldi estimates that the source code has completely disappeared from over 90% of the “games we care about”.
“I’m sure a lot of sources were saved at once, so a change of office happened, someone said, ‘What is this old DAT that we have in a closet? It’s probably stored somewhere, just throw it away, “said Cifaldi.” I think the situation is very bad. It will only get worse as the people who actually filed those things age and leave the industry, if not this deadly coil. “
Footage of a hacked enemy Sword Swallower that was restored in 1993 Aladdin Genesis game from the source code.
When the source code of the first games survives, Cifaldi said it is usually purely by chance, “individuals who may have brought their work home and happen to have this material”. The source code of a previously unknown Stormy days The NES prototype, for example, was found digging into “a pile of floppy disks in the basement of its late developer”, as Cifaldi recalls. He imagines that there are “hundreds more [game source code repositories] thus, just floppy disks rotting in someone’s basement waiting for someone to recover. “
That is why VGHF is calling on developers who may have these important historical artifacts in their possession. Although the project is in its early days, Cifaldi said the foundation currently has about 100 titles with source code repositories “in several states”, including some that are just prints on endless reams of paper.
Who owns the story?
Even when the source code still exists, preservationists often have problems with protectionist companies that zealously try to protect their IP rights. “[Source code is] seen as a trade secret and there is no statute of limitations on when people are comfortable with a trade secret, “said Cifaldi.
Convincing companies to share these “secrets” for historical posterity – and first of all spend time and effort looking for them – can be an uphill battle, said Cifaldi. But that is starting to change in some corners, in part because of the trend for remakes and remastering of well-remembered games across the industry.
In the case of a game like Grim Fandango Remastered, for example, “the only reason the product exists is because employees have things in their homes and people know who to ask,” said Cifaldi. Without the source code, doing this type of remastering work is much greater – when Cifaldi worked at Digital Eclipse, none of the games had source code available, meaning the team had to create a whole new engine and reverse engineer of existing games ROM files.
However, companies are beginning to assess the value of this type of preservation. Disney began to realize the value of preserving source code, for example, when it used this raw material in the 2019 remastered collection Aladdin and Lion King games.
“In all cases, there is an internal interest because many of the companies we spoke with recognized that it arouses the interest of fans when people talk about these older products,” said Cifaldi. “A lot of commercial film preservation, Blu-ray movie remastering or whatever, a lot of that happens because the Library of Congress has the master film roll in its files … The idea of video game source repositories is no different. for me than that. “
Leaving aside the commercial relaunch, Cifaldi said that the fountain preservation project is seeking to supply the necessary raw materials for the continuation of studies in classic games. He compared it to documents and letters that serve as a basis for civil war stories or to archived production materials that illuminate the creation of Citizen Kane.
“We want to see more books on the shelves, more documentaries out there, a more in-depth study of what we are seeing,” said Cifaldi. “Original repositories like this, this is where history books come from.”