When the director of Square Enix's recent Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles remaster, Kazutoyo Maehiro, admitted that the company no longer had the source code for the original PlayStation version, it keenly illustrated how preservation wasn't a key concern for many developers in the '90s.

Now, Naoki Hamaguchi – the man in charge of the Final Fantasy VII remake project – has revealed that the same thing is true of that iconic game, too – at least when it comes to design documentation.

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Update : Since we posted this initial story back in September of 2023, we've been trying to get in touch with Sega Europe and, in particular, Sega Forever lead Danny Russell in order to get some clarification on what is happening with the retro-focused channel, which mysteriously went dark in August of last year.

We can now report that Russell appears to have left Sega, or is at least in the process of doing so.

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We have some good news for Cave fans, to add to the exciting news from earlier this year that a version of the incredibly rare Dodonpachi DaiOuJou DX Reco.ver had been recovered and dumped online.

Across social media, the feature phone preservationist RockmanCosmo is now stating that the 2003 mobile shoot 'em up Dodonpuchi Zero from Cave has also just been saved from the digital abyss, alongside a trial version of Dodonpachi's 2002 mobile port, known as Dodonpuchi.

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Long before Burnout arrived and made crashing into cars fun, we had Reflections' Destruction Derby to satisfy our desire for twisted metal (which, ironically, is the name of another '90s game about vehicular carnage).

A notable launch title for the PS1, the first entry in the series would later be ported to the Sega Saturn – but Sega was apparently so displeased with how it ran on its console that it chose not to release it in the US, rendering it a European and Japanese exclusive.

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The video game preservationist Yuvi has managed to preserve a copy of Biohazard: The Episodes, a Resident Evil spin-off originally released for Japanese feature phones in 2007 (thanks, RockmanCosmo, for the spot!).

As you may well know, if you've been following Time Extension for a while, feature phones were essentially pre-smartphone devices, sold primarily in Japan, which featured a group of providers that all had their own specific platforms for mobile gaming.

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After 19 years, those who love Insomniac's Ratchet & Clank are finally able to play a "lost", cancelled entry in the series, which has previously been described online as "a holy grail for 14 people", as recently spotted by the folks at Gamesradar.

Back in 2006, Sony's mobile arm announced Ratchet & Clank: Clone Home, a Java-based follow-up to the Insomniac duo's first mobile platformer Ratchet & Clank: Going Mobile.

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If you're a long-time reader of Time Extension, then you'll be aware that we're not entirely thrilled by how AI is being used right now.

While the technology has massive potential benefits in the world of science, research and medicine, it seems that the companies peddling it at the moment are more concerned with giving people the chance to create deepfake slop videos of celebrities stealing chicken than they are about curing cancer or making our lives better.

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The feature phone preservation community has launched a new website dedicated to its ongoing efforts to save old and endangered Japanese mobile games from becoming lost media.

RockmanCosmo, a prominent member of the community online, announced the new website, Keitai Archive, last week, sharing some of the goals of the new website in a thread posted on social media.

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An early version of the Nintendo fighting game Joy Mech Fight, from one year prior to its release, has been preserved online, giving players a chance to check out a version of the impressive Famicom title from back when it was being developed for the Famicom Disk System.

Initially released in 1993, Joy Mech Fight is a Nintendo-published fighting game that stood out at the time for being able to squeeze some fairly remarkable graphics and animations from the Nintendo Famicom for its roster of robot fighter.

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Support for NEC LD-ROM² is coming to Ares, and is already available as part of the multi-format emulator's nightly builds, it's been announced online.

Last month, as you may well be aware, brought the exciting news that Ares would become the first ever emulator to support the Mega LD add-on, a peripheral device created for Pioneer's 1993 video game system and laserdisc player, the LaserActive.

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A museum based in Bologna, Italy has recently come into possession of the blueprints to a Sega game from the 1970s that has long been considered "lost" (the video game historian/preservationist Damiano Gerli recently informed us).

Heavyweight Champ was a boxing game that Sega originally released in the arcades back in 1976 (and is not to be confused with the company's 1987 game of the same name). Many historians consider it today to be a groundbreaking title in the history of gaming, with the game reportedly featuring what is widely regarded to be the first depiction of hand-to-hand combat in a video game, as well as the first ever depiction of a person of colour in gaming.

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We recently reported on the news that Sega used the British Police to recover a selection of dev kits and consoles it had "negligently disposed of" from a business owner who has a legitimate claim to those items.

Since we published that story, we've seen a huge reaction online from the retro gaming and game preservation communities.

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The Japanese feature phone preservation community has shown itself to be experts at recovering games that many had believed would be forever lost to time, but its latest achievement could be one of its most impressive finds yet.

That's because, as revealed yesterday by RockmanCosmo (one of the leading experts on the preservation of old feature phone games), a member of the community (Yuuku) has miraculously managed to locate and preserve a copy of Dodonpachi DaiOuJou DX Reco.ver (大往生DX-ﾚｺver.-), a game that was only available to purchase for a single day on December 30, 2007.

