All the talk recently about video game archival has got me thinking I'd like to find some way to do an exhibition of some kind from my collection.
I've spent the last year and a half gathering more and more games that are widely considered 100% not worth preserving. Fantastic Four. An American Tail. The Lawnmower Man. Too Human. The Owls of Ga'hoole.
People pretty regularly ask me why it's always this garbage, why do I play all this trash, and it's in part because this is the stuff that will vanish forever.
Often the hardest things to find are the "trivial" things that used to be at peak saturation. A decade from now it's going to be a chore to track down a fidget spinner in-box because they're all going to be sent to landfills.
The Wii and DS shovelware that used to be inescapable is already getting harder and harder to find. No one bothers to put Wii Petz or Ninjabread Man on eBay because in their own calculus it's more work to create the post and keep the game around than they'll ever get in money.
Budget games, knockoffs, tie ins, these games are worth preserving as a reminder that a huge cross section of the actual output of the industry really, deeply suu~uuu~uuucks.
Like, people often gravitate towards "the forgotten gems" and "diamonds in the rough" and "lost masterpieces" and I'm just like No.
Sure, those are cool when you find them, but No.
It is worth remembering that we mostly output middling garbage.
Sure, those are cool when you find them, but No.
It is worth remembering that we mostly output middling garbage.
"We might be throwing out the games version of Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'" is just PR to get people to buy in to the idea of preservation because it's easier to get people to support the idea of preserving the Singular Exemplar
It's a lot harder to get people to care when you explain how we should preserve a body of work because it has value as a volume, even if the constituent parts are, at best, meh.
Anyway, I'd like to find some way to do an exhibit at a library or museum. Give people a chance to actually play some of the worst games ever sold.
