Free Play – Video Game Canon

GOG.com Launches GOG Preservation Program to Keep Classic PC Games Available on Modern Systems

The capital letters in GOG.com don’t stand for anything anymore, but when the digital storefront first launched in 2008, the acronym stood for Good Old Games and was meant to shine a spotlight on the company’s retro focus. In the decade-and-a-half since, GOG has positioned themselves as a competitor to Steam, often selling the same AAA titles that appear on Valve’s storefront. But their desire to be a destination for retro gaming never really went away, and earlier this month the company unveiled the GOG Preservation Program.

The GOG Preservation Program is a new initiative that’ll attempt to ensure that “classic games remain playable on modern systems, even after their developers stopped supporting them.” To accomplish this, GOG has pledged to “commit [their] own resources to maintaining compatibility with modern and future systems” for games in the program. These updates can include everything from testing whether or not a game is supported in Windows 10 and 11, all the way to fixing bugs that have existed for decades (just look at these Patch Notes on a classic Resident Evil Bundle).

But why are they doing this? I’ll let GOG’s Arthur Dejardin explain:

Across my desk sits someone who describes his personality as a carbon copy of Squall’s from FF8. Another colleague told me he became a financial controller because he played so much Tropico as a kid. I love rainy days because they gave me the perfect excuse to play The Legend of Dragoon for the entire afternoon back in the day.

Games shaped us. Being able to play them is an essential part of reconnecting with ourselves. They must stay accessible, playable, and alive.

Unfortunately, the classic PC games market is in a sorry state. It’s too tiny for leading platforms to give it any attention. Classic releases often get the sell-it-and-forget-it treatment, and as time goes on and technology evolves, compatibility issues arise and remain unaddressed. Head to one of the massive platforms to buy a classic game and try to play it on your Windows 11 machine: You’ll stand disappointed.

We believe that maintaining these games as compatible and playable will allow you to keep our shared history alive, reconnect with yourself, and pass on your legacy.

It is incredible to see a company dedicate themselves to game preservation like this. As of today, more than 100 games are part of the GOG Preservation Program, but the storefront hopes to add many more to the program in the future. And like all the games on their virtual shelves, the titles in the GOG Preservation Program will be available to download without DRM.

Introducing the Video Game Research Library

Say hello to one of the next big projects from Video Game Canon… the Video Game Research Library… which is a collection of articles, videos, and podcasts that offer a glimpse into gaming’s past, present, and future through historical, retrospective, and contemporary reporting and scholarship.

Within the library, you’ll find links to investigative reports, retrospective histories, biographical sketches, commentary and criticism, editorial opinions, book excerpts, interviews, oral histories, journal articles from academic and medical professionals, development materials, postmortems, and a lot more. My goal is to create a hand-built collection of links inspired by a bit the old web.

Does the library represent the full history of video games? No, of course not. But it is a good start and I want to add new links as often as I can.

[Continue Reading…]

Nintendo Offers Up a Video Tour of the Nintendo Museum… Which Opens on October 2, 2024

It’s been three long years since Nintendo announced their desire to transform a shuttered manufacturing plant in Kyoto into a Nintendo Museum, but with a grand opening planned for this Fall, the consolemaker is finally ready to give fans a sneak peek at what’s inside.

The video tour, which has been embedded above, is hosted by Shigeru Miyamoto himself, and it actually starts on the second floor in the “Make Connections” exhibit. There, museum patrons will be able to browse Nintendo’s 135-year-history of games, toys, and playing cards. This massive display case overlooks the first floor, which will feature eight interactive play exhibits. Miyamoto shared three of those exhibits during the video.

“Ultra Machine SP” is based on an indoor pitching machine sold by Nintendo in the 60s and 70s and will let you take the plate in a replica of a typical Japanese home. “Zapper and Scope SP” gives players a Zapper or Super Scope and lets them loose on a 13-player light gun game that attempts to modernize one of Nintendo’s first moves into the video game space. And you’ll get exactly what you expect in the “Big Controller” exhibit, as two players will attempt to complete a Nintendo-themed game challenge together using an extra-large controller.

With this combination of museum gallery and interactive play-based exhibits, the Nintendo Museum seems to be very reminiscent of The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. But as with all things Nintendo, I’m sure a few surprises are still being kept under wraps.

