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Thread: Piracy for Preservation; Prototype Article on 1Up

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    Apple (Level 5) tubeway's Avatar
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    Default Piracy for Preservation; Prototype Article on 1Up

    Hey guys, here's an article about distributing unreleased games for everyone to complain and criticize every aspect of, as usual. You're welcome.

    http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3177520

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    I think it's a great article for casual gamers, but not a whole lot of new info for people who have been in the hobby the last five or so years. I mean, Earth Bound, P&T Up in Smoke, Star Fox 2, Hit the Ice, etc., were dumped and released YEARS ago. Nothing really new in there other than a personal preservation philosophy that most in the proto collecting hobby are familiar with, but it was written well.

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    Hey, that was written by the same guy who ran "Lost Levels", right?

    DP Feedback | Game Blog of Awesomeness! | Seeking out these GCN kiosk discs: Jan 2002, 21, 25, & 29

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    Hi that's me. This wasn't written for prototype collectors, this was written for 1UP.com.

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    I love the silent tribute to The Thumb. Well played.

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    Nice job Frank! I enjoyed the read, even if most of the points have already been discussed time and time again
    Last edited by TRM; 01-09-2010 at 12:05 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by TRM View Post
    Nice job Frank! I enjoyed the read, even if most of the points have already been discussed time and time again
    Thanks! Yeah I didn't expect any of my points to be new to anyone here, but I was asked to write an opinion piece on game preservation and that's what I felt needed to be said.

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    I actually hadn't heard of some of those games.

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    The Hit the Ice Nes one was new to me, looks like a interesting play.

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    Quote Originally Posted by PC-ENGINE HELL View Post
    The Hit the Ice Nes one was new to me, looks like a interesting play.
    The ROM was released in May of '04 (if I'm not mistaken). I actually didn't think of it that way, but some of these ROMs are so old that some of the newer guys more than likely haven't heard of them, so they're getting something new out of seeing them.

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    Yeah, it was part of the batch of games that included Secret Ties, Sunman, etc. God, has it really been almost 6 years. *starts beating mrmark with his cane, telling him to get off his lawn*

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    Port, you're forgetting that we had those games before Lost Levels even launched, I think it's more like seven or eight years ago.

    mrmark, can you explain why you expected an op-ed about the necessity of piracy for preserving unreleased games to somehow show you "new" stuff? It's really strange criticism to hear, I would think that's completely irrelevant to the article.

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    The third page was nearly a pictorial of unreleased games that have been released many, many years ago. In an article about current efforts in unreleased game preservation I was hoping it would touch on some more contemporary releases that you have been involved in, that's all. The article is about current efforts that are being made to preserve unreleased games, why piracy is basically essential (something I have been criticized by you in the past about, but my methods of piracy are different than yours) to preserving said games, and why people should continue to do so. I just think it would have added a bit if the ROM examples on the last page were more reflective of your recent efforts rather than things you were involved in 5-10 years ago. It wasn't a bad article by any means, although like I said before most people in the proto community know exactly where you stand on preservation and your means of accomplishing it (something that I am VERY thankful for). I did mention that it was written well, didn't I?

    *Runs to grab his friends and a dozen eggs to go light up Port's house like a Christmas tree*

