The French National Library in Paris, along with old books, films and audio documents, owns one of the largest collections of video games, with about two thousand games such as "Juke Boxes", "Game Boy" and "Magnavox Odyssey", carefully preserved and classified as a "cultural heritage". In every sense of the word."
Those looking to see these video games should visit one of the four towers, each 79 meters high, and includes 22 floors in the François Mitterrand Library in southwest Paris, named after the former French president who ruled France from 1981 to 1995.
In the middle of the phonograph and jukebox, about 10 video game consoles that reflect the history of these games were displayed inside two facades, including “Game Boy” from “Nintendo”, “Atari Linux”, “Sega Saturn” and “Magnavox Odyssey” Very rare, which was introduced to the American market in 1972.
Games in the library
“We keep these video game players to make future researchers who will appear in 10 years, even hundreds of years, understand how we played these video games and what equipment was used while playing,” says Laurent Dublois, head of the multimedia department at the French National Library.
He adds that "the library's officials consider video games to be of no less importance than the historical documents displayed in them, and they give them the same attention because they represent a cultural heritage in every sense of the word."
Video game consoles on display at the François Mitterrand Library (French)
This library move remains somewhat secret, as tools for old video games are collected and preserved under a 1992 law that provides for the "legal deposit" of "multimedia documents".
Although the text of the law does not explicitly mention video games, it has included within this conservation mechanism interactive programs, and thus video games.
The library should include two copies of each video game, the first for preservation and the second for visitors to view.
The library was able to collect two thousand similar "documents" annually thanks to the work of a team of 20 people entrusted with this task, in addition to group administrators, warehouse custodians and engineers.
In addition to the video game players displayed in the library, the latter includes - in one of the lower layers - thousands of games deposited in dark storage rooms, where the temperature is fixed at 19 degrees Celsius, in addition to being stored in a way that protects them from moisture.
The games are put back into custom boxes, and each game has its own classification to be indexed in the public library directory.
It includes various media formats (box / ROM cartridge, discs, CDs...) all kinds of games, starting from the famous educational game "Adibo", passing through the first version of the world-famous "Tom Rider", up to the latest version of the adventure game "Assassins". Creed".
A side of video game consoles displayed in the François Mitterrand Library (French)
technological obsolescence
But how will these games be saved forever while the media that play them are gradually dying out, threatened by technological obsolescence?
The library relies on groups of gamers to develop software that allows old games to be played on modern computers, based on the digitization of analog games and "emulators," explains Laurent Dubloy.
He adds that "the department responsible for multimedia in the library includes two engineers who are constantly acquainted with this issue, to find emulators and make them work compatible with video games."
It is expected that those in charge of the library will face other problems, most notably the lack of games in physical copies, but rather playing them based on cloud computing (cloud games), which are increasingly imposing themselves as the dominant video game model today, such as the game "Fortnite", which can only be played with. Online through a dedicated platform and with regular updates.
"We are negotiating with publishers and some platforms to find a way to recover games saved under the legal deposit law with physical copies," said the library official, noting that this new model imposes limited techniques.