About Game Footage Archive
I’m twelve years old and what is this?
Well Timmy, you see, long before you were born and before the advent of the internet, games used to be available exclusively on physical media. Kids these days don’t know what it was like to go down to their nearest Toys R Us and pick up the latest cartridge (also get off my lawn). But in all seriousness, physical media isn’t going to last forever, so we conceived of GFA as a way to document and archive experiencing these games for the first time, like you going to your friend’s house and watching them play for hours.
Haven’t other people done something like this?
Yes, absolutely. I’m not going to act like other people do not have similar projects, although when GFA was originally conceived, I was not aware of any of them. The difference here is that most if not all other footage projects use emulators and ROMs for their footage. GFA will use all original physical media recorded from original hardware whenever possible without modifications. When the best video quality is not possible without modifications to original hardware, only video output mods or FPGAs will be used in their place.
So how does this whole thing work?
The Game Footage Archive will archive video from the first 20 minutes of games released on physical media. Any video recorded will be from games that we own to attempt to as closely as possible comply with outdated copyright laws in 17 U.S. Code § 108. Project F20, the company behind GFA, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational archive. All footage will be made available for others to use in their personal or professional projects through YouTube and/or other platforms.
What games will you be preserving footage for?
At least for the time being, the plan is to preserve footage for games released in North America on physical media for home consoles and handhelds. Home computer releases may be considered in the future, however, the US didn’t have as many home PCs as the rest of the world, and getting video output from those without the use of any emulation is much more difficult than home consoles.