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    Quote Originally Posted by mrmark0673 View Post
    The ROM was released in May of '04 (if I'm not mistaken). I actually didn't think of it that way, but some of these ROMs are so old that some of the newer guys more than likely haven't heard of them, so they're getting something new out of seeing them.
    Yea and that's where I missed out basically. I stopped messing with anything Nes emu wise around the end of 2k3 basically. From then on I didn't even consider messing with Nes anything until I got a normal console again a couple of years back.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mrmark0673 View Post
    The third page was nearly a pictorial of unreleased games that have been released many, many years ago. In an article about current efforts in unreleased game preservation I was hoping it would touch on some more contemporary releases that you have been involved in, that's all. The article is about current efforts that are being made to preserve unreleased games, why piracy is basically essential (something I have been criticized by you in the past about, but my methods of piracy are different than yours) to preserving said games, and why people should continue to do so. I just think it would have added a bit if the ROM examples on the last page were more reflective of your recent efforts rather than things you were involved in 5-10 years ago. It wasn't a bad article by any means, although like I said before most people in the proto community know exactly where you stand on preservation and your means of accomplishing it (something that I am VERY thankful for). I did mention that it was written well, didn't I?
    As Frank had mentioned earlier,he aimed this article at a different set of people, which may not have been familiar with his efforts at dumping and preserving unreleased games, whether older releases or newer releases. That is something I enjoyed about the article, as it was nice to read a well-written article (something that so often I am unable to find) about unreleased video games and the reasons why they should be preserved, even if piracy is involved. Aiming the article at another target area was nice as well, as this sort of thing can change the approach an author takes when writing an article. Last of all, the screen caps did represent a nice set of games that TRE helped release over the years.

    I personally feel that on articles such as this, one cannot afford to criticize over the lack of "more current" releases, since unreleased games are found at an inconsistent rate. On something as inconsistent as this, TRE would be pretty limited if he chose games that he was involved in releasing, which were both unreleased and publicly released in, say 2008-2009 or something like that. I view the situation just like more-respected facets of history, such as those dealing with World War 2 for instance. People are constantly finding paintings, books, artifacts, etc relating to World War 2, Hitler and the like. However, I believe that the artifact itself is more important than WHEN it was discovered. When writing an article about modern discoveries and preservation, it would seem reasonable to cover important discoveries within the past 10 or 20 years, as opposed to limiting oneself to insignificant discoveries over the past 5 years. After all, 20 years is still fairly modern in the grand scheme of things, regarding WW2. I am having a bit of trouble trying to explain this, but do you see what I am trying to say?

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    Quote Originally Posted by TheRedEye View Post
    Port, you're forgetting that we had those games before Lost Levels even launched, I think it's more like seven or eight years ago.
    Really? Jesus I feel really old now.

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    Quote Originally Posted by TRM View Post
    I am having a bit of trouble trying to explain this, but do you see what I am trying to say?
    Absolutely. I think I was trying to say something similar in my second post, though I chose my words poorly. I think the target audience was more of the people not already involved in the hobby rather than people who have been around for a while.

    I guess if this had been a front page story on the lost levels, my point would be relevant, but as it is the age of the ROMs is pretty nit picky.

    Good points.

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    Well, the games that were demonstrated in the article were mainly some of the more commonly known ones to give people an idea of some of the unreleased games that have been found. I mean, I have released several unreleased games on my website, but really, no unreleased snes game reaches the amount of importance than Star Fox 2.
    <Evan_G> i keep my games in an inaccessable crate where i can't play them

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    Quote Originally Posted by mrmark0673 View Post
    In an article about current efforts in unreleased game preservation I was hoping it would touch on some more contemporary releases that you have been involved in, that's all.
    I would agree with you if the article was about my current efforts, but it's not. The article is an opinion piece on game preservation, and my opinions in the article are as follows:

    1. Without the hindsight of the future, we do not know which parts of our video game heritage are going to be important and worthy of study.

    2. It is impossible for video game "archaeologists" to be in all places at all times, so we need to focus on preserving the most important data that we can.

    3. Playable game code is the most information-rich data we have. We can glean more information from a playable game than from images, video, audio, etc.

    4. Playable code of released games is fairly easy to come by and is (in my opinion) in no real danger of disappearing. Playable game code for unreleased games is difficult to acquire and volatile, and is in very real danger of being permanently damaged or disappearing entirely. Therefore, archaeologists should be focusing on preserving it right now.

    5. In the absence of a reputable and stable institution, the only safe way to ensure that data will not be lost is to distribute it in mass over the internet.

    I know none of this is going to be a mind-bending revelation for anyone here, but that's all the article is about. My selection of five games at the end was to end things on a high note and show that not only is this important for the future, it's also fun and beneficial to us as a culture right now.