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The original i-Mode release of Bomberman 3D, an obscure Bomberman game that debuted on Japanese feature phones, has just been preserved in full, representing yet another piece of rare piece of Bomberman history rescued from its digital graveyard.

Bomberman 3D was originally launched in December 2004 for the DoCoMo 901i series of i-Mode compatible Japanese feature phones, and was unsurprisingly (given its name) a 3D take on the Bomberman series. The game featured multiple levels of elevation in its stages, "3D sound" (a feature of the 901 series of phones), and two separate modes to play through, including a Normal Mode and VS.

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A bunch of new videos showcasing footage from Human Head Studios sequel to Prey (2006) has appeared online, offering an extended look at some of the features and mechanics the studio had planned for the cancelled project.

Prey (not to be confused with Arkane Austin's 2017 title of the same name) was a first-person shooter that launched for Windows PCs and Xbox 360 in 2006.

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Earlier this week, it was announced on social media that a lost Resident Evil game for Japanese phones had been partially preserved, thanks to the efforts of those within the Japanese feature phone preservation community.

Biohazard: The Operations was a title released in 2007 and rather used assets from the Resident Evil GameCube remake, as noted by feature phone preservation expert RockmanCosmo online.

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Originally making its debut in arcades back in 2004, Cave's classic bullet hell shooter Mushihimesama has gone on to inspire a bunch of ports, remasters, and even a sequel since it was first released.

But what you not know is that the series also ended up getting a couple of different mobile entries too, with only the latter of these, Mushihimesama Bug Panic, for Android and iOS, ever getting a release outside of Japan.

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There are very few preservation groups online that are quite as active as the community devoted to the preservation of old Japanese "keitai" games.

Shortly after announcing the discovery of titles like Monster Hunter i, Chokkan Crash Bandicoot, and Xenosaga Pied Piper, the community has revealed on social media that it has made another exciting breakthrough, successfully recovering and dumping a game in Namco's Valkyrie series that was previously considered lost to time.

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The source code for the engine that powered the 1996 Sega Saturn first-person-shooter PowerSlave (known as Exhumed in Europe) was released yesterday on the code-sharing website GitHub, with the approval of its original programmer Ezra Dreisbach.

This means that now it's not only possible for people to take a closer look at how the original engine was created for historical/preservation purposes, but that users can also now potentially redistribute and/or modify the program, as long as they adhere to the terms of the GNU General Public License 3.0. This includes making any new code available under the same exact freedoms as the original, and documenting whether any changes have been made to prevent any issues from being erroneously applied to the author of the original version.

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It all started so brightly for Polygon. Launched by Vox Media back in 2012, the site promised to "redefine games journalism" by hiring the best of the best, and even released a multi-part documentary series to promote its launch.

While people might argue that Polygon never quite fulfilled that lofty ambition (what site possibly could?), there's no denying that it was once a goldmine for quality, long-form games journalism – and nowhere was this more evident than in Matt Leone's excellent Street Fighter 2 and Final Fantasy VII oral histories.

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The Video Game History Foundation has announced today that it has acquired the rights to the historic US magazine Computer Entertainer, and is making the entire magazine free for anyone to read or use.

Computer Entertainer was a magazine published between 1982-1990, and is significant for a few different reasons, such as being the first women-owned and operated game magazine and the only North American console-focused magazine to survive the entirety of the infamous 1980’s games industry crash in the States.

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Released back in 1995, Nintendo's virtual reality system, the Virtual Boy, is regularly regarded online as one of the company's biggest failures, due to its low sales and a string of other problems that plagued the device at release.

This ranged from the lack of games, to the discomfort of actually wearing the red and black headset, to its relatively high price point ($179.99) that turned away potential buyers, and prevented it from becoming yet another hit for the legendary video game manufacturer.

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A selection of over 200 beta GBA, DS, DSi and 3DS carts could be at risk of falling into the hands of a private owner, it has been revealed.

The non-profit preservation group Video Game Preservation Museum was in discussion with the seller about dumping and preserving the carts. However, it was revealed yesterday that the seller backed out of the arrangement after being contacted by other individuals, presumably with higher offers.

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Given the rich history surrounding the Metal Gear series, it's no surprise that related pieces of merchandise are still being discovered and documented.

Seasoned video game journalist and researcher Bruno de Figueiredo has unearthed and preserved another piece of fascinating Metal Gear ephemera, this time related to the oft-maligned GameCube remake of the first Metal Gear Solid, Twin Snakes.

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One of the biggest challenges when it comes to game preservation is, ironically, the companies which own the assets and code.

As Fallout creator Tim Cain has already revealed, we very nearly lost the source code for the original game, but thankfully that was avoided, with no thanks to the company that made it.

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