
Reconstructing a lost NES game from 30-year-old source code disks - caution
https://gamehistory.org/days-of-thunder-nes-unreleased/
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voltagex_
Although at the moment there are other organisations you should be donating
to, at some point you may like to donate to the following:

[https://gamehistory.org/donate/](https://gamehistory.org/donate/)

[https://www.gamepres.org/en/qamission/](https://www.gamepres.org/en/qamission/)

[https://archive.org/donate/](https://archive.org/donate/)

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mensetmanusman
So cool to see computer archeology happening already.

Here is a quick glance of the game:
[https://youtu.be/63G9PrLLo_U](https://youtu.be/63G9PrLLo_U)

I love the tron-esque music :)

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bredren
It is really cool to see people go to such great lengths to recover lost
software projects.

I wonder about what other interesting failed products from this time will
later be found important enough to attempt to piece together and display to
people in the future.

Perhaps an app that was prescient in its intent or the career of one of their
makers seen as remarkable in some way that their digital detritus is dug up
and placed under glass.

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userbinator
With all the security paranoia these days, the future of "digital archaeology"
seems pretty bleak. Even if you do manage to find the storage media, it's
likely to have been encrypted with an algorithm that remains unbroken.

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bredren
Perhaps, but it also may be cracking the password is a trivial endeavor.

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bluedino
>> an unreleased NES game – an unpublished version of Days of Thunder done for
Mindscape (a separate attempt done by Beam Software was ultimately published
in its place

I wonder how many other games reached playable or nearly-complete states, and
were just cast aside because of schedules, contract snafus, etc? Imagine what
we missed out on.

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karatestomp
There's an unreleased Dreamcast game with a playable near-complete build
leaked, called Propeller Arena. It's probably in my friend group's top-4
favorite multiplayer games for the platform, despite not actually having been
released. Actually aside from MVC2 (still more fun for us amateurs than
MVC3—and kinda looks better?) it might be the most likely game for us to play
on the DC, just because the others have newer, better replacements, but I've
not seen anything newer that's quite as arcadey and easy-playing as Propeller
Arena in its niche (multiplayer propeller aircraft dogfighting, mostly)

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Talanes
I'd argue that Capcom has never made a better looking fighter than MVC2.

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karatestomp
I really wish they’re re-release it on a modern console. My DC’s gonna die one
of these days and it’s a pain to keep old consoles in service. I’d really
rather have it than 3. Which is probably why they don’t—it’d directly compete
with the new one.

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klmadfejno
I think it's technically on ios...

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karatestomp
Not anymore. Was for a while (and also other platforms) but hasn’t been
purchasable in IIRC several years. Though I’d forgotten it was for a while.
Still, aside from iOS even _those_ consoles are old enough that I’m trying to
find new platforms for all the games I play in them, so I can get rid of ‘em.

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kalium-xyz
I have worrying thoughts about how many prototypes get trashed and lost
forever every year, yet have no idea how we could go about systematic recovery
of lost games such as these. Can we buy up old game studio assets somehow?

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corysama
An old friend of mine worked on an unreleased SEGA Genesis game for the movie
Akira. The ROM was recently "discovered" on the internets.

Pics and vids:
[https://hiddenpalace.org/Akira_(Prototype)](https://hiddenpalace.org/Akira_\(Prototype\))

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tw000001
Given IO errors and degradation of storage media, how long can one
realistically preserve digital data?

Is it possible with multiple disks and an extant error correction algorithm to
prevent data corruption indefinitely, assuming some maximum error rate?

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derefr
> Is it possible with multiple disks and an extant error correction algorithm
> to prevent data corruption indefinitely, assuming some maximum error rate?

This is the main thrust of the Dynamo paper, yes. You _can_ solve all the
_technical_ problems. Put something in a "living system" like Amazon S3 (where
data has 17+ clones; and where ops people are there to both replace individual
hard disks as they fail, and to gradually port the system over to new storage
layers as new technology displaces old), and then—presuming the _company
providing the service_ is still there—it'll be vanishingly unlikely that your
data will have degraded on a human time-scale.

What's left in the way of "indefinitely", though, are _political_ problems.
"How do I preserve data indefinitely" gets into the same sort of hairy
problems as "how do I enforce my will on my descendants after I die?" kind of
questions, where you start to see people putting forward ideas like immutable
autonomous trusts.

The key question being: how do I ensure that the stuff _I_ want to stick
around, sticks around, after _I 'm_ dead, during a period when literally
nobody else cares about it, until a later time when somebody else _does_ care
about it?

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caiobegotti
The movie reference is buried in there, and it might not be obvious to some
younger folks, so:
[https://youtu.be/AhUhuDW_jOw](https://youtu.be/AhUhuDW_jOw)

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metalliqaz
god i'm old

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djmips
"To those who are about to play, I salute you!" \- Chris Oberth.