    As for this:

    why piracy is basically essential (something I have been criticized by you in the past about, but my methods of piracy are different than yours)
    Understand that what I'm about to say is not to pick a fight with you, and I'm not trying to change your or anyone else's minds. I just want to explain why your Hoppin' Mad situation is different and goes against the thesis of my article.

    I'm going to roleplay a bit here, I'm going to pretend I'm a video game historian 50 years from now. In this first situation, I have access to the original, unmodified ROM, just as you initially found it, and nothing else:

    After careful evaluation, I would notice that the title screen lacks a "Licensed by Nintendo" message, and that the game ends in an obviously unfinished state. From this, I would come to the conclusion that Elite put together an unfinished prototype of Hoppin' Mad and shopped it around to publishers, hoping to get funding to finish the game. The lack of a Nintendo license would tell me that the build that exists did not have a publisher yet attached to it, and the fact that the game was never released would tell me that it probably never did. More than likely Elite was not successful in getting a publisher interested in the game, and moved on to other projects. I might even further postulate, based on the short length of the game in comparison to the number of levels available in the original computer version, that a finished version of the game would have had additional levels not present here. Therefore, any criticism of the game would have to be observed with the caveat that the game was not yet done.

    OK, now let's roleplay that I'm the same historian in the same time period, but this time the only ROM I have access to is the modified one you released.

    My first observation is a vandalized title screen that says "From Nowhere Productions." I don't see a publisher's name and I don't see a "Licensed by Nintendo" message, so either they didn't exist, or they were written over by whatever "Nowhere Productions" was. I have no way of knowing, I can only guess. Then, having played through the game, I would notice that it has no obvious errors or omissions, and would probably come to the conclusion that the game was finished and ready to ship. So, my best guess here is that the game was funded by an unknown publisher, and was completed, but was unreleased for an unknown reason. I might even come to the conclusion, based on the game's length, that the game was canceled for quality reasons - it just didn't have enough content to be a successful commercial game.

    Do you see the difference? I know you meant well and you made a lot of collectors happy with a new release and, indeed, you made the game "better," but by releasing only your modified version you very well may have changed the history of this game.

    Again, I'm not trying to change your mind or get the original ROM out there or whatever, I'm just explaining my criticism of "your" piracy versus "my" piracy. They're very different, one preserves history as it was and one modifies it and makes it "better."
    Last edited by TheRedEye; 01-09-2010 at 10:21 PM.

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    I'd have to say I don't disagree with 99% of what you wrote. I understand (in hindsight mind you) that the modified ROM is something that could be misinterpreted in the distant future. With that alone, all other ROMs that I have released to date, and all future repros/ROMs (including Kitty's Catch) will be completely unmodified. I'm hoping that the documentation surrounding Hoppin' Mad will be carried with it into the future, both the hard copy instructions where I mention what has happened to the game, as well as the articles (like the one found on your site) that mention the distinct unfinished differences between the original proto and what I released. If it doesn't, then yes, I do agree with you that things could have been done "better". I left the names of the original programmers on the ROM so that at least they could receive some credit for their work. My brother and I also plan to release the unmodified version (free of charge of course) to the community in the future.

    I was under the impression that your major criticism was the fact that I was profiting off of some (so far, one) of the ROMs I release. In defense of that, I have said in the past that it is absolute pain in the ass to reproduce these games to get to the final product that we ultimately provide, and I'd like to think I'm charging for the labor of releasing these games and not off of the actual data itself. I openly criticize "community dumps" in much the same way, but that's for another thread.

    As to the article, I agree with all of your points fully. It was very well written, clearly presented all five of your points without dragging on, and the piece at the end was perfect for people that haven't been in the community for very long. Like I already said, the (minor) criticism that I gave, after looking at who the target reader is, was unwarranted.

    We're both on the same page Frank, I'm really trying to do the same things for the community that you've been doing for years.

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