I feel as though video games are the most underrepresented medium of preservation compared to other art forms like Books, Music and Movies.

[TomRiddle]

It's supposed to be re-released as something for gamers and developers to look back on the value of the artistical forms of innovations.

Take this as a example, I can watch harry potter and the chamber of secrets pretty easily, be it DVD, Blue Ray, and multiple digital services to buy and rent the movie however I please.

Meanwhile, F-Zero GX, a almost 19 year old game is completely unavailable to the masses unless you buy the original hardware and game off on places like eBay that's not very practical or even cost-friendly by the majority of gamers.

And this raises an issue across the board for video game preservation, how can we expect the new generations or even ourselves to play older games that were seen as artistical masterpieces, games that impacted their respected genres by revolutionary and fun gameplay, story and characters that made you care, and the innovations that it set during the time periods and eras of gaming.

I also feel as though video game preservation needs re-releasing as a means of genuine accessibility because games aren't really entirely meant to be locked away in a museum where nobody can play it.

It's supposed to be re-released and preserved as something for gamers and developers to look back on the value of the artistical forms of it's gameplay, (story and characters) and innovations in order to make a brighter future of all gaming by seeing on what we did both right and wrong in the past.

That being said though, discussing how to release them is the problem here.

Various people have different opinions on if a game should be remastered, remade or even emulated like with the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, for instance.

Overall I made this post to see on how many people agree with me and if so, how to re-release classic games in order to preserve them in the best possible form for years to come being on the same caliber of accessibility of older titles like, again Books, Music and movies.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

The problem you are referring to is not exclusive to video games. I tend to see the problem in the overly long copyright term: death of the author(s) + n (n→∞).

Mentioning mainstream movies like Harry Potter as an example for easy, legal access isn't sufficient. Of course Harry Potter saw countless different pressings on optical discs over time all over the world and is still for sale new (and available on streaming services).
It gets much more problematic with old, obscure movies. Often the DVDs are sold out and ridiculously expensive on the used market because there isn't a real used market. I even failed finding DVDs of well-known cartoons like Animaniacs. They were (maybe are again) available in region code 1 with English only. Plus: The discs were overly expensive when I searched. No European release – region code 2 – and no German dubbing. The weak, useless region enforcing on DVDs aside, the German translation of Animaniacs is one of the few that is equally good compared to the original (more often than not German cartoon dubbing is ).

Then there is forgotten/abandoned content – no matter if book/movie/software(game). Sometimes copyright situation is unclear (rightsholder unknown). Sometime rightsholders don't agree with further publication. The term abandonware emerged… there are sites where you can download for example DOS games. But this isn't really legal – it just seems to get tolerated.

From the technical point of view I would say everything is already done to preserve console games. We have next to perfect emulation for older consoles and anybody able to use a search engine should be able to find complete no-intro and redump in some archive. The games don't get lost and will be playable even after the last old TV and last old console dies. Our problem is missing legality. Again: Take Nintendo mainstream stuff as an example: You can't say it is difficult to get legal access to… let's say Super Mario World. It was/is available on:

• Wii Virtual Console (shop now defunct)
• Wii U Virtual Console (active)
• New 3DS Virtual Console (active)
• Maybe Switch online (don't have a Switch)

But if you watched Angry Video Game Nerd ranting about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on NES (or any other obscure title)… good luck finding the old cartridges for trying the garbage games yourself. Such things aren't available (to my knowledge) in legal emulation.


As for remastering for re-release: Well, a remaster technically is a new game. I wouldn't call that preservation (not saying it is bad). A good example for blurring the lines between remastering and preservation is the new version of "Day of the Tentacle". All graphics, sounds and music modernized (making a more modern looking version of the cartoony game) – but with a single press of a hotkey the player can switch between (as far as I have seen) 100% accurate usage of the old graphics/music/sound and the new version.
For the case of the SCUMM-based adventure games, ScummVM alone does a pretty good job preserving the content in the sense of usability on a variety of modern platforms – again the illegality is the only obstacle since hunting down old floppy discs and CD-ROMs isn't particularly easy (I don't know if and which games are for sale on Steam and the like).

