Even though it’s from 1998, Crash Bandicoot 3 for the first PlayStation it remains a title of great respect, even on the graphics front. We say this because we have just completed a walk inside the first level, the medieval one. With Noclip.website it is possible to visit old video game worlds for free, and thus take a trip out of reality. You don’t fight, you don’t interact with anyone, you don’t collect objects. You just walk, among the polygons of settings that have made it great Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, PC and other platforms in gaming history. Among the locations available, there are urban settings such as Liberty City from GTA IIIbut also fantasy villages like Besaid from Final Fantasy Mario 64 and Galaxy.
To take this dive into the past, just reach the site via browser and dive into the various virtual worlds offered. You can also immortalize walks, via screens and video clips, to create “eastetic” content perfect for social media. But behind this powerful mix of chill and nostalgiathe project hides a deeper ambition. Noclip.website was born from the desire to preserve videogame worlds. On the site it looks like “digital museum of video game levels”. To get updates, you can join the official Discord channel, where the developer known as “Jasper” informs the small community of almost 1,000 users about the news.
The problem of video game preservation
The preservation of video games is a more than current problem. On the one hand there are the manufacturers who, as companies, are little interested in preserving their titles: it is more useful to revive the old glories through remastering and remakes. On the other hand there are the institutions, which instead do not have the right skills or sensitivity to propose policies for the preservation of old titles and platforms. This is what Andrea Dresseno, president of the Italian Videogame Program association, who curated the Videogame Archive at the Cineteca di Bologna for 12 years, explained to Fanpage.it in an interview. Bottom-up initiatives such as Noclip.website attempt to fill this cultural void.
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It is then undeniable nostalgic value of such a site. Being able to explore the worlds of your childhood with a click is something that triggers powerful memories and sensations. All without the need to perform: as mentioned above, the only possible action within the selected map is to move. No scores, no game overs, just simple walks in virtual worlds that are firmly rooted in the collective gaming imagination.
Even younger generations are not immune to the charm of old video games. Especially for the gross graphics. On Instagram there are numerous pages that reproduce the worlds and aesthetics of gaming from the 1990s and 2000s, such as Grand Shots, which publishes photos of everyday life in Los Santos, the city of GTA San Andreas. In general, there is an increasing interest among twenty-somethings in old-school gaming, because it refers to a less frenetic and less competitive society. A trend that the independent and small production market is exploiting. Just think of Chained Echoes by Matthias Linda inspired by Final Fantasy for Nintendo, or Mouthwashingthe psychological horror from Wrong Organ that uses the graphics of the first PlayStation.
