From “Super Mario Bros” to “Final Fantasy”, a cultural heritage in danger?

Turned to new technologies, the first cultural industry in the world neglects its old consoles. If in France the National Library does important work, studios are little involved in the conservation of the archives.
The first part of the adventures of Super Mario Bros, on the NES console, a hit from the 1980s. Nintendo
Posted on February 04, 2025 at 1:00 p.m.
«Lhe format of films has remained almost the same for the past hundred years, from silent cinema to colorful feature films. We can look at any classic on our current equipment, regardless of its seniority. It is not possible with video games, Note Yoshinori Kitase, producer and screenwriter of the series of games Final Fantasy, For the Japanese developer Square Enix. In thirty years, industry has experienced major technological revolutions. »» For ten years, Square Enix has developed and has published new versions of their old successful series like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, In order to make them accessible on our modern consoles and computers. This is called Masterns – When these adaptations are faithful to the original game – or remakes – When they are rewritten and transformed to please a younger audience. “The only way for us to preserve the best qualities of our games is to redo them”, Assure Yoshinori Kitase.
Since the appearance of the first arcade terminals in the fairgrounds until the next release of the Nintendo Switch 2, the video game has established itself as the first cultural industry in the world. But this domination has a price: to have better graphics, more content, more realistic renderings … The technological supports have continued to improve and pose in hollow the question of the obsolescence of the content. How can you use games if their supports have disappeared? What to do with old CD-ROMs that take dust if no console or computer is able to read them?
The BNF relies on emulation
As Yoshinori Kitase explains, many manufacturers have simply chosen to recreate old games on new supports. Replace rather than protect. The strategy works since, last year, the remake of Silent Hill 2 sold ten million copies. Final Fantasy XII Rebirth has been appointed six times to Game Awards, a ceremony that rewards the best games of the year. “In reality, it only doubles the work dose, Object Marine MacQ, researcher and exhibition commissioner of the Pixel Life Stories video game gallery. It takes a lot of time to reinterpret an original material without providing more response to the conservation issues, which must come well upstream by institutionalizing its protection. »»
In France, there is only one public body responsible for conservation of games: the National Library of France. Since the extension of the legal deposit in 1992, it has recorded and preserved all titles distributed in the territory. Its solution was to turn to technology called emulation. It consists in reproducing on a machine the behavior of a game which has been programmed to operate on another machine. For example, you can “emulate” on a modern computer the game Super Mario Bros, Released in 1985 for the NES console. “It is a technology that has a lot of advantages for research, you can take breaks or check details of the game, explains David Benoist, in charge of the video game collections at the BNF multimedia service. But it can also displease purists who find that the gaming experience is too different. We lose the physical aspect of the game on console. »» Without forgetting that this technology is based on the mobilization of enthusiasts who make their tools available.
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In order not to lose old consoles and old games, other associations like M05 and the National Video Game Conservatory (CNJV) are trying to repair the old machines for one day being able to create a national video game museum. In the meantime, they allow enthusiasts to test old games at events. By searching the CNJV boxes, there are other treasures. Paper archives, drawings, videos of developers’ meetings, testimonies, etc. The video game heritage is not limited to the final product but also to its know-how. “Of course we cannot keep everything, but at least we should keep the essentials, exprime Marine Macq. To have this pleasure of opening an old closet in forty years and of discovering the sketches of artists, their work and their inspirations. »» We cannot always know what will be useful for research. In their book A story of video games in France, At Pix’n Love, Alexis Blanchet and Guillaume Montagnon tell how they immersed themselves in the archives of the fairground press and the magazines of La Redoute to find the trace of the first arcade and consoles bounds sold on the territory in the 1970s .
The controllers of the main game consoles of the 1980s. Photo Alex Milan Tracit
However, there remains an unknown in the conservation of the video game heritage: the involvement of the studios. In a concern for the protection of their intellectual property, a certain number of actors still prefer to hide or destroy the archives of their creations. “Today mentalities are changing, the studios realize that putting forward their artists is a good way to communicate on their productions, but not all have the means to keep them correctly, analyse Marine Macq. It has already happened to me that a studio comes to see me to recover documents they had lost. It’s a shame because it is a heritage of great richness. Whether you consider it an art or not, as an object and cultural subject, it deserves our attention. »»