i will not delete my games

Our lives are already so fleeting that intentionally forgetting memories can be devastating. Still, it’s important not to beat ourselves up over these decisions. It’s hard to know what we’ll find valuable from our pasts as we grow and change as people. I used to write dense, hand-made books comic books when I was young and amassed a large collection of my own silly stories. I recycled them all out of worry that future me would find them too embarrassing to hold on to, and was doing them favor by throwing them away early - boy do I regret that decision. It wasn’t until many years later though did I realize how important that loss was after gaining the self confidence to better appreciate myself and my interests. The few things I still have help ground me in a continuity of who I am and how I got here to remind me I’ve been a person long before and will (hopefully) continue to be after this moment in time.

This was interesting and touching, thanks for sharing!

I still own the very first e-mail I created back in the very early 00s. I've been consistently sending myself e-mails with photos, files and short commentaries since then (back then there weren't services like Drive  or Dropbox). One of the best ideas I had as a kid, I now use it also to mark the exact date and time I conclude every art piece/game project of mine in case I need them for legal purposes. I feel like it satisfies a scratch for me no common journal or diary ever could, and I feel no need to share anything in there but with my partner. Maybe someday I'll open it as one opens an album and show it to someone much younger, walking through the tunnel of time with them, but for now simply recording the little precious details of life through the decades in all it's weirdness, happiness and sadness gives me plenty of contentment.

A wonderful sentiment. A person's works are a part of them, and need not be discarded!

I don't want to sound condescending, but have you tried the browser plugin?

hxxp://www.microworlds.com/plugin/index.html

If that didn't work, my next step would be to get my hands on an old windows laptop and install the trial version, which should also install the necessary system files to run the game.

A windows virtualization system on mac may also work.

i will keep this manifesto close

I love this. I want to add a lot more of my words for comment but first before anything else I want to let you know something though, you can definitely implement ruffle flash emulator into frankensteining sea quest back to life. You can then play it from that, ruffle.

Much of this resonated with me. Most of my early QBASIC games are lost, not because I actively deleted them, but because of simple neglect and indifference. When I made those games, I backed them up on 3.5" floppy disks because that was the best I could do at the time, but when I had access to CD/DVD-writing technology I didn't bother archiving such old works of art that no longer seemed important in my artistic journey. I only got back into making games thanks to the growth of indie dev communities online. But in the interum, all those floppy disks had degraded away, as floppy disks do. Like tears in rain. :V

I still have two games from that time - including the second game I ever made, from 1995 - only because I'd posted their code on a web forum before the death of whichever hard drive I had my old .BAS files on. I'm more careful about backing things up now - even the cringy stuff that seems irrelevant - and even my most recent hard drive failure earlier this year did NOT spell doom for my current collection of unfinished game projects!

that urge to wipe your own hard drive is a feeling I can very much relate to. Today I learned that the files of one game are forever gone and I cant get it back. Thanks for making this :)

This is great, I am a digital packrat, but I still very much relate. I have so many things I can't open anymore. 

My dad showed me a rubbermaid bin full of cursive written fanfiction I wrote as a preteen and I told him he had to keep it. I have no idea why. I'm convinced I'll use it some day?

This reminds me of a short story I created and destroyed years later because of embarrasment. I don't regret it, but I can't help but think of it as I read your book.

I also lost a lot and a lot of my work over the years. I kept as much as I can, but life happens. Cloud didn't exist. Haha~

nostalgic and touching,

i see your text as a visually cool way to say "be tolerant and kind with your past-self"

and that's a great decision