 

[ChibiMofo]

75% of all movies from the silent era are gone permanently. Imagine if 75% of the games from the first 30 years of videogames were gone forever. There are hundreds of songs that were popular from the 1890s to 1920s for which no known recording exists. Your analogy fails at the most basic level. No medium has been more overrepresented in preservation than videogames. Nor is it even close.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

75% of all movies from the silent era are gone permanently. Imagine if 75% of the games from the first 30 years of videogames were gone forever. There are hundreds of songs that were popular from the 1890s to 1920s for which no known recording exists. Your analogy fails at the most basic level. No medium has been more overrepresented in preservation than videogames. Nor is it even close.

A little more friendliness in a reply wouldn't harm. Else I would say something like: "Nice quote from Wikipedia with the 75% lost silent movies. But your comparison fails itself. 1890s to 1920s is a time frame were recording technology wasn't readily available – non existing recordings are hardly an example for not preserving. How to preserve what isn't there in the first place?"

Lost movies are indeed a big thing. The older, the more is lost. Nitrocellulose is dangerous to explosive. As late as the 1990s the first computer animated films like Toy Story suffered from undiscoverable parts in the digital source.

Fact is that nowadays all content can be easily backed up, copied, preserved and converted without loosing quality. The same couldn't be said for earlier technology. Seeing some TV series from the 1980s is almost painful because they have been recorded on professional video tape rather than film. They might be somewhat preserved by digitizing them, but they will never reach the picture quality we are used to nowadays (which is mostly not a problem with much older content – although they tried cost cutting in some episodes with experiments on video tape as early as Rod Serling's Twilight Zone).

Video games being more or less digital media from the beginning (surely someone will be able dig out some irrelevant analogue examples), their preservation was – ignoring copyright – much easier (and doesn't involve digitizing a mass of content from analogue technology). Nevertheless when not taking the backup topic seriously, losses can occur faster than they should. The source code of Price of Persia was deemed lost (but rediscovered). A future problem for preserving video games are the increasingly invasive DRM measures. I own a ProtectDisc that would have given me a hard time staring the application if there wasn't my good old reliable Windows XP computer.

 

[JaapDaniels]

A little more friendliness in a reply wouldn't harm. Else I would say something like: "Nice quote from Wikipedia with the 75% lost silent movies. But your comparison fails itself. 1890s to 1920s is a time frame were recording technology wasn't readily available – non existing recordings are hardly an example for not preserving. How to preserve what isn't there in the first place?"

Lost movies are indeed a big thing. The older, the more is lost. Nitrocellulose is dangerous to explosive. As late as the 1990s the first computer animated films like Toy Story suffered from undiscoverable parts in the digital source.

Fact is that nowadays all content can be easily backed up, copied, preserved and converted without loosing quality. The same couldn't be said for earlier technology. Seeing some TV series from the 1980s is almost painful because they have been recorded on professional video tape rather than film. They might be somewhat preserved by digitizing them, but they will never reach the picture quality we are used to nowadays (which is mostly not a problem with much older content – although they tried cost cutting in some episodes with experiments on video tape as early as Rod Serling's Twilight Zone).

Video games being more or less digital media from the beginning (surely someone will be able dig out some irrelevant analogue examples), their preservation was – ignoring copyright – much easier (and doesn't involve digitizing a mass of content from analogue technology). Nevertheless when not taking the backup topic seriously, losses can occur faster than they should. The source code of Price of Persia was deemed lost (but rediscovered). A future problem for preserving video games are the increasingly invasive DRM measures. I own a ProtectDisc that would have given me a hard time staring the application if there wasn't my good old reliable Windows XP computer.

for the DRM part, i've only got 2 games i never got running good in later windowses... pong, and i mean like the 3d version also on PSX, just the pc had better graphics, and act of war... i mean i can get them running on later oses, but pong misses a lot of audio, and act of war crashes about every 10 minutes.
pong doesn't see the CD at all, but will progress as long as the data files are there... no music.
act of war can be cracked, then with compatibility mode to the minimum it starts (though buggy), but it seems to have a havy problem with ram and so it kicks me out a lot at random points.
practicly all other old games i could kick DRM out of the executable, register or emulate/fake the DRM.
just is it worth the time spend...
for your DRM games serch for deme or beta's of the game, they might use the same executable, without the DRM in place.
there are a few DRM patch tools, not game specific but DRM specific...

