Bad news, folks. For the four of you who ever used it, myself included, Nintendo’s DSi shop is shuttering. The precursor to the illustrious Nintendo eShop is finally riding off into the video game sunset. In a vacuum, this isn’t a huge deal. Nobody talked about it a ton and many of its worthwhile games are available on the 3DS eShop. But there are a few that won’t make the transition, and those games are effectively gone forever. This is a problem, and one we could face on a much larger scale at any moment as we rush towards an all-digital future.
I’m a huge fan of Dragon Quest . Since I’ve been well-enough employed, I’ve been building a collection with its own special shelf on my wall, a shrine of sorts. I’ve done what I can to complete it as time goes by, but it will never feel 100%, even within reason. That’s because of Dragon Quest Wars . That game, minor as it is in the canon, is a DSi-exclusive joint. It sits on my 3DS now, its adorable little slime icon tucked away in a folder. I can’t ever delete it now.
What happens when or if something happens to that 3DS? Nintendo is an especially egregious case, as software ownership is tied to hardware on many of its platforms. If it breaks before I can transfer the data over to a new one, or the ravages of time catch up to it, that game is gone forever. There will be no additional downloads. A whole, unique game, simply ceasing to exist because a platform isn’t profitable to keep open anymore.
We saw a similar situation happen with P.T. , a strange, demo/trailer for the canceled Silent Hills project from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro. It was a pop culture sensation, dominating YouTube and Twitch streams, until things went sour at Konami and it was totally removed from the PlayStation Network. Most games that are de-listed are still downloadable, but P.T. was eliminated – attempting to download it spits back an error message.
What happens when physical media is finally gone or limited to small, boutique runs for fanboys and girls with fat wallets? What happens when a piece of art that tens or hundreds of people spent years creating ends up in the ass-end of a licensing deal or a corporation decides to burn a decades-old bridge seemingly out of nowhere? What happens when, through neglect, age or spite, some faceless corporate presence gets to rewrite history?
We already do a poor job preserving history from the days of cartridges, floppy discs and arcade cabinets. It took until 2017 for video games to have a preservationist non-profit. I’ve made that point before around these parts and hope to continue having opportunities to do so, because it’s important. If we want games to be as respected and revered as literature and film, we have to treat it as such. We need to worry about archival in ways that aren’t just seen as piracy.
If Steam suddenly shuts down tomorrow, it would be a damn shame if all we had to uphold gaming history was a bunch of Denouvo cracks. That’s all I’m saying.
Image Credit: GameHistory.org