im not sure because i havent played the orginal so i dont know if these claims are true
but the dev claim there was a freezer bug in the orginal
and that the game was unfinished
so their argument is that they see little point realesing the old source for preservation

My guess is
they are probably thinking modders will alter the game annyway and as such erasing the historic value and presevation value the game may have.

i dont totally agree with that line of thinkng though
sure you will alter the game with modding/fixing bugs
but i dont think the devs back then intended to have a freezer bug in the game
so i dont quite see why that shoud be an issue for preservation.

But then again
Not all bugs or glitches are bad for players
In some games
bugs/glitches was a plus for the player
In the orginal Final fantasy 7 you coud get 99 item of one type by using W-item matreia and canceling the second choice and keep doing that untill you got 99 items, because you got one extra item of the item you were cancelling
This is now considered a feature of the orginal game by players and not a glitch/bug

There's a Danny Glover joke to be made, but I'm not clever enough to think of one.

I'm glad there's controller support. Added this game to my wishlist.

Nice! This is the type of Good Old Game that I love to see released here.

Here, I'll try:

"Glover's back and this time he's NOT too old for this $h*t"

Purchased on day one, if only to combat the negative Review Bombing. It‘s a nice game and well ported.

XD

Why do you say they are against video game preservation? The very fact that they are releasing a game that was otherwise unavailable on ANY digital store and that was long forgotten by most folks is actually IN FAVOR of game preservation.

The link you provided is a tweet from a random angry guy on twitter who appears to be against any port or remake of an old game which requires a purchase.

If you check out his newer tweets he is now raving (with over 20+ tweets) against Sonic Origins - despite Sonic Origins being worked on by beloved Christian Whitehead and Headcannon from Sonic Mania fame - because he feels that a player would "get the same experience by running the old games", then running decomps and installing mods (!!!). Doh, that's the point of the digital release - he seems to think everything needs to be a remaster to be worth something.

Example of one of his many tweets - see here: "Begging you if you're a PC user buy the Taxman and Stealth ports of 1/2/CD and S3&K then just download the decomps + 3 air you will get the exact same experience and more with mods"

Really, begging us?
Why is he telling us what to do and how to spend our own money?
Why is he so much against ports and re-releases of old games?
Does he not see the hassle of having to research and look for all those decomps and mods, having to download so many different stuff and install them and tweak them?
Why is he so angry?
I bet he does not buy any game on GOG either because he seems to be against anyone selling old games brought back to life.

Look, I get that for some folks preservation is just an excuse for getting games for free by saying it is abandonware or something, but that is not really what game preservation is.

Even the co-director of the Video Game History Foundation says so (see here): I know we'd all prefer that every game just get popped online for the sake of historical preservation, but that's just not the reality in a world where these are collectibles. I'd like to think what I'm providing here is the best compromise possible but I'm open to feedback.

this is just gross:

https://twitter.com/Pikointeractive/status/1493995401246121989

What is so gross about preserving old games by making them available for sale? Would you rather old games to be unavailable? I don't get it - a lot of folks want and ask for old games to be brought back for purchase. Comments like these are what make certain publishers delist and bury old games because they don't want negative comments.

is it not ideal if all game companies did "commercial prsevation"?i.e. having all their games for sale. to me this sounds like what should be the standard, and if this is Piko's strategy then I applud them

I think "commercial preservation" is a strange choice of words, but I do wish more publishers would re-release older games to be playable on newer hardware.

Anyways, I'll wait for a bigger discount, since the base price is higher than I expected.

