There has a been a debate surrounding the classification of video games as art. I have always been on the side that says video games are just one of the newest forms of art we have been given, however, there are those who do not share that opinion. Fortunately, more and more people have started to change their opinions to see the former. Unfortunately, however, there is a new problem surrounding this, and that is the preservation of video games.
It surprised me that I was only exposed to this a couple weeks ago through a twitter thread by @AndroidSophia, but when I found out my eyes were opened to the real problem. A lot of the classic video games that were released in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's are being lost. In an increasingly digital world, where more and more games are being bought played digitally, we seem to be forgetting about the games that were not able to be saved digitally. There are tons of games that came out for the Sega Genesis, NES, and Super Nintendo (SNES) that have not been transferred to a digital platform, and many may never get that treatment.
@AndroidSophia put in better in her twitter post. The post said, "there are 721 North American SNES games. Before the Wii Virtual Store shut down, only 74 titles preserved on it." The article continues to say that "Now on the Wii U Virtual Console, the number is down even farther to 51." That is crazy! That is not even close to half of the North American games saved in some form. That is not even counting the countless games that never left their country of origin. Also, this stat is only for SNES games, and it doesn't mention the other consoles such as the Sega Genesis or Nintendo 64. There are so many games that may never get remembered because they simply won't exist. Of course, all the classics will be saved like "Mario," "The Legend of Zelda," "Mega Man," etc. but those are not the only games that are worth saving. There tons of cult classic games and lesser known games that people would love to see preserved.
This is not the first time this has happened either. We have probably all heard stories of lost paintings and pieces of art that have been lost over time, but this has happened to more recent art forms such as film. There are several films from the early days of film that have been lost forever. What I mean by that is they do not exist anymore at all. There is no way to find them or track them down in some way. They are gone forever, and this is happening to video games right before our eyes.
I also don't want to focus just on games from the 80's that were on SNES and consoles of that time. Digital distribution is still a relatively new form of distribution, and there are tons of games that, even in the early days of the PS3 and Xbox 360 that could be lost. This threat is real, and it is closer than any of us could imagine, and personally, I do not want to lose any more of the art that has brought joy to so many of us.
