Japan's Game Preservation Crisis
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- čas přidán 11. 06. 2021
- There's a game preservation crisis taking place in Japan, with the games in question having very little time left to be documented.
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#Japan #Game #Crisis - Hry
It just blows my mind that _fans themselves_ would be against preservation. "Not only do *I* not want it, I don't want *you* to have it either."
People suck
Actually to be fair it’s mostly people who grew up and lived in Japan who are at fault. I’ve talked to many who have games like BC and they are against the idea of preserving. However some have helped. We have fans overseas who are figuring out how to archive it.
@@littlewiihacker I have to wonder sometimes why that is, honestly the only thing I can think of is that they feel it's a sort of right to have been there when something came out and other people being able to experience it later would diminish that special quality.
@@megasoniczxx that could be it. But to me that is just selfish. I wish these phones and the service was able to get outside of Japan. But so far it’s been a struggle to achieve the goal.
It's just like people who oppose any regulation on video game companies. "How dare you try to ban lootboxes in E for Everyone games! How dare you support video game unions! How dare you complain about CEO pay or miserable working conditions! Don't you know we're supposed to bow down to the gaming industry no matter what?! Reeeeeeeeeeeee!
90% of silent films are permanently lost. don't let this happen to video games too
It’s an absolute tragedy. And let’s not even think of how much music, art, and literature has been lost to the sands of time too.
Lost media makes me sad
Most egregiously, Napoleon. Even movies that were regarded the absolutely best are permanently lost.
(And don't get me started on Dr. Who being lost by the BBC.)
@@borby4584 Got some bad news about the library of alexandria, bro.
@@Lovuschka There's a Dutch children's TV show my mother grew up with called Kunt U Mij De Weg Naar Hamelen Vertellen, Meneer? (Could you tell me the way to Hamlyn, sir?) which is basically a sequel to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn, and tells the story of where the children of Hamlyn went after the Piper abducts them. All but the last 9 (out of 45 iirc) episodes were completely lost. The ones that are left (and that sometimes pop up from people who had them recorded on their VCRs and find the tapes) have all come out on DVD, and I myself grew up watching the DVD of those last few episodes. It was a truly fascinating show, and while the visual effects did not age well at all (though at the time they were impressive), the show had a great story, amazing villains and characters, and the way some of the fairy tail characters speak is incredibly distinct in a way I can't reproduce or explain.
The original writer did, however, release a novelization of the entire show that I'm planning on getting.
We need more people to help. If we have people in Japan to help us then we could save a lot of games. But they are sadly against it.
Glad that lost media as a whole is getting more attention in recent days. Most of the stuff in danger of being lost is admittedly pretty trivial, but it's still history being destroyed by virtue of being digital.
@Spiral Drillman The fuck are you on about?
@@clonesharpshooter101 No, no. I think he might be on to something.
@@Dealortruth lol
@Spiral Drillman nah, it deserved all the hate it got. game marketed to eastern market revealed to a bunch of computer loving neckbeard westerners. good move.
@Spiral Drillman If that game was announced alongside a regular Diablo game then people probably wouldn’t have minded it but to think that every Diablo players dream is to play that game on their phone is very very stupid and ignorant to say the least.
Even if it’s not a “good game”, it should still be preserved and saved. I do what I can with my own little collection but it’s good to see there are others out there doing what they can on a larger scale and that we can help them!
there are many games, very good games even that died in android devices simply because nobody was ever interested on preserving them due to the bad stigma mobile games have. A remake of double dragon, a very good mobile mass effect and dead space, a really interesting music game called demon's score, are all good examples, and far from the only ones. In that regard preservation is either inconsistent in its efforts. or just plainly ridiculous on concept and scope. Value "preservationist" put on games its fully arbitrary and hard to rationalize. I personally think its like animal conservation. Primarily self-serving based on very little.
You are the hero
@Censorship's For Pussies Oh I agree, these look fun. I just meant like in general even if a game is bad I feel like it should be preserved.
It’s “Belongs in a museum” video game edition pretty much.
I would say that as well if they weren't mobile games.
@@DnDandVideoGames Gaming history is gaming history. You wouldn't say that something doesn't belong in a museum because it's an artifact from a civilisation you don't like.
So do you!
Some of those mobile games seem like decent titles, and objectively important. Such as sequels and spinoffs of popular franchises that have additional back story not found in other games.
FF Before Crisis and the Ni-No-Kuni stand out to me in particular.
All games deserve to be saved for future generations.
