Aaron C. Thomas

Professor Jacqueline Cano Diaz

ENC 1102

June 12 2025

Slide 1 Title:

The Resurgence of Retro Gaming: How Fans Preserve History Through Writing, Presented by Aaron Thomas, ENC 1102

Slide 2 Why Retro Gaming Writing Matters:

Today, modern gaming companies have shifted to focus more on profit, monetization, and live-service models rather than being something for the player to enjoy. Meanwhile, while that industry is slowly eating itself alive, the retro gaming scene is experiencing a resurgence in popularity! Not just within the realm of playing older games, but actively preserving them as well. Genres like READMEs, patch notes, and fan translations are all key in documenting, restoring and protecting these games for future generations to enjoy.

Slide 3 What Are These Retro Gaming Fan Genres:

Before diving deeper into this detailed analysis, I believe it is important to understand what these genres are. These fan-created texts are considered genres because they are in the same category that new articles and instruction manuals are considered genres, they serve a purpose and follow a fairly standard structure. Starting with READMEs, READMEs are a technical document included with  fan-made patches, translations, and ROM Hacks. It serves to inform the reader of what changes were made, which people were involved and contributed, and why the project exists in the first place. Moving on to Fan-translations, Fan-translations are unofficial efforts by fans to translate retro games from their original language, mainly because a translation to their language doesn't exist yet. A great example of this is Mother 3, it never had an official release, so fans took it upon themselves and created one. These translations are a love letter to the original games, they usually include a README full of their respect for the original creators, along with any other ethical concerns. In a similar function as Fan-translations, we have Retranslations, Retranslations are an attempt by the community to take the official translation from a retro game, and restore dialog that better matches with a true translation. For example, the Chrono Trigger Retranslation is a project made because the original company that was hired to do the translation did a terrible job, fans decided to translate it themselves working off of what they already had so that any mistranslations or inaccurate dialogue was fixed. Last but not least, patch notes, these patch notes are in the same realm as a README, but are less technical and more focused on using the genre of writing to reach as many people as possible by ease of readability. They explain what was changed, what was fixed if they fixed any bugs, and added features. These are extremely common on ROM hacks. All of these genres serve as important cogs within the machine that is retro gaming.

Slide 4 What The Research Says:

Before diving right into the research, I wanted to take a moment and look at what different scholars have said about the subject of fan work. These scholars argue that these fan made genres are a part of something so much bigger than just technical documentation. Scholars like Devitt and Miller talk a lot about how genres are used as social tools, not just to share info, but to respond to real needs in various communities (Devitt). Reiff and Bawarshi also go on to explain that these genres help different people access and feel included within specific communities (Reiff and Bawarshi). Wulf found that nostalgia drives different people to return to older games rather than newer ones, not just as a form of enjoyment, but also to restore and rework them (Wulf et al). Last but not least, Jenkins is said to view these kinds of fan genres as a part of participatory culture, where the fans don't just consume the content, they also create, document, and preserve (Jenkins).

With this in mind, I wanted to personally explore how these various genres preserve and further retro gaming as a whole, which led me to my main question…

Slide 5 Research Question:

“How do different genres like READMEs, translation patches, and patch notes preserve retro gaming culture?”

This question is the main motivation that drives my project, and hopes to highlight how fan writing isn’t just helpful, but also a powerful tool for cultural preservation within this community

Slide 6 What I Collected:

I analyzed a handful of studies, including the Mother 3 README, Chrono Trigger Retranslation README, PlanetVB forums, AtariAge Forums, and Wulf’s study on nostalgia. I chose each of these for a unique purpose the Mother 3 README for its translation and ethical value, Chrono Trigger Retranslation README for its extremely detailed fan retranslation, PlanetVB forums for their rich community discussion, AtariAge Forums for their documentation, and Wulf’s study on nostalgia for better insight into how these communities value nostalgia.

Slide 7 How I Collected:

I utilized a method called genre coding and through this methodology I identified 5 recurring themes. Those were preservation, ethical acknowledgement, community collaboration, documentation, and cultural significance!

Slide 8 Why These Methods:

I believe it is important for the methods I chose to be equally re-creatable, each source is fanmade, widely accessible, and easy to access. They demonstrate authentic preservation efforts by these communities, and by using these forums and public documentation I believe anyone could recreate it.

Slide 9 Results:

In the next five slides, I will be going through each pattern I observed across all sources to give you a deeper explanation of each of them.

Slide 10 Preservation Through Fan Writing:

Preservation is one of the most important aspects to these communities, it is the reason that I, like many others, are still able to enjoy and spread these games to friends and family. One way that these communities have preserved through writing is being able to restore various games that are otherwise inaccessible, for example the Mother 3 Translation. This game wasn’t released to North American audiences with an official translation, so it had to be translated by preservationists within these retrogaming communities. Patch notes are another big reason, since they have a log history, they give anyone reading it a good look into the challenges they faced during development, which is important for someone who would want to try taking on a project like this in the future.

Slide 11 Ethical Acknowledgement:

Ethical acknowledgement of what these fan writing practices are partaking in is extremely important, not just to honor the original creators of this game, but to make sure that respect is also given by the player as well. In the Mother 3 README, the creators of the fan translation bring up various ethical concerns and also urge the player that if an official translation were to become available, to purchase that one immediately. To me, this shows immense support and respect for the original creators.

Slide 12 Community Collaboration:

It is rare for a fan project to be a solo one, usually people turn into teams to handle such endeavors, some examples of this is in the Chrono Trigger Retranslation README, it lists off all the notable people that were a part of the project. Not only this but also feedback, on PlanetVB and AtariAge this is commonplace for different projects and opinions.

Slide 13 Documentation:

Fan writing often includes various changelogs, READMEs, and different genres to communicate issues or problems faced on the different project, to me this reflects a big community identity around documentation. They go further in the Chrono Trigger Retranslation README explaining not just the why, but the how as well. Along with the forum posts, these help new-comers get acclimated with preserving games and the process of proper documentation of these games.

Slide 14 Cultural Value:

Fan writing goes beyond just functional and technical, it's also deeply important to the identity and nostalgia of the community. Some notable examples of this is PlanetVB, the are basically an archive of Atari based retro gaming, they serve to preserve community memory and nostalgia, as well as a few game files. I also believe that Wulf’s study showed that nostalgia is just just emotion, its motivation to preserve.

Slide 15 Why this matters:

Through this presentation I have explained why these genres are used to fill in the gaps for what official archives and institutions have failed to do. These various genres are used not only just for the preservation of games, but the values, memories, and strong passion behind them. This aligns strongly with Jenkins, who delves deeper into the concept of participatory culture, and the fact that fans are not just passive consumers, but active producers of said culture (Jenkins 134). Furthermore this aligns perfectly with Devitt’s theory on the fact that genres can emerge from real world needs, like the fact that modern gaming is currently only for profit rather than fan enjoyment (Devvit 13). Last but definitely not least, Wulf’s argument that nostalgia isn't just emotional, but also functional as well. It motivates and drives fans to preserve and improve fan practices within retro gaming (Wulf 65).

Slide 16 Thank you!:

Thank you for listening, check the appendix for the images, code charts and other photos included, I hope this was informative on how various genres can serve to preserve retrogaming!