Endeavors of Digital Game Preservation in Japan- A Case of
Ritsumeikan Game Archive Project
Akinori (Aki) Nakamura

Koichi Hosoi

Kazufumi Fukuda

Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies
Ritsumeikan University 56-1 Tojiinkitamachi, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8577
nakamu-a@im.ritsumei.ac.jp

Art Research Center
Ritsumeikan University 56-1 Tojiinkitamachi, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8577
hosoik@me.com

Kinugasa Research Organization,
Ritsumeikan University 56-1 Tojiinkitamachi, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8577
fukudakz@gmail.com

Akito Inoue

Muneyuki Takahashi

Masayuki Uemura

Visiting Researcher, Ritsumeikan
Center for Game StudiesRitsumeikan University 56-1 Tojiinkitamachi, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8577
glocom.inoue@gmail.com

Visiting Researcher, Ritsumeikan
Center for Game Studies
Ritsumeikan University 56-1 Tojiinkitamachi, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8577
mnykt.ac@gmail.com

Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies
Ritsumeikan University 56-1 Tojiinkitamachi, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8577

ABSTRACTIn 1998, one of the first academic institutions, which focuses on
pursuing the appropriate ways of the video game preservation, theGame Archive Project has been established. The sentiment toward
the digital games being products rather than “viable culturalartifact”, the efforts have started slowly. In our continuous efforts
to enlighten academic as well as the professional community forthis cause, however, the importance of the preservation activities
has been embraced in both domestic and international communities,
leading to being a part of the national project for the creating of theMedia Art Database D by the Agency of Cultural Affairs, Japan.
The present paper attempt to introduce an overview of our efforts.

Physical Preservation was initiated simultaneously with theestablishment of GAP in 1998. We visited several studios to initiatethe actual preservation of game titles. One of the studios, SEGA
understood our intention and started donating products publishedby SEGA from 1998 to the end of 2003 when the major corporate
re-organization took place. Other than SEGA, various game titles
from multiple platforms had been donated regularly, slowly
expanding the number of collections at Game Archive Project.

2.2 Preservation through the Development ofEmulator

KEYWORDS
Digital Game Preservation, Database-Design, Emulation

1ORIGIN

Ritsumeikan Game Archive Project (or GAP in abbreviation,
henceforth, GAP), was established in April 1998. Our endeavourscan be categorized into three forms of preservations, which arenamely, 1) physical preservation, accompanying with digital dataarchive which registered information sufficient to identify thepreserved materials, 2) preservation in the form of emulation, andfinally 3) digital moving images of the people actually playing thepreserved object[2]. Thus, the next phase of our institutions was toexamine each of mentioned endeavors

2 GENERAL RESULTS FROM EACHPRESERVATION EFFORT
2.1 Physical Preservation

Figure 1: Emulation Box
Development of Emulation Box (hence forth “the box”) for theFamicon initiated in 2002 with the realization that physical objects
would decay in the long run. The overall design of the device isshown in the Figure 1. The box was designed to emulate precisely
as the Famicom, it would behave both in digital and the analogue
as the game data run from a generic computer. The systemcomposed of a server, the game data transfer system, and emulatorof the Famicom’s memory management unit which is compatible
to over 10 types of Read Only Memory architectures as well as theFamicom Disk System architecture, which allow the device to becompatible to all of the titles released for the Famicom. Onlyoriginal components used for the device is used was the gamecontroller interface as this analogue portion of the device isimpossible to emulate and thus the device was connected to theactual controller so that software can be operated precisely as they
were originally intended. For the testing purpose, two titles,
namely, Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers were stored in thegeneric computer and play tested with the device. The limitation,
however, also became apparent as the legal process was found to
be a lot more complex for what we anticipated, forcing GAP frompursuing the option for the video game preservation efforts.

2.3 Preservation through the Video Imageand the west [4] as well as the changing on the naming patterns ofgame titles [5].

3.2 Expansion of Physical Preservation
As our efforts has led to extend our network not only to academic
institutions, but also to libraries and museum of which the video
game has been objects of collections and exhibitions, making usfurther realize the importance of preserving physical objects not
only for the Japanese community but also for collaborating with theinternational community of the video game preservations. By
March 2017, there are 6211 as shown in the Table 1
Table 1: Number of the Titles Collected
Platform
PlayStationSEGA SaturnSuper Famicom
PC Engine

Figure 2: Simultaneous Recording of Game Play Images andPressing of the Input Interface
Regarding video games as cultural artifacts, recording the visual
image of the gameplay naturally became a vital part in thepreservation activities. Our approaches, however, were not merely
recording the playing images, but also simultaneously recording
the timing of pressing of buttons for each game play so thatspectators will be able to view how they were playing and alsoprecisely how they used the interface upon playing. This was
possible by showing both playing images and signal patterns fromthe pressing of the buttons as shown in the Figure2. The studies
further revealed that there were differences in the play styles
between novice players and those of avid players, further showing
the importance of the preserving the game play images in thismanner.

3

Expansion of the Efforts

3.1 Developing Metadata of Digital Game
These efforts lead GAP to work under the Agency of Cultural
Affairs for constructing a digital game section of Media Arts
Database since April 2012. The data have been cross-referenced
before the registration, allowing other researchers to use these data
as a source of reference. Number of game titles which have beenregistered in the database reached 44683 titles by March 2017[3].
The team has been working on modifying the former systems tocreate with entity-relationship model, considering a special
property that enables archivists for cataloging and designing of
metadata for the database. The scrutinizing the data allow us on
examining the differences in reception of Japanese titles in Japan

Family Computer
PlayStation 2Dream CastPlayStatio Portable
Nintendo DS
SEGA Mega Drive
Gameboy Advanced
Nintendo GameCube
Game BoyOthers

OthersTitles
1615
609
526
521
473
467
357
322
269
214
141
107
104
538
6263

Release Year
1994
1994
1990
1987
1983
2000
1998
2004
2004
1988
2001
2001
1988
-4 Future Perspectives of the Game Archive Project
As the video game preservations has been increasingly
acknowledged by the public, the demand for further security on
this subject has become ever more important. For recent years,
GAP has been extending our network both domestically as well asinternationally with hope of an organizing international consortiumof digital game preservation. By uniting the endeavors together
with other institutions around the globe, we will strive to continue
in our efforts to preserve this important cultural artifact in our era.

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http://www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/art_coe/nl/nl_4_03.html. The succeeding
section, namely, 2.1-2.3 is a summary of the same article.
[3] The Agency of Cultural Affairs Japan.2017 Media Art Digital Archive:Development Version. DOI https://mediaarts-db.bunka.go.jp/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&locale=en[4] Inoue, Akito and K. Fukuda. 2016. Distinctive difference game titles
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チ』v.17:pp 29-44. DOI: http://www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/download/AR_vol17_fukuda.pdf