Unfortunately there's also delisted games for PlayStation 3 that will never see the light of day again, such as the digital version of NBA Jam (packaged with NBA Elite 11), AERO-CROSS, Football Genius, a Macross game titled Don't Be Late (a disc, that nobody knows the whereabouts of), Germany's Next Topmodel 2010, and Fairytale Fights (Hong Kong version). These games are permanently gone, and while there's three known owners of NBA Jam, none of them want the game to be preserved.
Except Fortnite.
Joking not joking.
I really don’t get the Japanese mindset. They rather let work and effort that was put into a game disappear for all eternity than let it become archived out of fear of “piracy” when they don’t have any intention of ever making it available publicly again.
I for one who’s still mad at crapcom for cancelling Megaman legends 3 would love to play the 5 island adventures.
Yeah, one would think they could stick the games on a server and charge a monthly subscription fee for access.
lol, fans can even be considered worse than companies, those are "their" games, not for us Westerners (That's their mindset). There was a long lost Famicom RPG that was going to be crowd buy by a video game preservationist group in an auction. After their last bid a japanese private collectors doubled the bid and got the game. He told the people that he was going to guard that "japanese treasure" and the game can be considered lost now. "Indy: The Magical Kid" was the game.
RIP to the Xenosaga mobile phone game, a canon and very important installment to the overall story released in 2004 and currently unavailable for download
Exactly what I think of when I think of this exact issue. Absolutely wild.
Isn't that the one that takes place between 2 and 3 and explains why Shion left Vector?
@@greedkingcobalt200 it was made between 2 and 3 and details the story of Ziggy's past
@@legodawg2001 Oh. The history between him and Voyager?
@@greedkingcobalt200 Yep. Thankfully the script has been preserved, but otherwise it cannot be experienced currently
"stigmas surrounding videogame preservation in Japan"
Oi, somebody get Ross Scott on the case. This is the sort of mentality that the "games as a service" crowd want to engender, in the general population.
Game companies, among other companies, are not necessarily interested in preservation, since it isn't necessarily profitable. Fans tend to care more about IP's than the actual IP owners, fairly often. That's why preservation efforts are a necessity. We live in a world where master copies and source codes are lost or destroyed, on a regular basis.
I did a home stay in high school in Tokyo in 2001. My home stay brother had a phone that had color, could be submerged under water, and could be thrown in the air, land on the ground, and it was fine.
I had a Nokia from the US with no color so I was in the past for them (which I was). They gave me a color flip phone which I brought back to the states and everyone was shocked
Cool story bro
@@stereomonovici5796 This but unironically
Alex, I’ll take things that never happened for 500
@@RayRaySD941 Just because you’re jealous doesn’t mean it didn’t happen
I still have souvenirs from back then. I literally have parappa the rapper merch since part 2 was coming out around the time. I also have a Digivice from the 3rd season which was airing there at the time. As for the phone, it didn’t work in the US but it was still cool to have as an early teenager.
It's ironic that they think that game preservation is a form of piracy but also had mainstream commercials for Napster.
If I didn't know any better I would say Nintendo has something to do with that mentality
The UK also had mainstream commercials for Napster, on account of it being a legit digital music store... eventually
Makes me guess why Lars Urlich didn't sue them as well, not just Napster.
I need that WAP 😩(Wireless Application Protocol)
I nearly spit my drink out at that line at first, lol.
That Before Crisis is the one title that I've pawed at for ages. A fan did recreate it through RPG Maker, though, so that effort counts for something great to me. I'm just bummed we never got any official translation.
Before Crisis will see some info in the Ever Crisis release. How much of it we'll see, but better than nothing I suppose
That's the ONE game I always wanted to see before this new hype of 7. I always wondered about it
@@moomba_ if anything that will be a remake of Before Crisis. It will not be the original if they plan on doing what ever crisis is doing. But I’m glad we are getting it in someway though.
I was CRAZY to play Before Crisis since I was 14 or 15 in 2005. I remember reading about each new chapter of the game, as it released in installments back then
12:50 come on guys we have to save Sonic Billiards
so is this the most obscure Sonic game?
Yeah, we've saved the Sonic statues but not the Sonic billiards? Why not both?
i can hear this in your voice
GODDAMN IT CYBERSHELL STOP HAVING A LIFE AND MAKE MORE VIDEOS FOR ME!
Sounds like a good idea for a video a decade from now.
This needs japanese attention, like add japaneses subtitles or something people are out there who would take the effort to preserve what they could, but they likely aren't aware.
It would be a shame for these games to be truly lost
This. Hopefully DYKG will take notice.
I agree with this. Hoping they see this too
Bump
Someone get Hideki Naganuma
Wish there were still community translations
Yes, glorified Piracy, of a service you're not offering, and preserving your work for generations to come well after you've made your profit and you, your estate, your company no longer exist, How dare we.
