Why are Japanese video game developers so bad at preserving source code?
It took half a decade for the Japanese film industry to preserve its own reels and even then the majority of movies made before 1975 are just lost. Plenty of TV programs airing in Japan right now will not be preserved unless some autist here keeps a local copy. The same can be applied to games, as a lot of old ROM hacks and doujin titles died with the forums they originated on.
It's depressingAnd then when they make remasters, they use the worst ai upscaling software (some shit like waifu 2x) and call it a day
>>729206509and prevent you from buying the original!
>>729206189>as a lot of old ROM hacksOld Japanese Rom Hacks? Are there any interesting ones?
Why does it seem that only white people care about preserving human history while everyone else just fucking deletes things to be lost to time?It kind of really pisses me off
>>729206509>It's depressingIndeed.
>>729207332People in positions of power really don't like evidence of how much better things were before them. Never really applied this to games but it does describe what is happening there.
>>729206010Thing I hate?>Thriving for the foreseeable futureThing I like?>Gone
Because they had no concept of remastering in the future or anything like that. When they were done, it was done. Basically, as soon as a project was finished they fucking wiped and then reused their hard drives for other projects, and the entire teams are blown up and moved over as well, or let go if they were contractors.
>>729206010Because its a product and doesn't need to be "preserved". The game is done and out on shelves. Time to move on. Blame the state of the industry of why you need to remaster 35 year old games instead of having new stuff to play.
>>729207332White people should be more worried about having kids then preserving vintage japanese video games as highlights of human history
>>729206010You mean the companies? When the games are that old I wouldn't be surprised to see that the companies no longer exist or have changed hands 9000 times and nobody from back in the day is still around. I imagine game development back then was also less established in its processes, making long-term backups maybe just wasn't something they thought of.Even nowadays I wouldn't be so sure companies are thinking about long-term preservation. Sure they're probably using git and such but it's not like that guarantees their repos will be around forever. It takes somebody to actually care and think about these things.
>>729209050How come Electronic Arts and Microsoft still could preserve very ancient source code?
some companies felt like preservation was important, others didn't bother and figured that it was a waste of space. it's that simple.
>>729206010AI decompilation will be able to generate flawless sources with much cleaner code than the original from any old game binary within 2 years
>>729210034>AIjeet misses the point
>>729209050>Basically, as soon as a project was finished they fucking wiped and then reused their hard drives for other projectsNah, devs reuse entire codebases project after project. Even before remakes became a thing, you would keep a project's code so you could make sequels. Really nice to have 80% of the programming on a project already done.Like most backup failures, I would imagine it's down to either a retarded employee fucking up the backups or the company going out of business and scattering all of the assets to the wind (well, to random employees).
>>729206010Shame we'll never get more info regarding Illusion of Gaia's missing final boss phases the rando discovered and restored
>>729206010Their culture embraces impermanence because of Buddhist influence. They don't care that much when an ancient building is destroyed because they just make a new copy of it and that's good enough.
>>729210964That's the whole point. Quintet no longer exists.
>>729206189What will we do without 6 hours per channel per day of people in picture in picture saying "sou ne" and "sou desu ne" to random videos.
Japanese themselves are particularly into ephemerality and transience compared to everyone else.This is the same place that destroys and rebuilds the most important Shinto shrine every few years, that just rebuilt the kinkakuji after it burnt down, and where property value actually goes down overtime
japs view programming like a tool because they lacked an organic programming culture like the west had, to establish an emotional connection to the practice.So all that matters is producing the product and then moving on to the next product.
>>729206189Didn't the BBC also just record over episodes of Doctor Who back in the day so there's like dozens of them missing?
>>729206010Because the pressed game disk/cart was the "final" release, no one anticipated games would need to be ported to new hardware 20 years later. And it's not a jap thing, tons of western games lost their source code as well.>>729206646>prevent you from buying the original!Always pirate when the original goes out of print, dumbfuck.
>Nooo honorablu Matsumoto-san! We must notto use Gittu bersion controllu! Our kaisha doraivu that we have used for genelations is more than enoughu!
they aren't really behind the rest of the world in this regard but midwits love to memorize useless and untrue things to bring up in conversation as if they were interesting.yeah japanese game devs lose the source code all the time. bloodborne? it's not on PC because they lost the source code i bet. that's how it always goes...yeah.you played the new mario kart? yeah it's weird there hasn't been a patch in a few weeks, i think it's because they lost the source code. crazy right? it's like where are they storing it? up their ass? so which team are you guys betting on for tonight's game i put down a couple hundo on the lions. can you pass me another IPA?
