NHK World, the international version of Nippon Hoso Kyokai («the largest organization of radio and television of Japan”, according to their website), has issued a documentary within their space Inside Lens dedicated to the conservation of video games. Is titled Game Preservation: The Quest and you can see on their website until December 12; on these lines you can see it on YouTube. more comfortable.
In the documentary refers to the Game Preservation Society, an association non-profit dedicated to rescue, cataloguing and preserving video games. In half an hour is given a general picture of how the members of the GPS collect games (looking at small shops in town, exploring bars and leisure, thanks to the collaboration of private collectors) and how to prevent the passage of time to condemn them to extinction. As explains Joseph Redon, French based in Tokyo and one of them founders of the Organization (that has with the welcome of them institutions), the life of a video game is short: the support physical of many video games ancient of recreational, for example, tends to be dam of the oxide, and many plates of them 70 already are damaged. The purpose of the GPS is to avoid that this will lead to the definitive disappearance of some games.
«Do not we should preserve the old stories that had our ancestors?», asked Takuya Fukuda, one of the founders of the Game Preservation Society. “The story we hear of children have been saved. We have made movies and music with them. I think that is normal that want keep them things from our childhood. «Will be the next generation that decides if this has had sense or not».
Another important part is that the Game Preservation Society collection is playable; not only rescue and preserved video games old, but them give new life putting them to disposal of the public. In certain moment of the documentary is sees how one of them members of the GPS leads to a supermarket of the Prefecture of Niigata a DECO Cassette System, the system of games interchangeable for recreational of Data East, with a copy of Bump ‘ n’ Jump (that in Japan is called Burnin’ Rubber).
Not are these them unique themes that is treated in the documentary (there is even a section dedicated to the community of scorers, them amateur that compete by get them scores more high and that carry exist from the time of Space Invaders), so recommend take you a look when can separate half time for he. You can find more programs and reports on Japanese culture and filochinaka on the website of NHK World.