^
And then giving it away for free. There's gotta be a catch though, maybe we're including advertisements for the MASSIVE corporations we all own...
You should definitely put Japanese subtitles or tags for this. This should get more notice for people who are living in Japan and able to do something
the japanese culture is very much about being respectful and not questioning authority so sadly japanese people probably wouldn't do much of anything
Relieves me to see that this topic is getting attention. Media is even more in danger if you think about it. It's not just the old media, but also the digital-only and the region locked ones
Especially with authoritarian governments shutting out and book burning things they don't like or goes against the narrative
@@XDarksoulX1129 Oh yeah also that
That's happening with anime. Funimation making dubs with modern "woke" language, like gamergate and cis male stuff. Then when people start pirating because anime fans want source material or are region locked, industry leaders tell them "well too bad, buy our products or you don't get to see it."
@@Big_baasman yup which btw fuck funimation
Js. Something I realized recently. Is that when you don't believe in God and no one does. You will have no God given rights.
This is part of why I have always been against region locking for all media. I thought the 'net was supposed to bring is closer, not divide us even further.
A huge thank you to video game preservationists everywhere, you guys are doing incredible work. I really appreciate that DYKG is covering this topic as well, thank you so much for bringing attention to this!
This hurts my soul. We've lost so many works, so much media, and yet we haven't realized how much of a tragedy that is yet.
g-mode has at least started releasing archives titles on steam, so there's always a possibility for fan translations down the line. there are actually a few modern releases you can directly trace back to assumptions about the original versions being lost forever because of being java phone games, in a darkly funny way. suda51 would often make jokes about 25th ward, the silver case's sequel, being a "phantom sequel" until he decided to fully remake it, as it was originally made as an episodic i-mode title, and hero must die got a full remake staying 100% faithful to the original game's design because it was a cult hit g-mode phone game they assumed would never be rereleased (it got rereleased last year in g-mode archives.)
Yeah there are better versions of games available such as with Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded but these games and their choppy looks need to be kept because they look cool
It might be a good idea to have a translator create Japanese subtitles for this video and maybe even have the title of this video in Japanese as well, in brackets or something. It sounds like if there's any chance at preserving these games, were going to need at least a few Japanese volunteers.
Ladies and Gentlemen, that's why emulators and roms are extremely important.
There are no ROMs for these games. That's the problem.
@@mariomadproductions That's the idea though - if emulators and ROMs didn't exist, there's lots of games for much more well known systems that wouldn't have been preserved either. Yes, everybody knows Super Mario World, and it's been re-released time and time again, but there's no shortage of other SNES games that were obscure even for their time, and few people remember today except among the most hardcore of retro game collectors. The fact that those games have all been preserved means that they'll never be completely forgotten, even after the last physical copies succumb to bit rot.
Piracy is not only not bad, it is morally imperative in a world where developers have no financial incentive to preserve their games.
Personally, i feel bad pirating games from consoles on the existing console generstion and the generation before. Wii games can be played on wii u, the console before, so i kind of count backwards compatibility
However, old games like ps1 titles, ps2 titles, gamecube titles, and n64 titles are mostly lost to time if they arent available via online playstation store or backwards compatibility.
Games like goldeneye might have not ever been as much of a cult classic if not for emulation.
There exists a museum for old games though, which is a good thing. The bad thing, theyre just there and not to be played. In other words, practically useless since you cannot well, uh, play the game.
We have remasters, collections and online store fronts.
@@CornishCreamtea07 unfortunately, some games dont. Where else can I play ogre battle 64 or 007 64
remasters and remakes are fine, but how will i play the original versions? twewy final mix is great, but plays differently from twewy ds.
the mega man legacy collections are an amazing treat though. the original versions of each game emulated, and with extra content too!
@@makogp747 You can get the former on the Wii U VC. Goldeneye has some rights issues if I recall.
@@CornishCreamtea07 oh i forgot ogre battle was on vc hahaha
but yeah, some games wont get reprinted ever
Finally we have a REAL reason to travel back in time
Right? lol sometimes i fantasise about time travelers in the future going back in time to retrieve lost art
Don't forget about lost doctor who episodes!
To look at the ibm 5100?
The lost writings of antiquity, the countless lost epic poems, histories, plays, philosophical writings and poems are good enough reason alone. Not to mention the countless lost pages from the old internet such as Geocities, Yahoo Groups and old mods etc.