>>729206010Because Japs are not as smart as everyone thinks. These retards even lost the original Doraemon TV anime from the 70s.>>729211597This
>>729213848what the fuck are you talking about
>>729206189I keep backups of CGDCT anime so all anons will be saved when they disappear
>>729207332Writing shit by hand was a pain in the ass for asians so culturally they never got in the habit
>>729212068Yes, dozens miss the video and are just soundsAnd some other dozens are completly lost
>>729206010Why didn't Nintendo save the source code like they did with Seiken Densetsu 3?
>>729209050This is retarded>Program a rpg>Delete everything>Company want to do another rpg>Have to redo everything since you deleted all the ressource
>>729206010They're bad at persevering a lot of things. Don't look up how many movies they've lost.
>>729206010>>729206189Because it doesn't matter>>729207332What's the benefit?>muh learn from history so that mistakes are never repeatedMistakes are still repeated and new mistakes are made>muh human identity and historyYou are a human and you know you're a human, holding on to such transient affairs doesn't improve anything>>729211597>>729211975Correct. Can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find the answer.
>>729216752If that's the case then there's no problem in having people pirate and spread old games because it "doesn't matter"
>>729207332Everyone but whites are stupid niggers with zero pride or things to be proud of.
>>729206189Wasn't that also a problem with copyright laws over there, so many films got stuck in this limbo where no one owned the rights but it was still very illegal to do anything with them?
>>729206010>Act Raiser source code and artifacts gone>Illusion of Gaia source code and artifacts *most likely* goneThis does not bode well for Terranigma...
>>729207332superior culture simple askeep seething brownoid
>>729206010Japan is really behind when it comes to tech stuff, I remember one cybersecurity guy telling me all their shit is outdated with even major offices are still using windows XP and giving janitors root access. The number one barrier to major hacks is the people who do it don't know Japanese and the organization on systems is so abysmal finding files/folders is harder for foreign groups.
>>729216752Remakes and remasters are often the best sellers AAA companies have, not having the code can make it really difficult, or you get scenarios like Tales of Symphonia where they have to work off of the PS2 version and its 30fps limit.So even ignoring the history angle it matters.
>>729206010>QuintetYou mean where the lead writer scammed people with his credit card company and disappeared?
Media preservation is just gloriried hoarding
>>729218207Even former artist refuses to talk about them
>>729217925So you’re saying Japanese companies are ripe for the plucking for someone who both knows jp and has l33t skillz?
>>729218207>"he... vanished...?"
>>729206189>half a decade
>>729206010They didn't develop on home computers and physical space has always been a premium in Japan. Aside from rights for just about everything being tied up in layers of committees, few people could forsee that some project would be worth re-releasing 30 years later unless it was remarkably successful at its release.
>>729216847Yes exactly.Unironically don't ever let people tell you its bad to pirate games especially if they are old or no longer held by the orignal team
>>729218530This is specifically an american culture because they're corporative cuckolds, I remember someone on reddit suggesting buying zoo tycoon 2 on ebay instead of pirating
>>729218271Cope hoarder
just remake the game no need original source code
>>729218729yeah libraries are just for hoarding too right retard
You only value preservation because you live in a society where the past is being destroyed and rewritten by colonizers.
>>729214118Asiansa did write down history. But they just rewrote it and twisted it every time emparor/king died and new one came. For them history is just propaganda.
>>729218954weird way of spelling jews but ok
>>729214502early in the games industry many of the tools/libraries/compilers were so specialized for each platform that there was little benefit in trying to reuse code.in the 90s if you were to port an atari game to the NES it would just be easier to make it from scratch. Not to mention the lack of storage space meant that you had little incentive to keep saving old projects you 'finished'
I work a software job, at my last job we hosted our own git server (for security reasons). That company went out of business 5 years ago. No idea where that server went, I personally have no computers/source code from that job. If an old client needed someone to update the old code they would have to do it themselves or they are shit out of luck.Its easy to have source code go 'missing'
>>729206010Because they're bad at literally fucking everything regarding computers. They cannot comprehend best practices and they sure as hell can't code or maintain anything, and the suits are just as inhuman as the ones anywhere else so they used to just fucking DELETE projects when they released so they could re-use the HDD space.
