Most old Arcade games run on custom hardware that you can no longer get. On top of that, a lot of these games are encrypted. They are also designed to kill themselves with a suicide battery if they detect something wrong. This makes preserving arcade games hard. There is also a time limit to preserve them. The hardware is already old and over time these arcade machines will die one way or another. Most of these games were also arcade exclusives. So, that means the games themselves will cease to exist. Never to be enjoyed again.
Preserving Arcade Games Is Not Easy
But some dedicated people have worked very hard to crack or bypass the protection on arcade games. Because of them, there is hope to preserve these games for future generations!
In the video below, Ange Albertini explains how Arcade systems work. Ange goes into detail about how the arcade machines protected themselves. He also talks about the process of cracking or bypassing the protection to preserve the games. The talk focuses on Capcom’s CP systems and how its protections were defeated after years of hard work. I never knew arcade games were so complex!
Unfortunately, some games have been lost to time thanks to these early forms of DRM. Has DRM ever done anything good for us?
All Is Not Lost!
Thanks to the hard work of Ange Albertini and others many arcade games have been preserved!
This Talk Is Awesome!
I found this talk extremely interesting and could not wait to share it with others!
If you are interested in the history of games and details about old arcade machine hardware, then this is a must watch!
Here is a link to the slides used in the talk. https://speakerdeck.com/ange/preserving-arcade-games-31c3