I saw this and immediately thought about all the licensing hassles with Nintendo Switch Online: specifically, why a lot of the games that are getting re-released for Western players are from Data East, Jaleco, and Natsume and not more titles from Capcom and Konami. It was either because the publishers agreed, or the video game publishing companies no longer exist: as is the case for Data East and Jaleco.
Data East IPs are owned by G-Mode and Jaleco IPs are owned by City Connection. Both companies are mostly for re-releases of their titles
When companies go out of business their IPs are sold as liquidation. Someone owns the IPs.
At least Capcom rereleases their shit themselves
"while we were making use of WAP" hit me like a ton of bricks
After my iphone 6 broke earlier this year and so I bought the newest iphone, I saw how many apps and games were no longer available to download on the iphone (example, Mass Effect Infiltrator or Fifa 14 a non pay to play game). They are just icons with clouds pointing at that they are no longer available to download, even if I paid money to get them.
Makes me super sad that if the situation is like this in the U.S., other places such as Europe, Latin America, and Japan are probably much worst
Chaos rings. Those were expensive and they're gone...
I remember the GS Ball Celebi event from Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal being my first knowledge of Japanese exclusive stuff like this
That and Kingdom Hearts Final Mix for me.
i was so fucking mad about that
Did they fix this for the 3ds eShop version
@@likenem In VC Crystal, yes. The event is included by default.
Oh wow you're cool.
This reminds me of the SNES Japan-only BSX, an accessory that let players download new games regularly. Storage was limited to what could be stored on the cartridge that worked with the BSX hardware, so in order to play a new game the player had to overwrite the last one, with no way of accessing previously downloaded games.
The only way to preserve these games is to find a cartridge that hadn't downloaded anything else after that game was broadcast. There was an entire Zelda game released on the BSX service, as well as F-Zero 2 and some Kirby games that weren't discovered until a few years ago.
What are these Kirby games? Are they from the Satellaview?
@@pmd9801 Look up "Kirby's Toy Box." You'll find an article from the Kirby wiki that describes the games and the circumstances of their release in far better detail than I'm able to.
There was that story a year or two ago about them finding the full version of the cancelled SNES game Coolly Skunk that later released as Punky Skunk on the PS1. The "demo" on the BS-X cartridge was the full game but just with a timer added on to cut the game off at a certain point.
This went from an interesting video about the earliest phone games that were only in Japan, to a sad story that these games are/will be lost to the sands of time. This has got me into thinking of preservation of games
I'm torn between looking at the rudimentary gameplay and saying "who cares" and remembering a game that I loved on my old iphone 3GS that's already gone much the same way as what they're trying to avoid.
Still want to play Aegis: The First Mission
Based
As someone who commissioned art of one of the game's characters to use as a pfp, GOD I wholeheartedly agree!! The Persona Mobile games only added to the rich history and lore around the series and if they went away forever, it could only be described as tragic in my honest opinion. Same with every series meeting this same predicament.
Thank you for making this video, it's so unbelievably important. Just thinking back to the times of early silent films, and so much has been lost because people at the time didn't value preserving their movies for oncoming generations. Everything was seen as just making money in the moment and moving on that culture, history, influences, and so much more has been lost. Let's not repeat those mistakes if we can help it, this has been something I've been thinking about a long time and I'm happy that other people like this channel are bringing it to attention!
Nobody saved the silent films because they suuuuucked!
Omg I really hope these games will be preserved and become widely accessible, maybe even fan translated! I remember getting my first Ericsson phone back in the mid to late 2000s, and finding a ton of Java games on the internet like the Silent Hill mobile games and even a version of Devil May Cry, and I'm still super nostalgic for them!
This wouldn't be a problem if these game companies would just release ports of these games for modern systems in some type of collection, but of course that would make too much sense.
It would make almost no financial sense.
@@pictonomii3295 I'd pay out the hoo-hah for a copy of Pokémon Silver/Gold that wouldn't have it's memory dry up....let me repeat that...out the hoo-hah
@@pictonomii3295 They're games that have already been made and wouldn't require a lot of horsepower to emulate them. Game companies love being able to throw something together for a quick buck.
@@killwillv2610 That is on the 3DS eshop
How cool would it be if they just started reproducing old game karts? N64, GameCube, game boy, etc?
You can hear the tears just barely held back. The passion is real, guys
When I moved to Japan in 2008, I had a SoftBank phone. I was able to download Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. I'd never heard of phones that could do this before.
0:59 HOLY SHIT IT'S BOUNCE!! This red guy had like three games to himself, each coming out furing a different era from the beginnings of color phones to more advanced hardware all the way to the beginnings of the smartphone era!
Also Ratchet & Clank Going Mobile was also surprisingly good.
I remember playing Bounce tales and it was a fun time despite being short.