 

[KleinesSinchen]

for the DRM part, i've only got 2 games i never got running good in later windowses... pong, and i mean like the 3d version also on PSX, just the pc had better graphics, and act of war... i mean i can get them running on later oses, but pong misses a lot of audio, and act of war crashes about every 10 minutes.
pong doesn't see the CD at all, but will progress as long as the data files are there... no music.
act of war can be cracked, then with compatibility mode to the minimum it starts (though buggy), but it seems to have a havy problem with ram and so it kicks me out a lot at random points.
practicly all other old games i could kick DRM out of the executable, register or emulate/fake the DRM.
just is it worth the time spend...
for your DRM games serch for deme or beta's of the game, they might use the same executable, without the DRM in place.
there are a few DRM patch tools, not game specific but DRM specific...

The DRM removal approach will work for:

• Mainstream games
• DRM with generic cracks
• Reverse engineers being able to crack a protected executable themselves

It is no different compared to the preservation of movies, books… Things of general interest see the most efforts (be it DRM removal or other incompatibilities) and will survive. Exotic software often hasn't been cracked and you will find no workarounds for making them work on modern hard+software (if it doesn't work out-of-the box either directly or in virtual machine).

 

[thominho]

It's supposed to be re-released as something for gamers and developers to look back on the value of the artistical forms of innovations.

Take this as a example, I can watch harry potter and the chamber of secrets pretty easily, be it DVD, Blue Ray, and multiple digital services to buy and rent the movie however I please.

Meanwhile, F-Zero GX, a almost 19 year old game is completely unavailable to the masses unless you buy the original hardware and game off on places like eBay that's not very practical or even cost-friendly by the majority of gamers.

And this raises an issue across the board for video game preservation, how can we expect the new generations or even ourselves to play older games that were seen as artistical masterpieces, games that impacted their respected genres by revolutionary and fun gameplay, story and characters that made you care, and the innovations that it set during the time periods and eras of gaming.

I also feel as though video game preservation needs re-releasing as a means of genuine accessibility because games aren't really entirely meant to be locked away in a museum where nobody can play it.

It's supposed to be re-released and preserved as something for gamers and developers to look back on the value of the artistical forms of it's gameplay, (story and characters) and innovations in order to make a brighter future of all gaming by seeing on what we did both right and wrong in the past.

That being said though, discussing how to release them is the problem here.

Various people have different opinions on if a game should be remastered, remade or even emulated like with the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, for instance.

Overall I made this post to see on how many people agree with me and if so, how to re-release classic games in order to preserve them in the best possible form for years to come being on the same caliber of accessibility of older titles like, again Books, Music and movies.

To be honest I never cared how they handle video games as media. I expect politics etc but I just don't care even if they release a game where minorities are handled as they must. It is like playing football and stopping the game to ask the other "what do you think about X". Create good stories, gameplay and graphics just this. I don't care remakes,remastered, reboots re whatever.

 

[JaapDaniels]

The DRM removal approach will work for:

• Mainstream games
• DRM with generic cracks
• Reverse engineers being able to crack a protected executable themselves

It is no different compared to the preservation of movies, books… Things of general interest see the most efforts (be it DRM removal or other incompatibilities) and will survive. Exotic software often hasn't been cracked and you will find no workarounds for making them work on modern hard+software (if it doesn't work out-of-the box either directly or in virtual machine).

Please give examples of those not cracked and no workarounds for those are really limited.
I know for consoles that's half treu,new consoles can be completely diffent hw in design, and cartridges might got a timebomb in design.
The timebomb is mostlikely a (cap used as a) battery wich keeps the ram supplied with juise wich has the decryption key in it.For PC it's there, but there's hope if you really want it working there are a few tools.
There's also ghidra.
Your favorite hexeditor, regedit...
You shouldn't be waiting for others to do the research if you want it done, if something alike is done before it can be done again.
that said, no great accomp[lishment is ever just the work of one man, you should share your research to those capable to work with this data.
and i hate to say, but with this soort of work, you might also have to consider a way of funding.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Please give examples of those not cracked and no workarounds for those are really limited.

