Saving video gaming’s source code treasures before it’s too late

Enlarge / The Days of Thunder NES prototype source code on these disks sat in his basement for 30 years before being uncovered upon his death. (credit: VGHF)

When most people think of preserving video game history, they probably imagine a museum full of boxed consoles and cartridges, or maybe a massive, digital database of emulatable ROM files ripped from the original physical media. The Video Game History Foundation's latest project is looking past those kinds of basic archival projects, though, and toward collecting and preserving the source code behind many classic games.

"For a video game historian, an archaeological dig through source material is the next best thing to time travel,' VGHF's Frank Cifaldi said. "A really good source repo is the closest you're ever going to get to being a fly on the wall during a game's development."

Digging through a game's source code repository can help archivists discover previously unknown content and information. Back in 2017, for instance, a VGHF analysis found unused Disney character art and animation in the source code for 1993's Genesis Aladdin game ("Some of that was in a folder called trash," Cifaldi told Ars). More recently, the VGHF team discovered the source code for Nuclear Rush-a game prototype for the unreleased Sega Genesis virtual reality headset-and remade it to work on modern VR hardware.

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