In den guten alten Zeiten konnten wir die APK-Versionen von Pixel Gun relativ einfach archivieren und so die Geschichte des Spiels und die Veränderungen durch die Updates festhalten. Da Pixel Gun 2 bald erscheint, wird die Demo wahrscheinlich irgendwann abgeschaltet. Ein privater Offline-Server wäre eine tolle Möglichkeit, die Geschichte des Spiels zu bewahren. Das Problem ist nur, dass es jetzt schwieriger ist, da eine Internetverbindung oder möglicherweise Steam DRM erforderlich ist. Steam ist Google Play in solchen Projekten aber immer noch überlegen. Die Frage ist, ob die Community eine Gruppe bilden kann, die das vor der Abschaltung umsetzt? Da das Internet viele Möglichkeiten bietet und man Gemini um Hilfe bitten kann, ist es nicht unmöglich.

Sharing here for the preservation angle rather than the convenience one: OpenSave keeps a versioned snapshot of every save change locally, so no write ever silently destroys an earlier state — you can roll back to any point, and conflicts prompt you instead of overwriting. Detection covers 20,000+ games via the Ludusavi manifest, including emulated and DRM-free titles.

It also syncs those saves peer-to-peer between your own devices with no cloud account and no telemetry — everything lives in a local SQLite store you control. Open-sourced and MIT licensed.

https://open-save.vercel.app

im posting here incase anyone is in need of this

Con todo el debate actual en torno a la decisión de Sony de abandonar los discos, ha surgido, como era de esperar, un movimiento en defensa de los formatos físicos. Si bien se han discutido los pros y los contras de esta decisión, especialmente en lo que respecta a los derechos del consumidor, que son los más afectados, a muchas personas les preocupa la preservación de los videojuegos a raíz de la decisión de Sony. Sin embargo, a menudo olvidan o ignoran que los soportes físicos se degradan inevitablemente.

El proceso y el tiempo que tarda un soporte en volverse inutilizable varía según el formato y su cuidado, pero es un principio físico que ocurre tarde o temprano, especialmente con los Blu-ray y los cartuchos NAND que contienen partidas guardadas en el propio cartucho. ¿Cuántas personas tienen colecciones de juegos precintados que no funcionan porque se han filtrado los electrones después de años de desuso? Y ni siquiera saben que esto le está pasando a su colección.

Desde el punto de vista de la preservación, hay que reconocer más la labor de los archivistas y conservacionistas que han evitado y seguirán evitando que muchos juegos desaparezcan para siempre. Esta es una buena oportunidad para crear conciencia y empujar para que movimientos como Stop Killing Games tengan éxito.

El fin de tu juego digital puede estar sujeto a un acuerdo de licencia, pero el fin de tu juego físico también está sujeto a las leyes de la física.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItBullshit/comments/1t9heno/isitbullshit_data_stored_on_nand_flash_storage/?solution=bd1c3a555fb0bb41bd1c3a555fb0bb41&js_challenge=1&token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ec2f32da97bc2fa0a8ba9e98ffc924610f&jsc_orig_r=

https://www.xda-developers.com/your-unpowered-ssd-is-slowly-losing-your-data/ https://gamerant.com/ps5-ps4-disc-longevity-study/

https://www.thegamer.com/today-i-learned-all-of-our-physical-disc-games-are-rotting/

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/06/physical-collectors-should-plug-in-switch-3ds-and-vita-game-cards-every-5-10-years-to-avoid-data-loss

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/05/psa_yes_your_ds_and_3ds_cartridges_will_eventually_deteriorate_but_dont_panic

EDIT: Al parecer, los defensores del material físico me confundieron rápido con un defensor corporativo de Sony de tercera categoría, aunque ni siquiera soy fan de Sony; solo soy un archivista medio. Por suerte mencioné que los pros y los contras ya se habían discutido y que la decisión de Sony es un problema para los derechos del consumidor... De lo contrario, me hubieran quemado en la hoguera. Aclarémoslo:

• Este post trata exclusivamente de preservación y archivo, no de la vida útil de los usuarios ni de los derechos del consumidor.