The Nintendo Museum will open to the public on October 2, but to help control attendance, Nintendo is currently offering tickets through an online lottery. You can reserve your tickets, and learn more about the rest of the museum, at the Nintendo Museum’s official website.

Here Come the AAAA Games… But What’s a AAA Game and Why Do We Call Them That?

Where did the AAA designation come from? And what even qualifies as a AAA game?

I investigated both of those questions in a piece for Warp Zoned back in 2013, and a lightly edited and updated version of that article was reprinted here on Video Game Canon after Microsoft tried to announce a AAAA game in August 2020.

But a few recent discoveries have given us a clearer look where the AAA designation came from, and this article was rewritten to incorporate those updates in February 2024.

The console changeover from the PS3/Xbox 360 generation to the PS4/Xbox One generation brought a lot of worry about the spiraling budgets and massive teams required to create AAA games. Many felt it was hurting the industry, and while there was a reduction in games with blockbuster-sized budgets, these types of games continued to push the conversation among developers, publishers, and players. These same fears are being echoed today in light of the massive wave of layoffs that game executives inflicted upon the industry in 2023.

But for all the hand-wringing about how the AAA game was (and still is) detrimental to smaller developers, no one could seem to agree on what exactly a AAA game was or when the AAA designation was even first used.

In attempting to solve this etymological mystery, I found that the AAA designation shares much in common with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s obscenity test from a 1964 case (“I know it when I see it”). But I also found out that no one’s quite sure what the future of AAA games will look like.

[Continue Reading…]

Puzzle Games Have Always Had Personality… Featuring Threes, Dr. Mario, Peggle, Tetris, and a Lot More

Wordle jumpstarted a new wave of addictive puzzle games after it was released to almost universal praise in 2020. Players found competition and comradery in those green and yellow squares during the COVID pandemic, and this little bit of personality continues to fuel the game’s popularity today.

But puzzle games have always had personality, and on the second anniversary of Wordle‘s acquisition by The New York Times, I decided to look back on an article I wrote for Warp Zoned in 2014 that argued exactly that. A lightly edited and updated version of that article has been reprinted here.

As video games begin to resemble film and television productions more and more with each passing generation, it’s interesting to observe that puzzle games continue to remain a vibrant genre.

[Continue Reading…]

A Teenager “Beat” Tetris for the NES After Clearing 1,511 Lines

I’ll bet you thought it was impossible to “beat” Tetris on the NES… but that’s because your name isn’t Willis “Blue Scuti” Gibson.

Last month, the Tetris prodigy quite literally broke the game, clearing 1,511 lines before reaching the game’s never-before-seen kill screen. Blue Scuti is just 13 years old, and he’s part of a growing group of young players who have taken over the ranks of pro Tetris.

Blue Scuti and his peers are able to rack up such impressive line totals thanks to a strategy known as rolling. In rolling, the controller is pressed flat against your leg with your thumb hovering over the D-Pad. By tapping the back of the controller with your other hand, you can apply just enough pressure to the D-Pad to make pieces move across the screen (and where you want them to go to clear lines) at even the fastest levels.

While my own personal best of 214 lines is pretty decent for an amateur, Ars Technica explained how the pros are able to use rolling to push beyond the human limits found in a normal game of Tetris:

What makes Blue Scuti’s achievement even more incredible (as noted in some excellent YouTube summaries of the scene) is that, until just a few years ago, the Tetris community at large assumed it was functionally impossible for a human to get much past 290 lines. The road to the first NES Tetris kill screen highlights the surprisingly robust competitive scene that still surrounds the classic game and just how much that competitive community has been able to collectively improve in a relatively short time.

The whole world has come together to congratulate Blue Scuti, including Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, and Henk Rogers, the developer who brought the game to the rest of the world in 1988. A surprise appearance from both men during Blue Scuti’s interview with NBC News gave the young player quite a shock.

Shortly after the new year, two other Tetris players also managed to reach the kill screen: Justin “Fractal161” Yu and Andy “P1xelAndy” Artiaga. Both regularly compete with Blue Scuti in tournaments around the country.

Blue Scuti’s record-setting playthrough was recently shared by Classic Tetris World Championship, and it’s been embedded above. He dedicated this accomplishment to his father, Adam Gibson, who passed away on December 14.

Get A Sneak Peek at the Video Game History Foundation’s Digital Library

The Video Game History Foundation has been collecting and digitizing game magazines, press kits, development materials, and the personal papers of several major figures in the games industry since their founding in 2017.