I will answer although it goes partially off-topic. True for mainstream games. Everything well-known will probably already be patched, have workaround or whatever.
I already mentioned ProtectDisc. Many obscure German (in my opinion useless) games for little children have been protected infected with this garbage of a disc based DRM. The stupid "Emulator aktiv" message preventing the legit discs from working in a computer not having CD emulation software installed, really made my blood pressure skyrocket. I've got three titles, three different versions of the ProtectDisc driver acedrv09.sys, acedrv10.sys and acedrv11.sys. The latest installment of this DRM might be compatible with recent Windows versions (didn't try). acedrv09.sys is known to randomly bluescreen Windows Vista and newer while NOT using a protected game/application

I wasn't able to find cracks for any of the three games(?):

• Lauras Vorschule 2 (acedrv09.sys, ProtectDisc CD)
• Frag doch mal… Die Maus (acedrv10.sys, ProtectDisc DVD using the CSS mark to distinguish DVD±R from the legit DVD)
• Die Reitakademie – Das entscheidende Turnier (acedrv11.sys ProtectDisc CD)

Spoiler

If you start digging into obscure things, not only games, you will encounter many protected applications not having a crack on well-known sources. I don't think this is a German thing. Anybody try unknown software/games from their country. Last year I spontaneously started randomly buying PC games on copy protected CDs/DVDs to play around with various burning software and emulators to see how well CloneCD/Alcohol 120%/Daemon Tools/Virtual CD… are able to beat disc based DRM with and without emulation. The only criteria for me buying those games were a) very low price b) different DRM schemes and different versions of the same DRM schemes.
The result was clear:

• Emulation software won the fight (cat and mouse game is over with virtually non disc based DRM around anymore)
• Most titles I've heard of before (e.g. Splinter Cell, Sims, Bioshock…) were protected either with Safedisc or Securom and perfect cracks are one search away
• Obscure software had no cracks available and ProtectDisc is a major beast a tackling disc emulation. I don't believe ProtectDisc is so much better or harder to beat – but flew completely under the radar of emulation developers. No crack groups seem to be interested in kiddie software.

Your favorite hexeditor, regedit...
You shouldn't be waiting for others to do the research if you want it done, if something alike is done before it can be done again.

Very funny. "If there is a preservation issue, solve it yourself" If I was able to learn reverse engineering, I would. I'm simply not on that level (and too much mentally affected to put efforts in that direction). A hexeditor, ghidra, regedit and IDA will not magically put average people into the position to contribute much in this regard.

 

[JaapDaniels]

I will answer although it goes partially off-topic. True for mainstream games. Everything well-known will probably already be patched, have workaround or whatever.
I already mentioned ProtectDisc. Many obscure German (in my opinion useless) games for little children have been protected infected with this garbage of a disc based DRM. The stupid "Emulator aktiv" message preventing the legit discs from working in a computer not having CD emulation software installed, really made my blood pressure skyrocket. I've got three titles, three different versions of the ProtectDisc driver acedrv09.sys, acedrv10.sys and acedrv11.sys. The latest installment of this DRM might be compatible with recent Windows versions (didn't try). acedrv09.sys is known to randomly bluescreen Windows Vista and newer while NOT using a protected game/application

I wasn't able to find cracks for any of the three games(?):

• Lauras Vorschule 2 (acedrv09.sys, ProtectDisc CD)
• Frag doch mal… Die Maus (acedrv10.sys, ProtectDisc DVD using the CSS mark to distinguish DVD±R from the legit DVD)
• Die Reitakademie – Das entscheidende Turnier (acedrv11.sys ProtectDisc CD)

Spoiler

If you start digging into obscure things, not only games, you will encounter many protected applications not having a crack on well-known sources. I don't think this is a German thing. Anybody try unknown software/games from their country. Last year I spontaneously started randomly buying PC games on copy protected CDs/DVDs to play around with various burning software and emulators to see how well CloneCD/Alcohol 120%/Daemon Tools/Virtual CD… are able to beat disc based DRM with and without emulation. The only criteria for me buying those games were a) very low price b) different DRM schemes and different versions of the same DRM schemes.
The result was clear:

• Emulation software won the fight (cat and mouse game is over with virtually non disc based DRM around anymore)
• Most titles I've heard of before (e.g. Splinter Cell, Sims, Bioshock…) were protected either with Safedisc or Securom and perfect cracks are one search away
• Obscure software had no cracks available and ProtectDisc is a major beast a tackling disc emulation. I don't believe ProtectDisc is so much better or harder to beat – but flew completely under the radar of emulation developers. No crack groups seem to be interested in kiddie software.

