Preservation, elsewhere

ENCORE is a small corner of a much bigger effort. If you care about old games, these people do it at a scale we don't, and they deserve your support.

Video Game History Foundation

gamehistory.org — a non-profit that collects, preserves and shares the history of video games: original source code, development materials, magazines and marketing, and the stories of the people who made them. It also argues for better legal access to old games for researchers and libraries.

GOG Preservation Program

gog.com/en/gog-preservation-program — GOG's commitment to keeping a growing list of classic games working on current versions of Windows, maintained by GOG itself. Buying old games from stores that do this keeps the work funded.

Good Old Games

gog.com — a store for DRM-free games, with a long catalogue of classics. When one of the games in our collection is available there, that is a fine way to bring your own copy.

Source ports and reimplementations

Many games live on because someone rebuilt them: OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe), OpenRCT2 (RollerCoaster Tycoon 2), OpenMW (Morrowind), and the source ports that grew around Doom and Quake once their code was released. ENCORE stands on their shoulders — the idea is theirs; we only try to do it faster, and for games nobody has got to yet.