Arcade "Lost Media", Rare Roms, and Preservation Discussion

[Warboss Gegguz]

So over the past week I've been compiling a collection of MAME ROMs from my favorite manufactures, and I was kind of surprised by the amount of completely missing/unpreserved ROMs even from huge names in the industry.

Granted, most of these are from the 70s and early 80s, but it was still kind of eye opening to see how little documentation there is beyond "this game existed", on proper in museum and archival sites. I figured that maybe this would be a decent place to start a discussion around rare/lost roms and other such games.

 

The biggest culprit was Taito. Outside of Western Gun/Gunfight, Sub-hunt, and obviously Space Invaders finding any of their 70s and early 80s library ranged from either finding needles in a haystack to just listings with no evidence they existed beyond Taito saying they did.

It was kind of wild and surreal to see so many games that're seemingly just gone, while also getting basically no coverage from the outside despite the apparent obsession people seem to have with "lost media" nowadays. 

[ledzep]

On 12/19/2023 at 12:02 PM, Warboss Gegguz said:

The biggest culprit was Taito. Outside of Western Gun/Gunfight, Sub-hunt, and obviously Space Invaders finding any of their 70s and early 80s library ranged from either finding needles in a haystack to just listings with no evidence they existed beyond Taito saying they did.

 

I like to collect PDFs of arcade game manuals, specifically finding the best versions which usually means full-color covers (usually the scans are also better as well).  Taito didn't make a lot of games that I thought were great but I do have a few.  Besides Space Invaders I found Elevator Action, Front Line, Lock N Chase, Polaris (loved that game), Qix (another favorite), Space Dungeon (a great 5200 port), so at least those things exist.

 

I haven't really looked for historical documentation for those games but I think there are Wikipedia pages for most of those.  Or are you saying that KLOV or similar don't mention those games?  Because I see them there, too.

[zzip]

On 12/19/2023 at 3:02 PM, Warboss Gegguz said:

The biggest culprit was Taito. Outside of Western Gun/Gunfight, Sub-hunt, and obviously Space Invaders finding any of their 70s and early 80s library ranged from either finding needles in a haystack to just listings with no evidence they existed beyond Taito saying they did.

It was kind of wild and surreal to see so many games that're seemingly just gone, while also getting basically no coverage from the outside despite the apparent obsession people seem to have with "lost media" nowadays. 

Some early games, especially from the 70s, were discrete- meaning they were completely implemented electronically and didn't use CPUs or ROMs.    I don't know if that applies to the games you're asking about,  but it's one reason ROMs can't be found for some games.

[mr_me]

On 12/19/2023 at 3:02 PM, Warboss Gegguz said:

So over the past week I've been compiling a collection of MAME ROMs from my favorite manufactures, and I was kind of surprised by the amount of completely missing/unpreserved ROMs even from huge names in the industry.

Granted, most of these are from the 70s and early 80s, but it was still kind of eye opening to see how little documentation there is beyond "this game existed", on proper in museum and archival sites. I figured that maybe this would be a decent place to start a discussion around rare/lost roms and other such games.

 

The biggest culprit was Taito. Outside of Western Gun/Gunfight, Sub-hunt, and obviously Space Invaders finding any of their 70s and early 80s library ranged from either finding needles in a haystack to just listings with no evidence they existed beyond Taito saying they did.

It was kind of wild and surreal to see so many games that're seemingly just gone, while also getting basically no coverage from the outside despite the apparent obsession people seem to have with "lost media" nowadays. 

Although licensed from Taito, Midway's Gun Fight is a different game from Taito's Western Gun.

 

 

Western Gun is one of those discrete logic games and hasn't been emulated.

 

This game might actually be lost but others can have their discrete logic documented but not yet emulated.  Discrete logic games can also make use of rom chips for graphics and therefore have rom dumps.

[Udderdude]

This site is extremely comprehensive in terms of undumped/extremely rare arcade games and prototypes. https://unmamed.mameworld.info/

[Udderdude]

Someone on Twitter posted a video of Orca's Super Crush. Undumped game that I couldn't find any info or video on anywhere else. https://twitter.com/onionsoftware/status/1746882767995204034

[The Mr. Video]

On 12/19/2023 at 2:02 PM, Warboss Gegguz said:

The biggest culprit was Taito. Outside of Western Gun/Gunfight, Sub-hunt, and obviously Space Invaders finding any of their 70s and early 80s library ranged from either finding needles in a haystack to just listings with no evidence they existed beyond Taito saying they did.

It was kind of wild and surreal to see so many games that're seemingly just gone, while also getting basically no coverage from the outside despite the apparent obsession people seem to have with "lost media" nowadays. 

If you're going to talk about lost Taito games then you might as well mention Vertexer.

Despite it looking like the middle ground between the original F-Zero and F-Zero X and having dazzling sprite-scaling effects, the game did poorly in location tests and was shelved. The game itself is unplayable in Mame but you can listen to the original soundtrack online.

 

[YexxenBlaster]

 

[CreeB]

EEK that HIGHWAY game makes me feel like someone's gonna pop out from behind me