Very funny. "If there is a preservation issue, solve it yourself" If I was able to learn reverse engineering, I would. I'm simply not on that level (and too much mentally affected to put efforts in that direction). A hexeditor, ghidra, regedit and IDA will not magically put average people into the position to contribute much in this regard.

that be true, and protectdisc is indead triggered by CD-emulation, though it's triggered by the drive name... some emulators let you set a custom drive name deamon tools pro let's you rename the drive (it's a paid service) and the type of connection like sata... put here a really excisting drive of the time of the game...
that should remove the trigger of the emulation detection...
should cause i never had a game past protectdisc 9.xx in the netherlands to test with...
check thier mini images for special mini images wich ehm are specially meant for bypassing the security.
but i'm affraid that windows wil still fail you for the DRM driver will not be allowed to fully run on windows 11, on thier site they say it breaks partly from windows 7 and up...
i'll try to trck your 3 games around here, to search for if i can get any better details for how to break the wrapper of protectdisc.
yes it's a wrapper protection and it only wrappes around the executable, so it should be bypassable. that being said, i really didn't do any kind of this work for ages now, last time i cracked a game was at school around the year 2000.
and i really don't know how many tools i used, so for credits... it hardly been my work.
i didn't use a crack that been released, but i still used guides and tools of others to get there.
i don't believe protect disc is that great a deal, just a lack ofinterest for the group[ still using it is limited.
as far as i can see it's almost only used in germany after driver version 9 was released.

Okay, i checked and found those 3 games, though i they're not easy to get here, so testing will be hard for me, and since the last universal cracking method was using alcohol 120% to dump the special part of the original disc (mini-image) containing the non standard data discarded by normal copy software (mostly because it been a small data partition/track that was discarded as being garbage or a scratch).
this mini image has mostlikely a key, decryptingthe executable's wrapped data.
you can either run this mini-image in the emulator like deamon-toolz pro with custom settings, but i can't garante it'll work.. you can use this key to unwrap the executable itself... though i don't know if that'll work as i think it will.
both these routes only work with an original disc to dump from.

 

[N7Kopper]

75% of all movies from the silent era are gone permanently. Imagine if 75% of the games from the first 30 years of videogames were gone forever. There are hundreds of songs that were popular from the 1890s to 1920s for which no known recording exists. Your analogy fails at the most basic level. No medium has been more overrepresented in preservation than videogames. Nor is it even close.

So it perfectly fits the modern definition of underrepresentation. OP is right. (In the sense that wokists have included the term's antonym in its definition )

In all seriousness though - rereleases of videogames are simply more complicated than anything else. Playing Kingdom Hearts on your PS3, PS4, Xbox One, PC, or Switch (lol cloud gaming) requires the game to be ported. If you lost that source code in a fire, then you need to stick Final Mix into that TEST and start reverse engineering that sucker. Then add in Level 1 and Combo Master, and tighten up the controls...

Meanwhile, watching Spaceballs on Blu-Ray would at most require the original film to be rerecorded in HD to get its original quality that old hardware couldn't display. Maybe some CGI upscaling too. It's a portability issue.

 

[RichardTheKing]

We have next to perfect emulation for older consoles

We do? How's PS3 emulation going, or PS Vita? Those fall under "older consoles", correct?

 

[KleinesSinchen]

We do? How's PS3 emulation going, or PS Vita? Those fall under "older consoles", correct?

That's up to your own definition. The word "old" isn't exactly a precise one.

Getting older myself I always find myself surprised when things I feel appeared "yesterday" turn out to be old (and obsolete) in the eyes of the majority. One of the rare circumstances where one of those yellow circles transports my feelings better than words:

Since I never had a newer Sony console than the PS2, I didn't even look for PS3 or Vita emulators. Don't know the state of emulation in this regard. I wouldn't consider the PS Vita (or Nintendo 3DS) old. The PS3… maybe. But to be honest: If somebody says the words "Old gaming console" my brain delivers pictures of (S)NES, Game Boy, Master System, Genesis/Mega Drive and Game Gear… and maybe PS1. Emulation of this stuff is good as far as I know.

 

[Deleted member 42501]

Thanks to the net all kinds of inane crap will be immortalized forever, all according to Keikaku...




Related: Consoles as you know them (ie separate platforms with their own titles) is going to be over in about 2, maybe 3 generations where all you'll get is a generic Gaming Device (TM) made by Sony, Microsoft etc... much like Blu Ray players. What will be used as a USP will be the back catalogue of said firms, their IPs and possibly a different controller.

