Preserving Your Own Game Collection: Dumps, Backups, Boxes and Old Hardware

Games are tied to their hardware in a way books and films aren't. A cartridge needs a console that works, a disc needs a drive that still reads, and some games need a server that shut down years ago. Every year a little more of it stops working.

The big preservation work belongs to groups like the Video Game History Foundation and the Internet Archive. But there's a smaller job anyone with a shelf of old games can do: make sure your own copies survive. This is how I think about that.

What's working against you

• The media itself. Discs can rot, cartridge save batteries run flat and take your saves with them, and floppies just fade.
• The hardware. Consoles fail, capacitors leak, disc drives wear out, and parts get scarce.
• Formats. Some media simply can't be read by anything modern.
• Missing pieces. Games that need a particular controller, light gun or accessory to play properly.
• Servers. Online-only games, digital-only releases and day-one patches can vanish when a store or server closes. The 3DS and Wii U eShops closing in March 2023 took a lot of digital-only games out of legal reach.

Dump what you own

A dump is a file copy of the game straight off the cartridge or disc. The tools depend on the system:

System	Tool
GameCube and Wii	CleanRip, on a Wii
DS and 3DS	GodMode9, on a 3DS
PS1 and PS2	DiscImageCreator for accurate disc images; ImgBurn works for PS2
Cartridges	A Retrode or a dedicated cartridge dumper

Then the important step: check the dump. The No-Intro project keeps checksums of known-good cartridge dumps, and Redump does the same for discs. If your file's checksum matches their entry, you have a perfect copy. If it doesn't, something went wrong, and it's worth dumping again before the original gets any older.

Tip

Keep the dump's checksum alongside the file. Years from now, it's how you'll know the copy on your backup drive is still the same bits you started with.

While you're at it, note the region and version of each game, and scan the box, manual and any inserts. Those scans are the part people forget and wish they hadn't.

Store the files like they matter

• 3-2-1. Three copies, on two different kinds of storage, with one somewhere other than your house. A cloud backup counts as the off-site one.
• Keep a catalog of what you own, which dump goes with which game, and where the copies live.
• Name things consistently. A tidy, predictable naming scheme is what makes a big collection usable. I wrote up my genre-code naming convention, and Remove-DuplicateRom helps thin out the extra regional copies.

Keep the old hardware going

• Clean cartridge contacts with isopropyl alcohol. Most "broken" cartridges are just dirty.
• Replace save batteries in cartridges that use them, before they die and not after.
• Replace capacitors on old consoles before they leak onto the board.
• Consider modern replacements for the parts that wear out: an optical drive emulator in place of a tired disc drive, SD card storage in place of memory cards and old hard drives, and an HDMI mod or a good cable for the picture.

And when the original hardware isn't practical, there are good alternatives: FPGA machines like Analogue's consoles and the MiSTer, which recreate the hardware in a chip rather than emulating it in software, and flash carts like the EverDrive, which play your dumps on the original console.

Keep the boxes, too

Complete-in-box copies, with the box, manual and inserts, are the version of a game that tells the full story: the art, the marketing, credits that aren't in the game, and publishers that don't exist anymore. They're also what collectors pay a premium for.

What I'd do for them:

Do	Avoid
Keep them somewhere around 60 to 70°F and 30 to 50% humidity	Attics, basements and garages
Use archival-quality sleeves, and acrylic cases for the valuable ones	Direct sunlight, which fades boxes fast
Store them upright, spine out, with front-facing space for favorites	Stacking heavy things on cardboard boxes
Handle NES box tabs gently	Price stickers you'll want to peel later

Discs go upright in their cases, get cleaned with a microfiber cloth from the center outward, and get a new case when the old one cracks.

Note

Reproduction boxes and printed covers are fine for playing copies and for replacing a missing insert. If you ever sell one, say it's a reproduction. My cover sizes for printing are in the case cover dimensions sheet.

The legal part, plainly

Emulators themselves are legal. Downloading copies of games is a different matter, even for games you own, and that's not what any of this is about. Dumping your own games for your own backups is a gray area a lot of people are comfortable with. Beyond that: support official re-releases when they exist, don't sell or share dumps, and consider giving a few dollars to the preservation groups doing the heavy lifting.

If you want to look inside the files you've preserved, Genesis ROM Workshop is my toolkit for poking at Genesis ROMsROMA copy of a game cartridge's contents in a single file. It's what an emulator actually plays.More: Keep One Copy of Each Game in Your ROM Backups, by Region.