Game Reviews [2026]: 9 Games Worth Playing This Year

A significant portion of video game history is genuinely at risk of disappearing — not because anyone is actively destroying it, but because the combination of physical media degradation, corporate intellectual property management, and the shift to digital distribution creates structural obstacles to preservation. Here is the honest look at why game preservation matters and what's being done about it.

The Scale of the Problem

The Video Game History Foundation's 2023 study found that 87% of classic video games are out of print and inaccessible through legitimate channels — meaning they can't be purchased or played legally without owning original hardware and physical media. Unlike film, where systematic archiving efforts have preserved most of the early film catalog, gaming has no comparable institutional infrastructure. Games are preserved by collectors, enthusiasts, and preservation organizations working with limited resources against corporate legal structures that complicate archival work.

Physical media degradation is the biological clock problem: optical discs develop disc rot (oxidation that makes them unreadable), cartridge batteries that save game data die, and magnetic media degrades. The window for capturing data from original media is finite and shortening. The most urgent preservation work involves dumping ROM data from deteriorating cartridges and discs before they become unreadable — work that organizations like the Video Game History Foundation, Internet Archive, and various academic digital humanities projects are doing.

The Corporate IP Problem

The legal framework around intellectual property creates specific obstacles for game preservation. Companies hold copyright to game software for decades after the games have been commercially abandoned — no longer sold, no longer supported, but also not legally available for archival distribution. Libraries, which have DMCA exemptions for preservation of other media types, have limited exemptions for software. The DMCA's Section 1201 creates additional complications for breaking the copy protection on older games to enable archival preservation.

Companies occasionally actively obstruct preservation: Nintendo's aggressive takedowns of ROM sites, ROM-hosting communities, and even fan projects represents the most consistent pattern. The argument that preservation efforts harm commercial sales is difficult to sustain for games that haven't been commercially available for decades and aren't available through any official channel — but intellectual property protection doesn't require commercial harm to be legally enforceable.

What's Actually Being Done

The preservation community has achieved significant things despite the obstacles. The No-Intro and Redump projects have created comprehensive databases of verified ROM dumps for most classic platforms — ensuring that the data being preserved is complete and accurate. The Internet Archive hosts game archives and provides browser-based emulation for classic platforms. MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) has preserved the arcade gaming era in a form that would otherwise be completely inaccessible given the scarcity of working original arcade hardware.

Legislative advocacy is the other track: the Video Game History Foundation has been active in pushing for expanded DMCA exemptions for game preservation, with some limited success. Academic attention to games as cultural artifacts has grown, bringing digital humanities resources and institutional support to preservation work. The situation is not hopeless; it is genuinely urgent.

My honest take: Game preservation is a genuine cultural crisis that most gamers don't think about until a beloved game becomes completely inaccessible. Supporting the Video Game History Foundation and advocating for DMCA reform matters more than most gaming conversations.