>>729210034DenuvoGODS will stop this
>>729206189Doujin works get a free pass because significant amount of them have been created before the rise of internet and are published in small numbers and mostly in physical form (at least until mid 2010s). Movies and shows made by actual professionals and companies don't get an excuse for not preserving the original form.
>>729220169Well you have to kinda remember that in the old days, each project had to be stored on its own storage medium, like film reels and shit. Back then, it was incredibly impractical to save everything physically. Plus, it's more economical to reuse things where you can. This also affects Japanese video games, since even the most successful companies at the time had relatively little office space. It's not like they had an entire room dedicated to storing old hard drives. About the only Japanese company that did back everything up was Nintendo.
>>729218657On the other hand, in Japan it's because of Nintendo and so on meddling with rental, gaming cafes and other businesses to the point piracy is really frowned upon there.
>>729206189>It took half a decade for the Japanese film industry to preserve its own reels and even then the majority of movies made before 1975 are just lost.in 2022 they want to literally destroy bunch of film reels that are being stored inside a warehouse so that they can sell that warehouse. there's a thread about it on /tv/ and people had to beg even buy some of the colleciton in order to preserve the entire thing
>>729206010Shame based culture. It encourages leaders to take illegal actions, because they are leaders, therefor their illegal actions are the status quo to regulate society.>>729207332Even for white people this is only true for a tiny slice of our current time for a tiny slice of the population.>>729216752>What's the benefit?Literacy, education, rapid iteration on extant works.All of this locked down proprietary shit has caused massive stagnation that has only been accelerating since the 20th century started, the fact that there were two global wars is just about the only thing that averted complete stagnation by the 60s and delayed it for 80 years.
>>729207332for those who come after is a white trait
>>729207332>human historyyou mean trash games
>>729217956No one back then thought that people would want to buy touched up versions of old games when they could play brand new games instead.
>>729206010It was a common thing over there for some reason. Square used to do it but only stopped recently, for the KH1 re-release they had to scrap data from the disk and remake everything else from memory because they destroyed the source code.Less of them do it now though, mostly because they know re-releasing their games is profitable.
>>729206010>source codeit's useless. You only need media+ formulas if there's any
Monumental shit like the OoT source code HAS to exist in Nintendo's vaults right? I mean theres a decomp, but they're not stupid enough to just wipe it once the game was complied and copied.
>>729207332Are you forgetting that "le whytt man"fucking deleted the only asian country who actually cared about preserving history?and now decades later youre wonderinf why they seem to not exactly care too much for preservation when the oldest structure less than 80 years old (40) at the time of act raiser.
>>729222006That is insane. Modernization reminds me of what China did concreting the biggest asset they had which was their environment.
>>729217956>it matters.People who aren't fucking retarded don't care about demakes. If you told me 20 years ago that some of the biggest games of the year would be slightly touched up versions of games I already played, I'd ask you to shoot me to save me from such a hellish future.
>>729222614back then the geeks who programmed it would be living in a mess. You would need some super autist archiver in your company that thought. Hey, all our efforts we should keep it somewhere and those were far and few between because you are just tossed into the next thing to do.
>>729222743yeah this. The only reason why nostalgia hits is because many games had their game mechanics in stasis. What made that game fun no one fucking copied it into the next thing they made. It is insane.
>>729222763Well okay you're right I guess, still kind of impressive Film geeks have this shit on hand with the Library of Congress and stuff like the original reels for Star Wars being preserved.
>>729222997Star Wars was made in a much, much more mature industry than 90s video games.
>>729222645>deleted the only asian country???>>729222997>the original reels for Star Wars being preservedThey aren't destroyed or lost? So it's just Lucas being retarded and not wanting to release them as is, hence us having to rely on Harmy?
>>729222614Nintendo are one of the few Japanese companies that have artistically archived everything, but it's all sealed up NEVER to see the light of day.
>>729223035That's true I suppose as well, everyone thought vidya as a passing toy fad in the 90s. >>729223049He legally can't release them iirc
>>729206010It's not just japanese, all asians are like that. They have no culture of preservation or archiving. They just consoom and move on to the next thing.
