Does anyone else find it curious that movies - which are a passive form of entertainment - are continuously re-released and preserved in multiple formats, while video games - which are an active form of entertainment - are discontinued very quickly and considered obsolete every few years? If someone wanted to do a report on the movies people watched in 1935, they could easily locate information on every movie that was released that year, and probably get a good number of them on VHS or DVD. On the other hand, if that same person wanted to do a report on the video games people played in 1985, while it would be possible to find information on which games were released that year, it would be nearly impossible to procure working examples of a fraction of those games. Even limiting the scope of research to just PC games or just Nintendo games would still mean hundreds of games lost to history.

The holy grail among gamers is rediscovering the games of their youth. I got rid of my Nintendo long ago, and while I have a Genesis and a Super NES somewhere gathering dust, they are mostly useless since I preferred to rent games rather than buy them. Sometimes I just want to sit down and play Warsong, or Final Fantasy II, or Metroid. So what am I supposed to do? Some games have been reissued; the only significant ones have been the Final Fantasy series and Chrono Trigger, which were released for the PS1. Everything else is gone. PC Emulators have helped to fill this gap and also to preserve these games, which I think is certainly just as important as preserving the movies of our time. But they are tricky to use, some games aren't available, and emulation is not supported by the original manufacturers. It won't be enough until there is a centralized movement within the industry to recognize the importance of preserving video games.

We've come a long way since Pong and Atari and even Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. 25 years ago, gaming was a different story. The primary market was arcade machines, and home gaming was just beginning. The industry incorporated new technology as it was happening, and as a result games improved very quickly. New games rolled out every year that put the old ones to shame, and so the idea of tossing out the old to make way for the new became the standard that is still in place today.

The problem is, the fact that Timesplitters 3 rocks so much does not diminish the quality of the first two. If and when Final Fantasy XXII comes out, I will still cherish the time I spent playing the very first one. And I will still want to play it, no matter what. That's why I want to see old games preserved. It's beginning to happen - the Atari joysticks that plug into your TV, the various arcade collections - and I think the video game companies are starting to realize that preserving and reissuing games is both historically and financially beneficial to them.