News

The official English version (handled by Working Designs) changed a good deal of the story and gameplay - this version is much more accurate to the original devs' intent on both counts.

If you ever wanted to search for gaming-related newspaper snippets, now's a great time to do so!

This may not be new information but I only learned of it now.

Google claims that "you can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups," but personally I would take this as a sign to start archiving anything and everything you can - I'm not one to trust tech companies at their word. (While this obviously doesn't spell the end of Usenet altogether, it is the death of a prominent method of accessing Usenet posts online without any specialized protocols.)

Finally, the time has come!

Direct quote:

Bill & Ted will be removed from sale before January 1 on all platforms, yes. This means it won't be available to buy, but people will still be able to redownload it.

It was released in February 2023, so this means it will have been available for less than a year in total.

Another online-only game bites the dust.

Digital Eclipse announced today that they’re joining Atari! What year is this? Jokes aside, I hope this leads to even more great content coming out from Digital Eclipse!

This is both hilarious and sad

Another good article on the subject, and with a quote from yours truly :)

From Twitter:

After 20 incredible years, I have decided to take a step back and work on the next chapter of my career. As I take a moment and think about all we have done together, I want to thank the millions of gamers around the world who have included me as part of their lives. (1/3)

Also, thanks to Xbox team members for trusting me to have a direct dialogue with our customers. The future is bright for Xbox and as a gamer, I am excited to see the evolution.

Thank and I’ll see you online

Larry Hryb (2/3)

P.S. The official Xbox Podcast will be taking a hiatus this Summer and will come back in a new format. (3/3)

From the website:

The NAND-AID is an interposer that installs inside the Wii-U as memory replacement for failing/corrupted NAND memory. It allows you to use an SD-Card to replace the internal memory without removing or "hot airing" the old surface mount NAND package. The NAND-AID also allowso you to manually back the failing memory off of the original NAND when used with the SD Tool.

This is fantastic news for those failing Wii U consoles out there, they get a second chance at life!

This is really exciting, a new PS4 emulator coming from the creator of RPCS3.

Credit it PaulHoule for posting this to HackerNews (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36454824)

Credit Michalg82 postings this to hacker news. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36373364)

Here’s a prime example of why preserving online games is important, but also very, very hard.

Something that came up in a chat today, somewhat of an existential thought / (threat?)

For a very long time, I've wanted to create a NAS, a large one, to house proper digital backups of my games (self-dump, and then verify with no-intro or redump, etc.) Having all that under one roof is an appealing thought, because no matter what, come hell or high water, my own personal collection is fine from whatever is happening in the outside world. But maybe more accurately, back in the day, it was a truly personal collection, because if you wanted a digital backup that was "known-good", you had to do some legwork.

However, now that it's 2023, and gigantic, full collections of no-intro and redump sets are just freely available for anyone on archive.org via a simple search, I find myself feeling not as in need of a NAS, because I can just go get something if I want it. I don't necessarily have to keep 24TB of hard drive platters spinning, just so that copy of Goof Troop for the SNES is handy at all times.

But what happens if everyone just says "ah i'll let that sit on someone else's hard drive (the cloud), and then nobody's keeping this stuff locally. (they most certainly are, but it's mostly hypothetical, and those people tend to be in closed communities.)

I'm reminded of an episode of 'Gilmore Girls' where the entire town set up an all-day knitting marathon to raise money to fix a local bridge, everyone's knitting, working, and then a rich guy comes down and just plunks down the remaining money needed to fix the bridge, and everyone having fun is just like "well, guess I'll go home now..."

So some thoughts:

1. Is the readily-available-ness of "roms" on archive.org actually hurting private preservation efforts?

2. If archive.org decides to remove the public-facing aspect of these collections, is anyone harmed? Or will it make people who want to preserve games work harder to do so, and those who simply wish to pirate head back to shady sites?

Anyone interested in a new role in game preservation?