Nintendo of course will have none of this and be cranking out their exclusives on their own hardware till the end of time but everyone else is going to merge into a standard portal type service. You're already seeing the groundwork being set for this with the move away from custom chips and more PC in a box type devices. Once it goes full swing then best believe every oldie (well apart from the ones with licensed music/IPs which is retarded as you don't see movies being delisted due to a Coke can in the shot) will be on their digital store front to entice you to sign up for their monthly subscription.

Watch. Thats exactly how it will play out. On the upside at least we'll get another "Sega" console even if it is just a SouljaBoy like reskin of someone elses hardware but at least it will have their IPs, their controllers etc... It will be like Actualized Virtual Consoles.

How meta is that?

 

[Deleted member 194275]

While the current civilization lasts, any successful video games is preserved. The reason is that out of the millions produced, some copies will last. Also, the preservation culture (and even hoarding culture) are very strong on that community.
And this is just for original media on original hardware.

Flashcards (some of them are open sourced btw) and emulation are other preservation paths. We can't emulate everything today, but we can rip everything and save for the future. So video games are fine, other medias that are not.

The OP mentioned movies, and yes he is right, is easy to watch harry potter today. What about "O Aleijadinho - Paixão, Glória e Suplício"? It was a movie released around the same time of Harry Potter. Some things will go away due to the lack of people who cares, but video games people do care (maybe except the flash and cell phone ones).

There is a street here where I live named after a music. "borboletas psicodélicas" (psychedelic butterflies) is the name. There is no recording of that music anywhere on internet, that is a non gaming example of something that just went away for good.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Thanks to emulation and sites like No-Intro and Redump it's pretty much guaranteed video games will be preserved for the foreseeable future. Full packs are available for every console that ever existed.
The devs and publishers are terrible at preserving their own games for future generations though. It's hit and miss what gets rereleased, ported, remastered or remade.
Which is why I believe there should be a law that stipulates that if a company makes no effort to keep game(s) available to future generations, those games should go into the public domain to encourage preservation efforts by the emulation community.
Anyway, in the end at least emulation is quite a good option for being able to replay older games from forgotten IPs.

While the current civilization lasts, any successful video games is preserved. The reason is that out of the millions produced, some copies will last. Also, the preservation culture (and even hoarding culture) are very strong on that community.
And this is just for original media on original hardware.

Flashcards (some of them are open sourced btw) and emulation are other preservation paths. We can't emulate everything today, but we can rip everything and save for the future. So video games are fine, other medias that are not.

The OP mentioned movies, and yes he is right, is easy to watch harry potter today. What about "O Aleijadinho - Paixão, Glória e Suplício"? It was a movie released around the same time of Harry Potter. Some things will go away due to the lack of people who cares, but video games people do care (maybe except the flash and cell phone ones).

There is a street here where I live named after a music. "borboletas psicodélicas" (psychedelic butterflies) is the name. There is no recording of that music anywhere on internet, that is a non gaming example of something that just went away for good.

Hmm, no seeds.
Generally the pirates are very good at archiving just about anything under the sun (there are a lot of hoarders around) and that site has a lot of foreign stuff so I'm actually surprised it has no seeds. Surely someone out there still has the DVD in their collection but disc rot is a concern and it's likely that some day some lesser known/obscure titles will be lost to the ages because nobody cared enough about them to archive them in a future proof way. There isn't the same level of interest in preservation as there is in video games.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Generally the pirates are very good at archiving just about anything under the sun (there are a lot of hoarders around) and that site has a lot of foreign stuff so I'm actually surprised it has no seeds. Surely someone out there still has the DVD in their collection but disc rot is a concern and it's likely that some day some lesser known/obscure titles will be lost to the ages because nobody cared enough about them to archive them in a future proof way. There isn't the same level of interest in preservation as there is in video games.

My feeling is that pressed optical discs are better than their reputation. When treated carefully and under good storage conditions they will likely last multiple decades and outlive their readers. However, even tiny damages in the coating may make them more vulnerable to disc rot. CDs are very vulnerable to damage from the label side. A scratch from above almost inevitably kills them. Care and good storage are important for keeping discs in good condition.