Not one I could ever really get into, but it is a good game, and more quality 3D platformers never hurt.

i'm going to bundle a couple of these up, because you're both asking the same question, really.

here's the other version of this question:

the words "commercial preservation" are kind of awkward when strung together.

i'm ALL FOR people re-releasing games and allowing folks to buy them.

but i'm also ALL FOR preservation.

and i don't necessarily think the one belongs with the other.

in a very real sense, piko aren't actually releasing the "original, undiluted" version of the game [that would be actual preservation.] - instead, they tinkered with it to get it to a point where they wanted it, then released it, and ALSO went after folks who /were/ preserving the original as it stood with cease and desists.

for me, preservation "preserves the game" in a kind of amber, so that if there /are/ bugs, you keep them in. [or, at very least, you release two versions of the game: the original and the "new version."]

plus, preservation works best when people DON'T c+d original sources [especially if there's no plans to release the original version of the game.] - ie: it works best when there's more than one outlet. bit rot and the like are real. maybe gog exists today. maybe gog do not exist tomorrow, etc.

What do you mean by undiluted version?
im pretty sure you know this
but there exist several games were the orginal version was more or less unplayable

And i really doubt most groups/individuals that says they are working to presevre the game will leave a game undisturbed or untouched
especcially if the game isnt playabal and there are game breaking bugs

undiluted: "original. untarnished. the original game as it existed when the developers released it." i'm surprised i have to say this and with this level of detail, but it's pretty clear what i meant.

and while, yes, there's a major bug in the non-piko version of the game, that's how it was released.

the best solution was: "hey, we're offering glover again, but you know the game pretty well, so we're going to release our /fixed/ version with the original that you played when it was on the n64."

instead, piko fast forwarded to, "hey, there's our version or bust." that's "not preservation."

---

most folks that do rom dumps specifically note the version information so that people can be aware of what's going on with the dump. from that perspective, yes. absolutely. those people aren't messing with the dump of the rom.

No it wasnt clear
To me it seams that you are actully okay if somone fixes a games if it contains bugs if these bugs make it so that you cant play the game
and thats not undiluted in my book
Also realesing a game that you cant play also defeats the purpose or the willingness to preseve such work
i can mention several movies that got lost to time just because the movies stopped working, the medium it was contained on degraded
or there wasnt enough interest and simmilar reasons

Films may go missing for a number of reasons. One major contributing factor is the common use of nitrate film until the early 1950s. This type of film is highly flammable, and there have been several devastating fires, such as the Universal Pictures fire in 1924, the 1937 Fox vault fire and the 1965 MGM vault fire.

Black-and-white film prints judged to be otherwise worthless were sometimes incinerated to salvage the meager scrap value of the silver image particles in their emulsions. Films have disappeared when production companies went bankrupt. Occasionally, a studio would remake a film and destroy the earlier version. Silent films in particular were once seen as having no further commercial value and were simply junked to clear out expensive storage space.

Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation claims that "half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever."Deutsche Kinemathek estimates that 80–90% of silent films are gone;[5] the film archive's own list contains over 3,500 lost films.

A study by the Library of Congress states that 75% of all silent films are now lost. While others dispute whether the percentage is quite that high, it is impractical to enumerate any but the more notable and those that can be sourced.

For example, roughly 200 out of over 500 Méliès' films and 350 out of over 1,000 of Alice Guy's films survive.
Notable lost films

Amongst the films commonly mourned among critics and film historians are early films by noted directors and films of unique cultural importance. The Mountain Eagle was the second film to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926; the silent melodrama has been described by the British Film Institute as their "most wanted" lost film. London After Midnight, starring Lon Chaney and directed by Tod Browning in 1927, was a silent-era mystery-thriller pseudo-vampire film that is now considered to be the 'holy grail' of lost films by collectors. Hollywood, a silent comedy film directed by James Cruze, featured over 30 cameo appearances from major stars of the day, including Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Astor and Pola Negri, but no footage exists. Films with all-African American casts produced by Ralph Cooper, including Bargain with Bullets starring Theresa Harris and While Thousands Cheer starring Kenny Washington, are also considered lost.

Not to mention is kinda hypocritical to speak aboput a undilituded version
when the only orginal versions back in the day existed on Physical cartigdes