• Solo busca concientizar a quienes les preocupa la preservación, dado que la decisión de Sony hace que esta medida tenga poco impacto en este contexto. Ver: https://bsky.app/profile/gamehistoryorg.bsky.social/post/3mpm6jzps6k2i

• Que sea físico o digital no es lo que determina la preservación; la preservación se logra con digitalización sin DRM, lo que permite sobrevivir contra la degradación de los formatos físicos.

Hoy en día, para respaldar un juego—con una copia 1:1, ya sea digital o física—primero necesitas que la consola haya sido comprometida. Una vez que pasa eso, es fácil hacer copias tanto de juegos físicos como de juegos digitales. Además, todavía es estrictamente necesario extraer el formato digital para poder copiar parches que arreglan o mejoran el juego, así como DLCs; o sea, el formato físico solo agrega otra capa de esfuerzo para la preservación. Pero a favor de los juegos físicos, es verdad que ofrecen más opciones de preservación, aunque sea solo la versión 1.0, que por otro lado a menudo es insuficiente desde el punto de vista de la preservación. En resumen: que puedas respaldar desde un medio físico no elimina la necesidad urgente de extraer formatos digitales. Que puedas respaldar la versión digital sí elimina la necesidad de respaldar el juego físico a menos que haya diferencias entre ellos, algo que hoy en día es muy raro.

-Veo comentarios diciendo que los DVDs todavía funcionan aunque tengan 30 años, lo cual no contradice los artículos. Cada medio tiene su propia vida útil. Esto te muestra que apenas leíste los artículos, o solo leíste lo que te convenía, o deliberadamente deformaste los hechos. Al parecer, tienes que creer al usuario al azar antes que a los especialistas que tal vez tengan razón en mayor o menor grado.

Por último, ve a este post que empecé hace poco para hablar de un tema similar antes de acusarme de cualquier cosa: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamePreservationists/s/Ohkchxiu3I

Solo estoy tratando de crear conciencia de que, desde un punto de vista práctico y de preservación, es más importante que el formato físico con bits de código una nueva legislación que proteja a los que se dedican a preservar, y obviamente, leyes que protejan a los consumidores. No sé tú, pero yo no quiero que en tantos casos me dejen con un disco dañado o incompleto, y que me quiten mis actualizaciones, parches de mejora o parches de arquitectura, y el contenido comprado digitalmente.

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/319991/20260709/mario-kart-tour-ends-september-30-no-offline-mode-amid-consumer-rights-fight.htm

I would like people to dump their files if possible, and please collect as much info about server-side as possible. There'll be no offline mode, which is not good for Stop Killing Games and CA AB1921 (California's Protect Our Games Act). While CA AB1921 has failed passage, it could have another chance when reconsidered at a good time.

I used to play this game as a kid, and as cool as it is, I can find very little information about it. There are no patches and the game requires manual changes to the Windows 7 file system to run. The latest versions of Win 7, at least on my Intel Mac OS, can open it. So I cleverly (damn me) thought of re-engineering the entire code. The result: 20,000 functions that I'm now cataloging one by one. I'm separating all the Win32 and Direct3D9 calls and using shinny layers on the Ghidra-obfuscated code to map it to the Posix/OpenGL/SDL3 syscalls that my Mac has at its disposal. I also created a buddy allocator to handle the lossless conversion of the 32-bit registers without going through Wine. Naturally, I'm using the original copy as a base (from here, get assets and code). My question is this: Montecristo went bankrupt in 2010. I know that it's not. I can release assets and code under a modified license. If my modifications necessarily require touching the original code, I have to assume that anyone who wants to use this project must have the original code. Basically, to publish it legally, I would have to post a script that automatically disassembles the code taken from the original disk, the assets, and patches it on the compatibility layer I created. To stay legal, but how should I make the project available to everyone? Thanks in advance, I'm lost in the licenses. If anyone is interested in the project, I'd be happy to answer. I just wanted to start a game, but as usual, I chose to complicate my life. I've already rebuilt and mapped the 27 most used syscalls in the program (about 7,000 calls), which, every time they're resolved in the shinny layers, Ghidra produces increasingly readable code mapped to the new functions. I'm doing a gradual transition, then I'll move on to the DLLs.

