When I need to shut off my brain, I turn to reality TV, specifically any show that revolves around finding hidden treasures in piles of junk — basically everything on A&E at this point. The producers of these shows coach their casts into childish conflicts for the sake of drama, but the merchandise is the real star. Every now and then someone discovers something incredible — a first edition of The Old Man and the Sea, original sketches by Picasso, ancient artifacts — items of real historical value. The men and women of these shows take their newly found treasure and sell it to the highest bidder, and no one objects, but what would happen if they found a historically valuable game — like an unreleased Resident Evil title for the Game Boy Color.
Video game fans long ago reconciled themselves to the fact that they would never be able to play hundreds of different historically significant games on their original systems — especially those that came close but never saw retail shelves. Over time, a small community grew around tracking down prototypes and unreleased titles. These lost games would otherwise sit in storage until magnetic and optical data degradation rendered them unplayable, destroying a piece of video game history in the process. There are only so many Stadium Events cartridges out there, and original Akalabeth floppies probably died long ago, effectively making emulation the only way to play these and many other classic titles. This emulation can be legitimate and endorsed by rights holders — think of the virtual console and countless retro collections released on modern console — or done through third party emulators and illegally downloaded files and ROMs. Since many of these important games never received a proper release and publishers are often selective about what titles they make available, the latter option won out amongst the small lost games community, which needed to cooperate and focus their efforts in order to uncover new finds.
