The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has conducted the first ever study on the commercial availability of classic video games, and the results are bleak. 87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered.
This confirms something all of us already suspected or knew: the vast majority of classic games are simply not available in any legal way, shape, or form. If it wasn’t for the emulation and preservation scene, many of these games would face certain oblivion in the near future.
It’s high time some changes are made to intellectual property law to make software and game preservation legal.
If it wasn’t for the emulation scene, even the small amount of “official” emulation wouldn’t be happening, eg. it is well known that Nintendo’s NES Classics series for GBA uses the PocketNES emulator, as Nintendo were too lazy or incompetent to write their own.
Either that, or it shows that free software works.
If the PocketNES emulator is good enough for Nintendo itself, why would they waste resources making another one?
It’s a small win, but archive.org did get an exception for old console games:
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/4kukq1/is_it_legal_to_download_roms_from_archiveorg/
Which means you can download old PS1 ISOs from archive.org.
For PC games, you are on your own.
BTW this study confirms my hunch: GOG only has a small subset of classic games, even the popular ones. First of all, the “racing” category in GOG is mostly empty because most racing games are stuck in licensing hell due to issues with trademarks and music, and then there are major gaps in other genres too. IMO games targeting Windows 98SE and earlier or using secdrv.sys should be given the same exception in archive.org as console ISOs and ROMs.
Another big problem is loss of DLC and downloadable games. For example, I legally bought Test Drive Unlimited 2 and not only didn’t it fail to work even on Windows 8.1 with secdrv enabled (due to dead online DRM), but there was no way to get to the DLC unless you pirated it (which I did).
Also, Asphalt 5 on Android is completely lost (it was sold outside the Play Store), and so are most Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 games. I have a purchased Asphalt 5 apk but doesn’t work even on the phone it was bought from.
Anyone wanna bet that some decades from now we’ll look at “lost downloadable content” like we look at Georges Méliès films nowadays? And yet again, the pirates will rescue some of those historically important works. For example, I have the Asphalt 1-4 games for Symbian S60v2 as pirate .sis installers (which are historically important as the first “real” racing games for smartphones), but good luck finding any of them in any official sources today.
not only didn’t it fail = not only did it fail