@@MegaMet98 Ditto!
Three, if you don't count the smartphone versions. The first Bounce had also a Symbian version for S60v1/S60v2 platforms (N-Gage was S60v1), and was the same game, but with slightly better graphics and good SFX.
But Bounce: Bon Voyage for S60v3/N-Gage 2.0 (and later) was completely different: full 3D levels with PS1 level graphics, music and SFX, and awesome gameplay.
Those had better fate than these Japanese i-mode games, and are well preserved. Symbian games can be played with EKA2L1 emulator, and for Java games there's lots of emulators, the best of all is J2ME Loader on Android.
I played this like no tomorrow on my moms phone as a kid
It was sadly glossed over, but Atlus has made many Megami Tensei games for mobile phones, some even crucial sequels for games like SMT If... or Soul Hackers and it is a shame that these games are lost to time forever.
What breaks my heart is some of those games were connected to series that I loved like the Professor Layton series.
Dude, I'd play the shit out of a Persona MMO
Doesn't exist anymore, but tensei: Imagine was fantastic back in the day
@@thecryingsoul Well. Good that there is a private Imagine server nowadays. last time i checked couple of months ago it was midly functioning. but it worked and existed at least. dont know about now thou
Someone was actually trying to restore the Megaman Battle Network mobile games, but Capcom issued a (rare) cease and desist. Perhaps they're planning on doing something with them
Sure they are smaller scale games, but it would be like burning hundreds of short stories written or music EPs composed in the past 20 years! Art should always be preserved!
I had heard about some of these, being a huge fan of the Battle Network games, but I thought that they had been lost to time years ago. It's good to know that there's still hope that these two exclusive games can be found, translated, and emulated.
Protodude apparently has the Rockman exe mobile games on a computer somewhere.
I loved playing some of these games back in the day..never realized too many people cared about these games, I gotta pull out my old Japanese feature phones!!
Was so jealous of Japanese people when I learned about what I was missing as a kid. Good to see a lot of Japanese-exclusive stuff being brought over nowadays.
Honestly, it's a big annoyance that there are so many Japanese exclusives in general.
The biggest travesty being Mother 3.
I don't think they understand how big the market is for all the exclusives they have made and are still making.
They should've at the very least made them games timed exclusives, and eventually released them as world wide apps.
2:08 “Whilst we were making use of WAP”
"Wireless Access Protocol, make that hang-up game WEAK"
lol :)
Sadly this world is going to remember WAP and not WAP.
@@thaneros but WAP be good tho lmao
@@JonathanR.Gutierrez I mean yeah but WAP is just as awesome.
Don't forget Xenosaga: Pied Piper, a prologue to the series following Ziggy before he became an Android. Without playing this game, there are certain plot points in Xenosaga III that go unexplained. The SCRIPT of this game was preserved and translated to English, but the game itself barely has screenshots.
Ever since I found out about the countless Megami Tensei related feature phone games that are now impossible to play I have been hoping someone with reach would highlight this issue. Thank you for making this video, I'm hoping we can save all these unique experiences for both the present and the future!
I am waaay late in the mobile games scene...
but we all know Japan, keeping games they think won't sell overseas for themselves
and just let it lost over time ;v all those games are works of creativity too and it is definitely
worth of preserving, but at least.. I have archived many games across consoles and keep it safe..
let's hope many sites don't end up like emuparadise we all know and love
I recently bought a Japanese flip phone with a 3D Devil May Cry game on it and have been interested in this stuff ever since! I really hope that people will be able to preserve these and develop an emulator too!
I really admire your dedication to preserve even these small “throw-away“ titles.
My first phone in 2006 was probably the coolest one I had.
My friends joked and called it a house phone or a brick.
I somehow found and bought Bomberman on it and would play it regularly.
It also had an animated screen saver of Garfield tap dancing that I thought was pretty cool, and the Pink Panther was my wallpaper.
I wonder how many people are preserving current mobile games. Especially when most of the modern mobile games are just some 'pay to win' games with very little content unless you pay for DLC or just constant parade of ads.
IKR? Me and my bros were just chatting about the original Angry Birds games and which of our old, dead phones still have 'em, seeing as they've been delisted from app stores across various platforms. I especially wish I could've got Angry Birds while it was on PSP as a Mini, even if I could play it on my mom or dad's phone for free (well, the lite version, at least).
