Ken Akamatsu, a member of the House of Councilors, has begun legal preservation of past games. Leave all games playable for posterity

Ken Akamatsu, who was elected to the Diet in the 26th House of Councilors election, is eager to save the games released and distributed in the past. On July 13th, he posted on his Twitter account, We have decided to form a team of experts to embark on'legal preservation of past games in a playable state'... He stated that he is seriously working on archiving old game content such as retro games.

Mr. Akamatsu is a manga artist who has worked on popular works such as Love Hina and Magister Negi Magi!. He has continued to oppose expression restrictions while writing manga, and ran for the 26th House of Councilors election, which was executed on July 10, with opposition to creative expressions. He was the first cartoonist to be elected a member of parliament, collecting 528,029 votes from all over the country.

Akamatsu has talked about his future prospects on his YouTube channel. The live stream on July 7 enthusiastically talks about his ambition to save all the games in the world ready to play. Many of the games that have appeared in the world, such as retro games and games for feature phones, are currently difficult to play. He wants to save those games in some way and aim to improve the environment and the law so that they can be played remotely.

• The reference to saving the game is from 29 minutes 50 seconds.

Publications such as books and CDs have already been collected and stored at the National Diet Library, and digitized materials can be viewed via the Internet. Mr. Akamatsu seems to be planning a system that allows him to play games from a remote location by expanding the mechanism of the National Diet Library to the game field. Akamatsu is also eager to save not only retro games but also games that are lost due to the end of service, such as social games and online games. He seems to be aiming to preserve the history of the game in the future and keep it playable.

Mr. Akamatsu has a track record of launching a website on the preservation of out-of-print comics in the past. In 2010, he established J-Comi Co., Ltd. (currently J-Comic Terrace), which he represents, and the website J-Komi (currently J-Comi) that distributes out-of-print manga, light novels, TRPG rule books, etc. as electronic books. Manga Library Z) was opened. It is a site that allows anyone to view works that are difficult to preserve in the future, such as out of print and unbooked books, with the permission of the author. Mr. Akamatsu, who once launched an out-of-print archive site in the manga field, seems to be struggling to achieve something close in the game field this time.

There are not a few organizations in Japan that aim to store game materials. Game Culture Preservation Institute that records culture such as the history and genealogy of video games, Game Conservation Association that aims to preserve media produced in the early days of video games, where are the games that have been released so far? Various organizations, such as the Ritsumeikan University Game Research Center, which investigates and organizes how the games are held, are working to preserve the history of the game from various perspectives. With the entry of Akamatsu, a member of parliament, into a field where many people are working in the private sector, it may be possible to take a more in-depth approach.

An archive of retro games envisioned by Ken Akamatsu, the first manga artist to be a member of parliament. Online games that require server operation may have some technical difficulties. Also, in old titles, the production data itself may be dissipated and the location may not be known. It's a concept that seems to have many obstacles, but it's a dream for gamers. I would like to pay attention to future trends as to how Mr. Akamatsu will realize this ambition.