>>729206976Mostly Mario rom hacks They have been a thing since 1986
>>729223196Is that why China has like four novels worth mentioning total in their entire history?
>>729223348Blame Mao for that.
>>729223348>Is that why China has like four novels worth mentioning total in their entire history?No that's because of the Great Leap Foward.
>>729222997>After the Spanish film development lab discovered that telephone lines, helicopters, and cars could be seen in the footage Bakshi had shot, they tried to incinerate the footage, telling Bakshi's first assistant director that "if that kind of sloppy cinematography got out, no one from Hollywood would ever come back to Spain to shoot again."Unfortunately the natural inclination is to sweep any potential errors under the rug, reuse storage media/building materials and eliminate things that just aren't done. It's a constant uphill battle to get people to stop trying to LARP as if they have standard when they are in the presence of something that appears to have standards itself, even when their LARPing is actively harmful to the project.
>>729206189>Le Japan doesn't preserve its video gamesI remember when schizos used to spam for 12 years that the source code for Final Fantasy 9 was lost, until finally getting a port to modern consoles and PC. A few years ago, when someone hacked Nintendo and leaked all kinds of beta rooms, it was proven that Nintendo had archived everything, including NES ROMs. I don't know where the idea that Japanese developers don't archive their work comes from, but it's simply not true. In fact, I would argue that western developers are far worse in that regard. Whenever something isn't ported or remade, some schizo on /v/ just spams "they probably lost the source code"
>>729207332The White Man's Burden is a very real thing
>>729223348Bruh they don't even churn out fung-fu kino anymore, and they used to churn that shit out by the dozen.
>>729206010japs are weird autists like that, even now they'll delete all their art/programs/games off the internet in a heartbeat
Baldur's Gate.
>>729219510At my third last job, I didn't write any documentation for our specialized webstore and nobody asked me to hand over the code for the Android app I made. They had to rewrite the former when they wanted to update it (and it broke causing them to lose out on several days worth of revenue) and they have no way of updating the latter. Good shit.I even asked multiple times when we were gonna sit down and have a talk about this crap, but it never happened. Not my fault then.
>>729223959Based red herring app dev.
>Fallout 1 & 2 Source Code Still Exists, Despite Orders To Destroy It
>>729206010>all the autistic retards only reverse compiling source code from the most popular nintendo shit with like 20 ports>none works on PRESERVING the quintet gamesThis is why we need the camps. To put them all in there and guide their autistic superpower through something worthwhile.
>>729224016>This is in line with Cain's account of working at Interplay, which is why we lost so much of Fallout's history. "When I left Fallout, I was told 'You have to destroy everything you have,' and I did," Cain said in a recent video. "My entire archive. Early design notes, code for different versions, prototypes, all the GURPS code – gone."
>>729223997Wouldn't be surprised if an employee taking his code with him has happened a lot in the past decade or so. Any company with some sense would have the IT guys ask you to hand over the code for anything you've made - and my last job did in fact ask me that - but this company wasn't very well organized. There were two other IT guys, one was a complete dipshit and the other one was constantly busy and left not too long after I did.
>>729206189>Plenty of TV programs airing in Japan right now will not be preservedGood, it's full of "sugoi sugoi" "nani kore" small corner reaction box, nothing is lost.
>>729223813Most of the kung fu flicks were from Hong Kong, actually most of their kino production was from there, the chink mainland had/has dogshit thanks to the ccp.
>>729222280Literally no one came after. It's still the same boomer generation in power. You paintvr fanfic billboard.
>>729223603YWNBJ.
>>729223603Nintendo is an old company, tho, it doesn't surprise me that they have better organization than the many small studios that have come and gone in Japan.
>>729223603You are on 4chan.
>>729222614oot and mm 3d used the source of the original games so we knew they preserved basically everything before the leak even happened
>>729224428Based take, I should play Killer 7.
>>729206010>Illusion of GaiaI've always wondered why it never got a remake.
>>729207332>Why does it seem that only white people care about preserving human history while everyone else just fucking deletes things to be lost to time?You and the replies are ignoring a lot of shit in brown countries
>>729207332Damn bro you telling me japan doesn't have historical documents? But why do they have archaic kanji studies for reading documents that don't exist?
