How seriously is game preservation taken in Japan, where many of gaming's masterpieces were developed?
Not very.
>>12262716They are really against piracy if you mean people hoarding roms. I think I've seen modded consoles sold on Japanese auction sites but rarely flash carts.
What, you don't remember the Japanese Game Preservation Society? They took donations in money and games, and used the money to store all the donated games in a building in a bunch of boxes. Journalists and academics could contact them to request access to the building to look at the games. The rest of the public could look at the game list online, and an occasional newsletter about recent donations. Then they ran out of money, and are begging for funds so they can pay the rent. That was about 7 months ago, dunno where they stand now.
>>12262743>That was about 7 months ago, dunno where they stand now.https://www.timeextension.com/features/japans-game-preservation-society-is-safe-for-now-and-its-all-thanks-to-you>There was a crisis of confidence that perhaps we weren't needed, weren't wanted, or that the community wasn't interested. The response was the complete opposite. We received around 400 new supporters, bringing in roughly ¥160,000 (£830 / $1100) per month. There were hundreds of new emails in our inbox, which we are still going through. The response was overwhelming and deeply heartwarming. In fact, we now have more supporters from outside Japan than from within.>Thank you to everyone who donated or signed up—the Japanese Game Preservation Society is safe for 2025. All of us at the GPS are overjoyed and extremely grateful for this support. We have also read through all of your feedback. In the comments on the Time Extension article, on Twitter / X, on BlueSky, on Facebook, multiple threads on Reddit, this ResetEra thread, and also private emails to the GPS and our allies.>Thank you to everyone for the feedback. The outpouring of support, in conjunction with the feedback, has given us a clear mandate moving forward. There has been tremendous discussion among the GPS board members, and we pledge to improve communications. It's apparent that while we're able to share knowledge that our supporters want, we're not very good at conveying it.In defense of GPS, suddendesu (Damian Rogers) is a staff member, and he uploads things to the Internet Archive.https://x.com/gamepresintl/status/1463124800369737729https://archive.org/details/@zanmai0101There are also some CD dumps there, done with cdrdao, LMAO.
>>12262716None. The mindset is that they are the legal property of the company, until the copyright expires and they come into the public domain. The bog standard belief is that if you want to play a Famicom game from 1985, you go and buy the game and the Famicom. In Japan, the population is a bit more tightly knit, so it's easier to find niche shops.
>>12262743They have PC Cockron apparently. I mean I don't really care much about that game but it does annoy me that they're hoarding it (and potentially others)
imo a scruffy old N64 cartridge covered in stickers with your name sharpied on it not that I have any :( has 100x the value of some pristine "100/100 VERIFIED GEM MINT" copy in an air-tight box. Still, it's kinda surprising they don't have any government backing considering how much of their contemporary cultural identity is linked to video gamesTaiwan has a pretty big publicly funded effort to preserve and restore old films. Their storage facilities are no joke:https://youtu.be/1jcpJWF-I2w?t=1205
>>12262778>Still, it's kinda surprising they don't have any government backing considering how much of their contemporary cultural identity is linked to video gamesWhy should the government fund it? That's the job of the Japanese video game industry.Japanese tax payers don't get to enjoy the copyright of the preserved works, and yet they're expected to pay for their preservation.
If you're into cancelled games, prototypes and early builds of games then Japan is genuinely infuriating. Everything you've ever wanted to see dumped and released online someone there definitely has a copy of and is hoarding it. There are weird black market type groups surrounding these games that will trade roms with you but they're impossible to get into and they even schizophrenically ID tag each game and encrypt them to make sure they don't get out by whoever they let use them. There are similar hoarder groups outside of Japan too I've interacted with a few but the difference is it's literally everyone in Japan vs a few bad apples here. They have some insane shit, I've seen a number of 64DD games that literally nobody even knows exist from Japanese hoarders, but you'll never be able to play them or even lay eyes on them.
>>12262730>They are really against piracythis is 100% false
>>12262781The Japanese video game industry also pays taxesI think Nintendo has a museum now but in general for-profit companies cannot be trusted to act in the interest of the publichttps://akirakurosawa.info/2007/04/04/more-information-about-the-toho-lawsuit/Some kind of government backed project with a public library/museum would come with an amount of implied protection from their bullshit infinite copyright glitchAlso holy fuck this new captcha is bad
I'm hoarding some Japanese games as well. It's pretty fun, everyone should try it.
>>12262730>They are really against piracyA small but vocal minority is against it, just like in the west.
>>12262730>>They are really against piracyFalse, they're just really cautious about breaking the law since the Japanese gov cracks down on copyright infringement and piracy far more than western countries.Downloading ROMs in Japan is literally a recipe for a prison sentence.It's too risky so most Japs don't bother.
>>12262756>mostly fliers and pamphletsI was gonna say it's nothing, but I see he uploaded a prototype and the Sega ST-V development documents and discs. At least that's something worthwhile.
>>12262891>A small but vocal minorityYour mind has been warped by how common sense it is to pirate Japanese entertainment outside of Japan, and also your retardation.
>>12262870>this new captcha is badWhy do you think that? I find it to be easier and quicker than the previous one, that one was annoying. The new one is almost fun to solve.
>>12262932Most of the time it's the quickest/easiest thing, but sometimes it just craps itself and you just haven't seen that happen yet or else you'd do. The other day I was attempting to make a thread and I had to find the odd picture among 5 pictures with NO discernable pattern, like literally the exact same picture 3 times followed by the same exact picture twice; and I had to do this THREE TIMES for the captcha to be solved with each of the three captcha being literally impossible. And yeah, if you haven't seen it, you'd probably think I'm just a retard, but when I say "identical" pics or "no discernable pattern" I really mean it, I should have taken pics of this shit.