@@franklinbrooksstoppedcomme3267 I have saved old Android versions of Angry Birds and AB Seasons, the last ones before going free-to-play, before all microtransactions, and with the original winning jingle and menu. The versions are 1.6.3 for AB and 1.6.1 for Seasons. Will play them instead of the modern ones, because these give the original experience I once had with them as a mobile gaming-hungry teen :)
@@TrashWoodBand I know, I just don't have any of those consoles or handhelds with me at this point in time. If I'd just gotten the PSP Mini of it however, /maybe/ I'd have a means of still playing it through my Vita, of which I kept with me in the process of moving.
@@AGTS10k I feel ya. Them the OGs right there. Peak Angry Birds! Oh, but how I pray one day like on the 7th-gen consoles they could finally do a physical release of the ones that have yet to have one, like AB Space, Go, and 2.
@@franklinbrooksstoppedcomme3267 Yeah, that would be awesome. Especially if they also include Angry Birds Stella, even though it wasn't completed. Best AB game to me.
Also, the Vita might be the definitive way to play Angry Birds - not only the screen is similar to the phones of the era, but it also has a back touch panel, which is incredibly useful for aiming your birds and not smearing the screen in the process :)
As someone who as actively resurrected one of these feature phone games by porting it into Unity, I wish I had known you guys were working this video as I would have been happy to chat with you about this topic, lol.
well to my understanding Japanese don't believe in preservation.
protodude was trying to perseve some megaman stuff and Japanese fans were giving him a hard time. shout out to megaman 👍 thank you for covering these games.
shadowrockzx made a video on it so many cool games that should be perseved
No, it's not just Japan. Prior to the success of the Wii Virtual Console, most companies viewed their older games as somewhat disposable. Nintendo has been preserving the ROM file for all the games released on their platforms since the early NES days
@@PIKMINROCK1 It's not the companies, it's the consumers. The Japanese people tend to not want to preserve old physical media like Americans do, at least thats how it was when I went there in 00s. It could be a space issue, or just a cultural thing. But they aren't as interested in collecting large collections of physical media for preserving.
@@neoasura
"Mono no aware". The idea that things are more beautiful when they're temporary. The cherry blossom is a prime example, they find it beautiful because it's only in bloom for a short time. Samurai loved the concept of a short and intense life, like a cherry blossom.
@@Lilliathi I don't entirely buy this.
There's a difference between wanting to preserve access to a game (e.g. via emulation or flashcarts) and wanting to have physical copies of media everywhere. The latter is a far higher time and monetary investment, so a country's attitudes towards the latter aren't particularly connected to the former. Building a retro gaming setup is a genuine challenge for a not-so-amazing reward.
I think it's less mono no aware, and more just apathy. You saw the same kinds of apathy towards old Flash games half a decade ago, and old console games before that. Think about how many Americans sold their old PS2 collections at GameStop for pennies on the dollar.
@@SuperSmashDolls
Not like people today all care about this. Likely just a minority actually. Honestly, when it comes to random mobile games like in this video, I can't get myself to care much either. And with the amount of little indie games coming out nowadays, there's no way people will preserve them all.
Great video guys. I hope it, alongside other videos that talk about game preservation of mostly forgotten game libraries, gets a lot of attention. Even if most of these games are fairly trivial and we'll play it once or twice, it's never good losing a part of history, especially when there isn't any effort put in order to preserve.
I wonder how many people contacted the company directly regarding preservation.
I remember being so bummed about all the Professor Layton content that was Japan exclusive as a kid. Such a travesty to see that all disappear and I'll never get to experience it
The sad state of video games preservation always breaks my heart. It’s one of the reasons I’m always hesitant about a digital only gaming future. With most companies not caring, to preserve and share gaming history, it’s only a matter of time. 😞 I hope efforts being made for these games will have some success. I know it’s unrealistic to think all of Japanese I-Mode and feature phone games to be preserved at this point, but at least some of it will hopefully be appreciated by future gamers and video game historians.
Many companies WANT a digital only future, that way THEY get to decide how long you can play a game for before they delete it. If these companies had their way, EVERYTHING before 2021 would be deleted never to be played again. To them, why play an old game that was made with heart and passion when you can play modern garbage that was made by a committee to milk you of every penny you have.
@@Rokabur It’s unfortunate, but true. 😔
Not sure if anyone's already mentioned it, but there was also a phone remake of Star Ocean Blue Sphere which was originally a Gameboy Color title. I always wanted to get my hands on it because the graphics looked really nice from what I could see in the tiny images online.
I doubt there'd be much trouble at least getting the JAR files to start as Java is a universal thing as long as you have the software to run it but the online only stuff like the battle tower or whatever in the Rockman exe mobile games would have to be reverse-engineered MMO style or hopefully maybe even Satellaview style? I don't know how Satellaview emulation works.
Uhh ..... Those Japanese mobile games generally do not use Java.
