Hours of Unseen Video Game Footage Is Being Archived Online

Hours of Unseen Video Game Footage Is Being Archived Online

Time Stamp: July 4, 2023 12:15 PM

The video game industry is so focused on the future that it sometimes forgets about the past. Obviously, retro gaming is an increasingly important part of our pastime, but publishers and platform holders don’t always make it easy to archive the best releases of yesteryear. Recently, for example, Sony announced plans to close the PS3 and PS Vita’s storefronts, and while it eventually reversed its decision, its original intention would have resulted in the loss of tens of titles forever. Nintendo actually followed through with its own similar strategy, shutting the shops on the 3DS and Wii U for good.

Now documentary makers NoClip have rescued dozens upon dozens of boxes of archive video game footage, all of which were heading to a local landfill. While it hasn’t been outright confirmed, we’re assuming much of this was previously owned by GameSpot, where host Danny O’Dwyer used to work. He’s now started the long and arduous process of capturing it and converting it into digital format, where it’s all being archived on a new channel. You can check out some of the results below, like an interview with Hideo Kojima regarding Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots’ reveal trailer:

Much of this footage was originally sent to press on video tapes, at a time when it wasn’t feasible to send large video files over the Internet or on hard drives. Therefore, a lot of the footage doesn’t currently exist online, or – as Danny points out in the video – does so at a lot lower quality. Needless to say, this is all rather fascinating, then – and it’s important work. If you’d like to support the project, you can do so on Patreon – otherwise, we’d recommend subscribing to the aforementioned channel and seeing what tasty morsels emerge as part of this project.

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