Hard Core Rikki Posted December 29, 2013 Share Posted December 29, 2013 Internet Archive starts digitally preserving ROM collections, based on MAME 0.151 definitions, as a 42GB gigatorrent and individual downloads for the curious.A Second Christmas Morning: The Console Living Room26 December 2013 For a generation of children, the most exciting part of a Christmas morning was discovering a large box under the tree, ripping it apart, and looking at an exciting, colorful box promising endless video games. At home! Right in your living room!The expansion of videogames from arcades, boardwalks and carnivals into the home was a vanguard mounted by companies with names like Coleco, Atari, Magnavox and Odyssey. For hundreds of dollars, you could play as many games as you wanted, for as long as you wanted, on the same TV you watched shows on. The change from the fireplace to television as center of home and hearth began in the 1950s and the home video game sped this process up considerably.Naturally, these home video games, running on underpowered hardware and not-made-for-the-purpose video screens, were scant competition in the graphics and experience department compared to arcade games. But as they improved, consoles and computer gaming dented and some would argue destroyed arcades as a nationwide phenomenon. Only a small percentage of arcades now exist compared to their peak.Sadly, the days of the home videogame console being a present under a tree followed by days of indulgent game-playing are not the same, replaced with massive launch events and overnight big-box store stays.Until today!In an expansion of the Historical Software Collection, the Internet Archive has opened theConsole Living Room, a collection of console video games from the 1970s and 1980s. Like the Historical Software collection, the Console Living Room is in beta – the ability to interact with software in near-instantaneous real-time comes with the occasional bumps and bruises. An army of volunteer elves are updating information about each of the hundreds of game cartridges now available, and will be improving them across the next few days. Sound is still not enabled, but is coming soon. Faster, more modern machines and up-to-date browsers work best with the JSMESS emulator.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted December 31, 2013 Share Posted December 31, 2013 /me waits for them to be shut down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hard Core Rikki Posted December 31, 2013 Author Share Posted December 31, 2013 (edited) The archive itself is staying up, as is the collection.They've always had this 'shoot first' approach regarding archiving. Save everything and only remove individual bits that are objected to (distribution-wise only. Nothing prevents them from archiving everything they can, the only limits are on making it available/distribution, which they are in no pressing need to offer right now or even this decade).Games currently sold on digital marketplaces like PSN may be the only ones to go, not just the first, and that'd be for purely moral reasons, not legal. Also, The Internet Archive obtained in 2003 a multiyear exemption from DMCA, which was renewed a couple times, then indefinitely renewed. Good luck suing then. Edited December 31, 2013 by Hard Core Rikki Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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