The video game journalist Danny O’Dwyer (37) publishes documentaries about the history of games on his YouTube channel Noclip and provides insights behind the scenes of the gaming industry. Recently, he rescued boxes of footage from the dump.
What kind of channel is this? Noclip publishes documentaries about video games funded through crowdfunding. The channel showcases the backstories of games and interesting anecdotes from the gaming industry.
So it’s not surprising that a tip piqued the interest of the founder Danny O’Dwyer: A media company in San Francisco supposedly has a huge collection of tapes that he definitely wants to see. The footage is also on the verge of being discarded.
O’Dwyer rented a truck and soon after returned to his studio with boxes of videotapes. Since then, he and his team have rescued more footage from ending up in the trash or rotting in storage.
Now he claims to have one of the largest collections of video game history – but the real work has only just begun.
More than 10 years of gaming history
What kind of footage is there? The boxes contain countless videotapes in various formats: Among them are well-known formats like VHS, but also rare formats for professional use that the YouTuber has never heard of.
The tapes contain thousands of hours of footage from the 90s to around 2010: trailers, interviews, gameplay recordings, and footage of events that took place behind the scenes of the gaming industry.
At a time before many people had access to high-speed internet, such videos were broadcast on television or a few gaming websites, according to O’Dwyer. The assets were not delivered in digital form but on such tapes.
The special thing is: The material on the tapes has largely been forgotten or was never intended for the public. O’Dwyer says he has already found an interview with the legendary developer Hideo Kojima that was supposed to have been erased from the internet 10 years ago.
Furthermore, the videos for publication on websites were heavily compressed due to the technological limitations of the time. On the tapes, one would now find the highest-quality version of the press conference from E3 2009, according to O’Dwyer.
The English-language video from Noclip about the collection is embedded here:
Do you remember, back then … ?
What does he plan to do with the footage? O’Dwyer and the Noclip team want to review all the tapes and digitize “historically valuable” footage to make it available online.
On a dedicated YouTube channel, there are already “never-before-seen” presentations of games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, which were supposedly presented behind closed doors at E3 2001.
The raw files will also be published in the Internet Archive.
This elaboration of video game history, which could have been lost, is not only a massive undertaking but also requires not only a lot of time but also the right equipment. Some devices needed to play the old formats are quite rare and especially expensive. Furthermore, they are so heavy that shipping costs a lot of money, explains O’Dwyer.
For the YouTuber and his team, however, it’s all worth it to create a “living, breathing archive” that everyone can interact with. After all, there is no sense in having a museum if people can’t walk around in it, says O’Dwyer (via BBC).
The YouTuber is sure that true treasures can be found in the footage: “I already know that some things will be hidden in this collection that will truly shock and excite the entire video game scene.”
However, O’Dwyer is not only focused on these big moments but also on the small ones. The moments that make someone send a link to a cousin or old friend with the message: “Do you remember when we used to play that back then?”
Race against time
What difficulties are there? The tapes, like all analog media, have a kind of expiration date. With each passing year, the tapes have deteriorated further, says O’Dwyer. The process continues every day they spend in the boxes in the Noclip studio.
Some recordings are already too damaged to be played, the YouTuber regrets. The Noclip team must therefore hurry to digitize the videos before even more are permanently lost.
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