>>729206189So piracy saves the day as always.
>>729217503Probably the same with video games.Japanese copyright laws are the top when it comes to being completely awful. They're written deliberately to favour Japanese families that held a monopoly since forever.Things in Japan can just become entirely untouchable. And you won't get anyone trying to challenge it because legally they can't and even if they win the shame on the entire company staff would be too much that everybody would quit if they find out they're challenging copyright laws.Cyberpunk genre's always use Japanese dominance in particular because of this. Their economy was massive but their legal system and society makes for very easy corporation control over life. There's no world building needed explaining how it came to be in the west, you just have to describe if Japan's economy didn't stagnate.
>>729207332whites aren't even preserving their own race. Stop coping
>>729206010You need to appreciate the beauty in impermanence.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
This is a verified list of video games whose source code was lost at least temporarily by the copyright holder. If anyone wants sources that verify that the source code for a particular game was lost, feel free to ask.Almost one-hundred games from Atari Corporation.Most old Konami, Sega and Square Enix games.The Rockman World game series (a.k.a. the Mega Man games for Game Boy).Living Books series.Autoduel (1985).Ambermoon (1993).Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator (2004-2012).BioShock (2007).Blade Runner (1997).Blake Stone: Planet Strike (1994).Bubble Bobble (1986).Chasm: The Rift (1997).Virgin Games' Disney's Aladdin (1993).Doom for Sega Saturn (1997).Doom II: Hell on Earth for Microsoft Windows (1995).Duke Nukem (1991).Duke Nukem II (1993).Ecco the Dolphin (1992).Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (2002).Fallout (1997).Fallout 2 (1998).Final Fantasy VII (1997) [less than a year after release].Final Fantasy VIII (1999).Gemini Rue for Android (2014).Golden Axe (1989).Grim Fandango (1998).Heroes of Might and Magic III: Complete (2000).Hollywood Monsters (1997).Homeworld: Cataclysm (2000).Icewind Dale II (2002).Lure of the Temptress (1992).Marathon 2: Durandal for Microsoft Windows (1996).Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station (2009).Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee for Microsoft Windows/DOS (1997).Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus for PlayStation (1998).Prince of Persia (1989).Ridiculous Fishing for Android (2013).Saints Row 2 for Microsoft Windows (2008).Sonic Spinball (1993).Star Control 2 for DOS (1992).System Shock 2 (1999).Tribes 2 (2001).Virtua Racing (1992).Virtua Formula (1993).Zool for Amiga (1992).ZZT (1991).There's only beta source code surviving for Disney's Beauty & The Beast: A Boardgame Adventure (1999), Donkey Kong (1983) [Atari 8-bit], The Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (2000), Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee [PSX], Silent Hill 2 (2001), and Silent Hill 3 (2003).It's a pity that source code releases aren't more common.
>>729226851BioShock (2007): Recovered and it compiles fine.Blake Stone: Planet Strike (1994): Recovered, released under the GPL.Virgin Games' Disney's Aladdin (1993): Recovered by the Video Game History Foundation.Ecco the Dolphin (1992): Recovered by CodeFire to make a Game Body Advance port.Fallout (1997) & Fallout 2 (1998): Source fo 1 recovered by Tim Cain. It does not compile. Rebecca Ann Heineman (developer of the Mac ports) also kept copies for both games.Grim Fandango (1998): Recovered.Heroes of Might and Magic III: Complete (2000): Source code for the Mac port recovered.Prince of Persia (1989): Recovered, available on GitHub. https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-IISaints Row 2 for Microsoft Windows (2008): Recovered, an update it's on the works. Deep Silver and Volition promised Mike "IdolNinja" Watson that they will finish the update no matter what. The likelihood of Volition actually delivering, however, is pretty low, considering that they are now dead, and six feet under.Sonic Spinball (1993): Recovered by CodeFire to make a Game Body Advance port.Virtua Formula (1993): Recovered, used as the basis for the Virtua Racing port for Nintendo Switch.ZZT (1991): There's a byte accurate recreation on GitHub under the MIT License with the blessing of Tim Sweeney. The actual source code from 1991 was recovered in 2023.
>>729224036Do it yourself.
>>729222614Yes.
>>729216752>Make something>Lol bro, lmao, who care about saving it