Of all the discs I own (>1000 from all kinds: audio CD, DVD-video, BD-video, PC games/software, console games; from late 1980s to current) two from the same pressing show signs of what I think is a form of disc rot without physical damage. There are zero completely unreadable discs in my collection (in the sense: Data cannot be read with any drive despite free of scratches/physical damage). More than 1000 discs and no complete failure in decades isn't a bad result.
Can't say the same for burned media. Failing CD-R or DVD±R occurred too often to rely on them long-term. Not much experience with BD-R yet.

I'm more concerned about PlayStation drives failing than PlayStation CDs rotting away. Important for preserving playing on real hardware are optical drive emulators – which solve both problems. Failing drives are not of much importance for PCs as brand new external drives are available for a few bucks (and they will probably stay available for some time). I've transcoded my CD/DVD/BD collection for the sake of convenience to files on HDD which makes further backups as easy as "CTRL+C → CTRL+V".

 

[duwen]

Take this as a example, I can watch harry potter and the chamber of secrets pretty easily, be it DVD, Blue Ray, and multiple digital services to buy and rent the movie however I please.

Meanwhile, F-Zero GX, a almost 19 year old game is completely unavailable to the masses unless you buy the original hardware and game off on places like eBay that's not very practical or even cost-friendly by the majority of gamers.

The way Harry Potter (or almost all motion pictures) was made to be experienced was theatrically on a cinema screen. The 'home releases' are a lesser, yet more convenient, way to experience it.
Using that rationale, it's arguably cheaper and easier to experience F-Zero GX on original hardware than to see Harry Potter in it's original release format.

The main difference between video games and other media comes down to the means in which it's experienced. Video games are hard locked to the specific system they were created for, and if future systems from that particular company don't incorporate backwards compatability then the previous generations titles remain locked to only being experienced on that system.
It's a whole lot easier to rerelease a video or audio recording on whatever is the technologically current playback method in vogue than for every video game ever to be made accessible on the latest gaming devices.

Fortunately emulation allows everyone a way to experience games from previous generations; albeit not as faithfully as original hardware, but it still beats watching a VHS rip of a movie that hasn't seen a release since the 80's.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

The way Harry Potter (or almost all motion pictures) was made to be experienced was theatrically on a cinema screen. The 'home releases' are a lesser, yet more convenient, way to experience it.

Do you think so? VHS shown on a 55cm 4:3 CRT television was inferior to cinema for sure. Home cinema has improved over time. High resolution as well as huge TV screens (or digital projectors) and good audio equipment are within range of average people's budget. My 1999 Dolby Digital/DTS receiver+ amplifier with 5.1 sound still satisfies my needs. If I wanted I could get an enormous TV – too big for the living room – for under 1000 euros.
Not that much different from cinema. Well… The popcorn comes from the microwave but it is a lot cheaper.

It's a whole lot easier to rerelease a video or audio recording on whatever is the technologically current playback method in vogue than for every video game ever to be made accessible on the latest gaming devices.

Once good emulators exists for a system, you can run virtually all old games on the new system. No need to port every title. Carrying the complete gaming childhood in one 3DS is possible.
A Wii U solves most problems (can emulate many old systems, has HDMI for modern TVs). And it plays the example of this thread (F-Zero GX )natively – almost like the original release. The only obstacle here is copyright law.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

The way Harry Potter (or almost all motion pictures) was made to be experienced was theatrically on a cinema screen. The 'home releases' are a lesser, yet more convenient, way to experience it.
Using that rationale, it's arguably cheaper and easier to experience F-Zero GX on original hardware than to see Harry Potter in it's original release format.

This is true. You can do a lot to bring the cinema experience into your home though. Movie buffs will sit a lot closer to the screen than the average living room setup, and the recommended viewing distance (relative to the screen size) actually differs depending on whether it's for general use or movie watching. Sitting closer to the screen effectively is like having a bigger screen. Turning the lights off helps a lot with the immersion in my experience. And your speaker setup also matters a lot.
With these factors combined you can get pretty close to the cinema experience.
Most people of course don't have a speaker setup that can compare with what you find in a cinema. It's not very practical for most people to have the couch/chairs away from the walls so that you can place speakers behind you, on the sides, and all around you and mounted to the ceiling. Not to mention the giant subwoofers cinemas use would make you quite unpopular with your neighbors. But you don't need all that for a small room.