SM64DS and Preservation Issues
This post is part of Agora Road's November 2024 Travelogue.
I recently read an excellent article on The Cuttting Room Floor about the pre-release of Zelda: Majora's Mask. This gave me the idea to do something similar for Super Mario 64 DS - a game I played a lot in my childhood. I had the vague idea of making an article about how the game was revealed on the internet and how it differed from the prototype shown at E3 2004.
What I ended up finding was not what I expected. Even now I am not sure how to describe what I have found. The string of text "preservation issues" is the best I can do for now, but I suspect this is not just a matter of video game preservation, but rather something else.
To start my research, I checked the pre-release page for SM64DS on TCRF. As documented here, the game was first revealed as "Super Mario 64x4". Using Google, I searched the earliest mentions of this title on the internet. I only found a few websites, most which seem to only reference the game in passing. I suppose that most of the contemporary websites are now long gone.
While looking back at TCRF page for more information, I checked the oddities subpage. There, it was noted that the file select screen has a strange black box on Peach's Castle:
I recall that this really bugged me as a child. On the page, a user recall seeing some E3 2004 demo footage that showed a canon being there. This piqued my curiosity and I decided to try to look for the footage.
At this point, I noticed that my web browser was lagging hard. It seems that during my earlier research I had opened too many websites. I closed some websites.
I scoured Youtube for beta footage and found this playlist. While watching the videos, I spotted 8 things different from the final retail version that were not documented on TCRF. I started to write some notes in a text documents. The proof that the canon existed was nowhere to be found however.
While checking some of the websites found earlier, I found one offering video downloads of the E3 2004 trailer. Upon clicking the link, I was redirected to a page saying that the archives were now private. I had no way to tell if those videos had been uploaded to Youtube or not.
Also on TCRF, a TODO template claim that issue 148 of Nintendo Official Magazine UK had a DVD that included some early SM64DS footage. I managed to find a copy of the DVD on the Internet Archive. For some reason however, the file provided was a .7z file. This means that I had unpack the file, mount the .iso file and then check the files for the SM64DS video.
At this point my entire system was lagging hard. I regretted going down this rabbit hole.
I eventually found it, the video was nothing special. The footage was pretty much gameplay from the final version. That had been a giant waste of time.
This is a bit hard to convey, but this entire sequence was not fun. It felt like that reality was punishing me for going down an "atypical path". This is however not the first time I have observed this phenomenon. It happened in the past while I was decompiling ROMs of Nintendo 3DS games. You end up with a metric ton of files and tools that you wish not to delete as it may be useful later. I hate this feeling so much.
What did surprise me, is that this phenomenon happened with a simple web search. There was no fancy datamining tools involved. All I did was looking at some website, Youtube videos and mounted a .iso file. Yet, this was enough to create a fountain of negativity. Curious.
I said in the past that video games feels unholy and instance like these is exactly why. This reminds me of the time when I was into RuneScape Preservation. I encountered similar problems, though their scale were far worse.
My thoughts are a bit difficult to articulate, but I can't help but notice the large amount of broken Youtube links on TCRF. If the site supportted video uploads, this would likely not be an issue. They obviously don't because video files have a large file size. I tend to notice that things that have "motion" tend to be harder to archive, namely videos and games. Perhaps this is a key part why it all feels so cursed...
Needless to say, I am not writing that Super Mario 64 DS article. I am not touching that rabbit hole anything soon. The last thing I will do is put the few notes I have taken on TCRF.
This experience does make me wonder what would happen if one where to put the "research experience" in some sort of contained environment. A sort of "game exploration" simulation. I also just realized that ARGs are probably based on that "thrill of exploration" that the people on TCRF experiences, just in a different context. I might investigate this in more depths at a later date.
Written by manpaint on 02 November 2024.