Technology

Various producers used different strategies to update and remake Q*bert from 1982 to 2019, which effectively conserve this game. We will list 4 main preservation strategies and analyze some of them that have been used in the conservation of Q*bert. (Guttenbrunner, et al., 2010) What's more, Q*bert's success may also benefit from the great promotion from Sony Picture. Sony Picture made the title character of Q*bert famous by giving the scene of that character into the films. The game lover would like to go to the movie to see their favorite game. And the audience who never see the game before may cultivate an interest in the game. Hence, Sony Picture can gain a win-win profit.

4 Preservation Strategies:

1. Museum Approach

Since some video games have broken documents and lack game codes, they can not fit the modern systems to remake. People can keep “original specimens of systems and games” for potential future museum use. (Guttenbrunner, et al., 2010) Luckily, Q*bert has perfect documentation, open game code, and a continuously progressive system to apply to different types of equipment. Therefore, the museum approach is not suitable for Q*bert. However, for other “broken” video games, this might be the last way to keep the digital preservation for possible repairment in the future. 

2. Backward Compatibility

This approach can make old video games compatible with the new generation models. This is more likely to be a commercial strategy rather than a conservation strategy. Partially using emulation, the producer only needs to emulate backward-compatible systems in the newest system. (Guttenbrunner, et al., 2010) For example, Q*bert has various updated versions and remakes with differing systems. Sony let PlayStation 3 to play games from the previous equipment with earlier versions, which reduced the cost for both players and producers. Therefore, Q*bert 2004 & 2005 can still play on PlayStation 3, which has the newest version of Q*bert named “Q*bert Rebooted”. However, with different systems, image quality and game experiences might be different.

3. Migration Approach

There are 3 migration approaches. For Q*bert, linked to this approach, Q*bert's Qubes seems to be the migration of Q*bert, using Source Ports.

1). Game Engine Recreation
This approach is feasible. It used the original game data into the new system to recreate the game. The original game data was interpreted by the Game Engine Recreation. But it's hard to get the original data. (Guttenbrunner, et al., 2010)

2). Code re-compilation / Source Ports
According to this approach, video games should be reprogrammed for current systems. It's time-consuming and costly for the early video games. Re-engineering the old video game to put them into the system on new platforms. (Guttenbrunner, et al., 2010)

3). Video Creation
Lost all the interactivity, this approach can reproduce the original game scene using the video as a future reference for recreating the game. 

4. Emulation 

It needs to create the emulator of the original hardware and conserve the orginal operating system to restore the old video game to the greatest extent in the modern computer. However, it needs perfect documentation, detailed source code with the support of the original producer and manufacturers to avoid legal issues. (Guttenbrunner, et al., 2010) For Q*bert, "the Archive" uses emulation to reconstruct the Q*bert 1982. (Hodges, 2017)