@@StriderVM many of them do, but it's not used exactly in the same way as in western java mobile games
"Glorification of Piracy" How moronic of them to even think that; sure there's gonna be people who don't wanna pay for your games/music/ect but you gotta live with that fact and not drag everyone else down as punishment.
If they were going to preserve their own games themselves, then I could see their justification working. But if they are just going to let the game die with no effort to preserve it, then I think others should be allowed to do it.
The Japanese head of cybersecurity doesn't know how to use a computer. That should explain exactly where this mentality comes from.
@quick silver Yeah. It's beyond embarrassing. Tech literacy in Japan is actually extremely low, both among the public and among "specialists."
@quick silver I have to disagree. Piracy is when things are stolen for gain. Archiving and preservation aren't piracy.
@quick silver Yes, that is how copyright law works. Unless you release an item with appropriate permissions to be copied, it is illegal to copy it. Whether you would take legal action after someone for copying your desktop picture is another matter, but that is your copyright to defend as you see fit.
I am all for preservation. But there is a difference between preservation and theft. When a museum preserves an artifact, they are doing so in order to allow the artifact to survive. They aren't making copied of it though and freely distributing them. This is a huge problem facing software preservation and lost media. Just because something is old doesn't mean that the creator does not still hold the copyright to their work, so it IS STILL piracy to distribute it. Strong feelings and good intentions don't change that. That being said, if something has become lost, that usually means the creator is not likely to exercise their legal rights against distribution.
TLDR Preservation is noble and necessary, but distribution is still piracy.
I love the use of Before Crisis' soundtrack in this video, it is egregiously overlooked music.
I have a plan to base my channel around old mobile games, so I’d love to try tracking down some of these forgotten classics.
That's why physical media is better.
No need to worry if the license of the game with the musics, anime, etc. expired.
Yeah but we'd still need to back up extra copies on newer physical storage to prevent data rot on physical devices. Edit: So we need to digitize it to keep copying it.
Open Source could be a solution to this.
Physical media achieves half of the goals: while it allows for stuff to be re-played and studied, true preservation needs to create means to play the data stored or back-uped from rom devices.
In order to do that, we have emulation, which works thanks to many efforts to reverse-engineer consoles and their software.
This is not optimal, some games might not work if they don't get enough attention.
So while physical media allows us to preserve most of the content, Open Source would be the ideal end to any product lifetime.
Copyright of both software and art can be preserved as long as normal, so we couldn't distribute modified versions, but at least we'd be able to create updated ways to play those games, and as copyright ends, we would have everything to experience games again (think about future museums of retro gaming in the 2050s, or any academic purpose)
Being digital isn't the problem since its been made clear in several instances that a game being digital can actually make it even easier to preserve than physical. The problem is that these games largely get ignored altogether until its too late, like now. Even if physical copies of these games existed, judging by how obscure they are, people might well never know they existed and they'd be there until they naturally break with nobody ever able or willing to play them.
@@GameAW1 I'm not a person who likes/puts these stupid cerificates in used games.
Physical media is finite and it will break down with time as well. The only true way of preserving media is uploading it to internet for public access.
Wow, mobile gaming in Japan really was ahead of its time O.o I would absolutely have loved to experienced a number of these titles! Especially back when they were new if they were made available like daaamn
Wow. This is one of the most interesting videos you guys have released in a while!
Props to G-Mode. I'd buy those old phone games any day of the week, I'm sure some of them are great.
In one of the great ironies of history, Nintendo has been one of the most careful in the preservation of their video games in an archive/vault, but that was because they had always taken seriously the preservation of the games, toys, and cards which they made. They have retained and shown in galleries examples of their products going all the way back to near their founding.
The same cannot be said for most Japanese game companies, sadly enough (and even some Western developers). Konami and Capcom in particular have been quite bad at it, with Square Enix infamously likewise losing the original code and assets to the first Kingdom Hearts, which necessitated the 1.5 ReMix when they wanted to port the game and Kingdom Hearts II to the PlayStation 3.
Square also lost the files for I think 1 of the Mana games, with Nintendo being the one to keep it, from what I heard. That’s supposedly the reason why the Mana collection for the older versions of the games are Switch exclusive.
Square supposedly also lost the code for all the Old FF games
Might explain the garbage remasters
I've always wanted to play those Persona 3 games. They honestly look really good. Hopefully that can be possible someday.
It's so exciting to see someone talking about this!!!! I did a video on iMode (and Tetris Docomodake) a few months ago, also hoping to spark the interest of some game preservationist
This is an amazing video!! I seriously hadn't even thought about this and now I am passionate about trying to save these games
Anybody else getting tired of the stigmas surrounding video games? How old does the gaming population need to get before it's considered just as normal as watching a movie or reading a book?