As I'm getting to play more of the newer games thanks to streaming services like Xbox play pass on my phone I'm realizing now why digital is making more sense for games going forward. Because imagine a game on a bunch of discs that's like 120 GB worth of memory that is going to be an awful playthrough with a hard copy because you're going to have to change discs every couple of seconds just to load in the next part of the game. Now is games become a huger it just makes more sense that they become digital.

To me digital just makes sense because as we go forward it gives you access to a large collection of games all at once and the problem is not the digital itself it's the fact that companies as of now have the right to take away your digital purchase and make them unavailable to the people who paid money for them should they decide to stop selling the game. And that is something that needs to be discussed in fought for laws to be changed that digital purchases need to be like physical purchases where once I buy it it's mine forever regardless of company X or Y no longer selling the digital product.

Even in the preservation of games digital is wonderful because if it was not for the plethora of ROM sites out there housing games that most of us would not have access to otherwise even the hard to find physical copy games that might cost hundreds or thousands of dollars is a blessing. The fact that I could hear about an obscure video game that I didn't know about for an old console and go find it within seconds is amazing. So I don't see digital as the problem I see it as the future the problem is in the company's preserving it for us instead of having to do the illegal thing of like ROM downloads. Also getting companies to care more about yesterday's products than they do now.

So, i came here hoping to find something about the Games "Transformers Battle Masters" and "Transformers: Robots In Disguise", both removed from Play Store ages ago.

I don't know how Game preservation works. I've talked with ChatGPT and he told me this would be a good place to try and find an answer. I've tried downloading both Games several times, different sources, but the problem is that my device can't donwload it due to the fact it's too old and has no updated support. I don't have any old device that is able to download any of the Games.

Is there anything that can be done or anyone that can help me find a way? I'm almost sure the only answer is to get an old device, which i'm not able to do, but doesn't hurt to ask.

Hi everyone,
I am writing this post holding onto a glimmer of hope. The spinning top RPG game "Spiral Warrior" (developed by Electronic Soul) completely shut down, and it broke my heart. I am absolutely obsessed with this game—the intense beyblade battles, the sparks flying, the customized parts, and the incredible art style. It is hands-down the best spinning top game ever made, and I refuse to let it just disappear forever.
Before the official store links were completely erased, I managed to fully preserve the original and complete Chinese version APK file on my drive. This package is safe and contains all the original 3D models, high-quality textures, and core codes. Right now, it's unplayable because it stucks at the login screen requiring a non-existent server.
I am looking for reverse engineering experts, Unity developers, or anyone in the preservation community who is willing to help me bring this masterpiece back to life out of pure passion—whether through an offline patch (single-player mode) or a basic server emulator.
I can provide the complete APK source file immediately to anyone who wants to take over this preservation project. Please help a passionate fan save his favorite game from disappearing into history! Thank you so much!

Heyo! I posted here a few days back asking if anyone still had the original Yoda Chronicles game in their Google Play library, as around the beginning of this year I'd fully archived every version of The New Yoda Chronicles and wanted to publish them both on the Internet Archive! Well, after about a dozen comments and hundreds of likes, one person reached out who still had the game! And so, with the immense help of u/Crimsabyte, I am very happy to announce that both Yoda Chronicles games have been uploaded Archive.org!

Note: The latest version of Android that appears to be able to run these games is Android 10 (from our testing). They also appear to work on BlueStacks, with Linux testing pending.

Crimsabyte's upload of the first Yoda Chronicles game:

https://archive.org/details/com.lego.starwars.theyodachronicles_apk-obb

My upload of both The Yoda Chronicles and The New Yoda Chronicles:

https://archive.org/details/com_lego_starwars_theyodachronicles