How long will your video games and consoles continue to work?
One of the big fears among video game collectors is the inevitable death of their games and consoles. These products will not last forever and have a finite life span. With due diligence, they can be well preserved, but no amount of care will stop that ticking time bomb.
Your games and consoles will eventually stop working. But how soon, exactly?
Hooking up
One of the big challenges retro game collectors face as technology marches forward is the advancement of television displays. In the future, television sets will inevitably all omit the coaxial (cable) and composite (red, white and yellow trio) inputs that all pre-HD game consoles used. While you probably won't be able to hook an Atari 2600 up to an 8K TV, there are companies that produce upscalers and adapters that make connecting old consoles to modern TVs possible, sometimes upscaling the image so they look amazing on modern displays.
The light gun dilemma
So you managed to hook up your old console to a modern TV, but you can't play Duck Hunt or Time Crisis. Unfortunately, the technology used by light guns is not compatible with anything other than big old CRT monitors. In short, if you want to be able to play these games in the future, you'll need to keep an old tube TV around. There's simply no fix or solution for this problem.
I smell something rotten
A lot of fear has permeated the game collecting community about 'disc rot', which is a breakdown of the materials in a CD that render it impossible to be read by the laser. While the extent of this problem is unknown, there will be discs that are simply unplayable due to their age. Newer discs seem to be manufactured to a higher standard, but early CD-based games are probably the most likely to suffer from this issue.
Epic fail!
Consoles will inevitably fail, there's simply no way around it. The good news is that the older systems are much simpler and replacement parts for some, like the NES, are still being produced. Cartridge-based systems, though older, will have longer lifespans than newer machines simply for the fact that they're simpler. A big problem with newer consoles is laser failures, hard drive crashes and overheating catastrophes. Consoles from the Playstation-era on will suffer far more reliability issues than old cart based systems.
What can I do?
Well, the best thing a collector can do is to treat their games and systems well. Keep them in cool, dust-free environments. Avoid putting them in direct sunlight. Make sure newer systems are well-ventilated.
And that's about all you can do. And hopefully, your games will be around so the next generation can enjoy them just as we did. Preserving video games is important, as its a huge part of our modern culture and anyone who loves these games should do their part to help them last as long as possible.
Great post.
All physical media have a shelf-life. I think I read somewhere then even under ideal conditions CDs and DVDs have about a 25 year shelf life and then they just stop working.
Great post! Would you mind if I included it in today's "best of gaming"?
You can always feature my posts in your best of gaming, but I appreciate the courtesy!
I think the shelf life is a lot longer than that. I already have CDs that are over 25 years old that still work perfectly and the oldest DVDs in my collection are nearly 20 years old already and still play just fine. But I do think that after 25 years, we'll start to see discs start failing more frequently. Those are often due to cheaper materials and manufacturing processes used in their production.
But heck, I have CD-R's I burned in 1999 that are still working, so I'm not terribly worried about commercial discs right now. Though the next decade will probably be pretty telling about how much of an issue this will be in the future.
I think it very heavily depends on how exactly you store them. I know that light specially has a big effect on them (few of my CDs died just after like 5 years when being in a sunny spot)
I always fear what will happen to my current games.... my Old PS1 already doesn't work... and Steam probably won't last forever..... But I'll manage it when the time comes.... I'm sure... I hope!!
Thanks for this post.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of risk with any consoles that use a laser to read a disc. The lasers will fail before the discs do, however I do think that in the coming years we'll not only see replacement lasers hit the market for popular game consoles, but I'm sure we'll eventually see PS1/PS2/Dreamcast/Saturn clone systems, much like we have cartridge clone systems today. I'm very excited about that prospect because clone systems are a great way to modernize old games by increasing the resolution, improving sound output and building in cheats and saves.
I'm looking forward to that!!
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