When video games stop trying to take themselves seriously and realize at the end if the day, are mere enterainment.
Old enough to be in positions of power. Once the 80's kids who grew up with gaming as a hobby hit about 50.
It's like Tom Scott talked about copyright laws and how broken they are.
I always remember seeing the cool Japanese cell phone stuff and wishing we had that here back in the day, all I had was my Razr
I really appreciate you guys covering this.
Can we go back to the mystery dungeon gundam game for a sec, like that just got brushed off, mystery dungeon is consistently good, and it would be a shame to lose anything in its library, y'all preserve these games, I don't have the means, but someone does, please, there could be so much lost media. We don't need more lost media, we have enough. Let us save this if we can.
I co-wrote this episode, and that's one of the games I'll be talking about more in detail in the upcoming podcast episode (not published just yet) mentioned at the end of the video - if you'd like to know more, feel free to check out that podcast link in the description!
@@LpSamuelm maybe, who knows, podcasts are very mixed on if they are worth the time invested, no offense it's just podcasts, but I'll likely try it out. We'll see.
Wow, first time the notification actually came through right away.
I just check my phone every time i take a dump so thats my notification i guess lol
Feels like this app just works "in theory" now.
Same
So they won’t have to make a self-pitying update video
Knowing Japan had WAP years before us makes me happy.
I still hope the mobile version of Seiken Densetsu can be found one day. I became a new fan of the Mana series recently and I'd love to see this game preserved.
I remember when people used to say cell phones in Japan were 5 years ahead of western ones. Nowadays everything is released around the world at the same time and we are on the same page with a lot of things.
Yep, a lot of games I've been interested in playing just simply aren't accessible anymore by any method. Very sad!
"an ungodly amount of Sonic games"
Sums up the franchise in a nutshell.
Isn't that ever franchise dipshit.
@@tremassicotte3172 Sonic is just a serviceable platformer with an amazing marketing campaign. Didn't really do much for the platforming genre.
Neat video! The state of game preservation is a tragic one.... Thanks for uploading this!
Excellent video, guys! Preservation is a must
Wow, this is incredibly tragic.
Is the feeling gone? Can you go on?
@@angbald Can you shut up?
REMINDER: "In the future, you will own nothing and you will be happy"...
"Because the things you own end up owning you". Wth...
@@Bestialce2007 He's talking about the now infamous quote from the World Economics Forum discussing their plan for a socialist utopia spearheaded in the wholesome exploitation of a global pandemic (costing countless lives) for an ideological end. "You will own nothing and you will be happy."
@@Bestialce2007 first rule of fight club...
In 2030 more specifically
@@tylerchambers6246 put together by share holders and other rich philanthropist
I have the luck of working at La BnF - Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the French National Library. We preserve everything that's published in France, from books to websites to video games. We currently have around 20.000 games and are always looking to preserve more. This is fascinating, I'll bring it up to the games department. O don't know what we can do, but we'll try!
It truly is videos like these that drive my pursuit to create the device I wanna invent futrthermore stronger every day.
Let's get a GoFundMe started to pay for this.
Ah, so that's what WAP stands. Wireless Application Protocols. Always knew Cardi B was wrong
I KNEW THERE WOULD BE A WAP COMMENT SOMEWHERE. I LOOKED EVERYWHERE FOR YOU.
On the note of the fps elevator action mobile game, they also have an arcade shooter with an elevator mechanic where when you go between floors, physical elevator doors close in front of your view of the screen
Thanks for doing this!
God this is kinda saddening dude, the call for help is definitely challenging and I hope way more people decide to help with archiving these games. I’m happy that there’s a preservation effort for this scene.
Why? why do these game companies make these "disposable" games on very short life limited platforms?
All that effort for a few quick bucks. I'ts like they dont care about the games they make.
I mean, i doubt most of these games took much effort relative to actual console and handheld games
For anyone who finds this comment that can help, I'm looking for "Gain Ground Again"- released on i-mode and Yahoo! Keitai (Formerly known as Vodafone Live). I'd do anything for a chance to play it myself, given how unique the gameplay and mechanics are in comparison to the rest of its series. Not to mention, the amount of lore given via the in-game character bios is ENORMUS for a small series like Gain Ground. If you have a copy (emulated or otherwise), or know where to find one, I'd love to know.
Man this made me remember the reason why KH Re:coded was originally assigned the Re title because Coded was originally a japanese phone game that got discontinued and never was released in the US so SE just remade it on the DS