But recently, they took a major step towards making the items on their shelves available to the public with a sneak peek at their long-in-the-works Digital Library. In the video, which is embedded above, Library Director Phil Salvador walks us through how the database will work, using Nintendo Power, Game Players, and the Mark Flitman Papers as examples. There’s also a blog post, Introducing the VGHF Digital Library, explaining a bit more about their progress:

One of the most frequent questions we get is how you can access our collections of rare video game history research materials. Well, wonder no more! For the past two years, we’ve been building a digital platform where you can explore our archives, without having to visit in person. And we think it’s ready to show off.

We’ve put together an 18-minute demo of what our work-in-progress digital library looks like. This is our first look at how you’ll access the resources in our collection—plus an advance preview of the Mark Flitman papers, one of the exciting collections we’ll be rolling out when the library soft-launches next year.

Remember: This is a preview, and some things are a little unfinished! But if we’re all cool with that, we think it’s about time to show you what we’ve been up to.

This is extremely exciting news for researchers and anyone else who wants to dive into gaming’s often mysterious past. If all goes well, the Video Game History Foundation’s Digital Library should be up and running next year.

Every Season of “The Electric Playground” to be Archived at the University of Toronto Mississauga

Victor Lucas is a name you might not know if you’re on the southern side of the Canadian border, but after launching The Electric Playground during the very early days of the World Wide Web, he’s been shaping how we report on and talk about games for nearly 30 years.

The show first came online as a website (ElecPlay.com) in 1995, and Lucas would later lead a newsmagazine-style spinoff of the site for Canadian television beginning in 1997.

Video game news and reviews on television was a bit of a novelty at the time, but The Electric Playground would go on to create the template for a newsmagazine-style show about games during its initial 18-year run and inspired many game journalists to pick up a camera. In addition to its style, the show was responsible for giving Geoff Keighley, creator of The Game Awards, his first on-screen hosting experience. The Electric Playground would spawn a spinoff of its own in 2002 (Reviews on the Run, which aired as Judgment Day in the US), before coming to an end in 2015.

Lucas brought The Electric Playground (which was rebranded as EP Daily in 2008) to YouTube after its cancellation, and he continues to produce new episodes to this day.

[Continue Reading…]

Hit Save! Launches Press Materials Archive for Video Games

Hit Save!, an organization dedicated to the preservation of video games, is back with another excellent resource for anyone interested in exploring how games were promoted to the public. The newly-launched Hit Save! Press Materials Archive includes hundreds of examples of promotional material for a wide variety of games:

The collection includes press kits, promotional material, concept art, trailers, and more, providing invaluable insights into the development and marketing processes behind many classic, well-known, and sometimes obscure video games. A big thank you goes out to Stephen Keating for donating a large portion of digital press material that he has collected over the years.

By sharing these materials and providing public access, we aim to enable new research and scholarship in game studies. The materials reveal rarely seen details about both popular franchises and forgotten gems. We hope they will lead to new discoveries that expand our knowledge of your favorite games and franchises 🙂

Hit Save! has said that the archive will be growing quite a bit in the coming weeks and months, and you can share your own discoveries by joining their Discord server.

Noclip Game History Archive is Digitizing a Decade of Videotapes to Preserve Lost Game History

Danny O’Dwyer has been creating video game documentaries under the Noclip banner since 2016, but he and his team are about to take on their biggest project yet.

Noclip has come into possession of hundreds of videotapes containing over a decade of lost video game history, including trailers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, B-roll footage, news reports, and a whole lot more. The collection likely includes a lot of the same videos that Hit Save! is currently streaming as part of their Always On project.

But as O’Dwyer stressed in the Patreon announcement (which is embedded above), no one knows exactly what’s on these tapes, and some of the ones they’ve viewed contain some really interesting stuff. There’s a previously-unavailable Behind Closed Doors Demo for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic from E3 2001, a tour of Nintendo’s Nintendo of America’s Employee-Only Museum, a newly-remastered Reveal Trailer for Uncharted, and a lot more.

You can see everything Noclip has digitized so far at the dedicated Noclip Game History Archive channel on both YouTube and the Internet Archive.

Good luck to O’Dwyer and his team as they work with all the temperamental video equipment needed to digitize these tapes.