So I woke up to a bit of a surprise. The GOG Preservation Program had struck again, this time preserving the iconic JRPG “Breath of Fire IV.”
“Breath of Fire IV” was preserved thanks to the Dreamlist, a community-driven effort where users vote on games they want GOG to preserve. Games that are added to the GOG Preservation Program are “preserved forever,” meaning GOG will update the titles in perpetuity to ensure they are available and run on the latest available hardware.
If you’ve ever tried to play an old game, especially before GOG came into being, then you know what an absolute chore that can be. Newer processors can cause games to run too fast to be playable. Driver conflicts can lead to crashes. That’s not to mention you may not even be able to physically play those old discs you have, since most new machines no longer have CD drives (and god help you if they’re on floppy discs!).
But the thing about GOG’s Preservation Program is that it’s more than just updating games, and I think they genuinely deserve some praise for that. See, if you watch the video, there’s more than just “Breath of Fire IV” being added.
For starters, three additional “Ultima” titles — “Ultima Underworld 1,” “Ultima Underworld 2,” and ‘Ultima IX: Ascension” have been added to the program as well. With these additions, the entirety of “Ultima” is now preserved and playable on modern hardware for the first time ever.
You’d be forgiven if you’re a newer gamer for not being familiar with it, but the “Ultima” franchise defined RPGs in the ’90s. But it was also notoriously a chore to run on modern hardware, and the waning interest meant it was never really a contender for any kind of re-release.
But GOG went above and beyond here. Not only are they playable on modern hardware, but some common bugs have been fixed. They’ve also added new French and German language support, meaning not only are these games preserved forever, but now more gamers can play them than ever before.
It’s a great service at a time when game preservation is an increasingly perilous thing. In a 2023 report, the Video Game History Foundation reported that 87% of games are currently out of print. There are thousands of titles which are considered lost media, either completely unplayable, unpurchasable, or just outright forgotten as they fell by the wayside.
GOG’s service isn’t perfect. It’s still beholden to rights and licensing, which means games can’t just magically appear on the service. That’s why titles like “No One Lives Forever,” a fan-favorite FPS spy romp that’s been out of print for decades and never released digitally, remain on the Dreamlist and not in the GPP; no one is really sure who owns that one.
But nonetheless, games like “Breath of Fire IV,” “Ultima IX,” and more still get to be loved by new audiences. The releases they’ve made so far have been fairly high-profile surprises, too, with the last wave including “Silent Hill 2,” “Wing Commander,” and more. The GOG Preservation Program is a huge leap forward for the preservation of game history, something that far too few people take seriously, and I think they deserve a lot more praise and recognition for that work.
