Preservation keeps adventure history alive.

Internet Archive

One of the most important digital preservation efforts anywhere on the web, the Internet Archive provides access to software, books, scans, audio, video, and archived websites. For adventure history, it is especially valuable for period magazines, software collections, and web material that may no longer exist in its original form.

• Historic software and documentation
• Magazine and manual preservation
• Website capture through the Wayback Machine

IFDB

The Interactive Fiction Database serves as a major catalogue and recommendation resource for interactive fiction. It brings together game listings, reviews, authorship information, tags, and cross-links that help modern readers and researchers navigate a very large body of work.

• Game entries and metadata
• Community reviews and lists
• Useful starting point for cataloguing work

IF Archive

The IF Archive has spent decades preserving the history and practice of interactive fiction. It contains games, tools, source material, articles, walkthroughs, and a huge range of community resources that would be difficult to reconstruct once lost.

• Games and development tools
• Articles, essays, and support material
• Long-term cultural memory for the IF community

ScummVM

ScummVM is especially significant because it is not merely emulating old hardware. Instead, it reimplements supported game engines so that many classic adventures can still be played on modern systems with better accessibility and portability.

• Engine reimplementation rather than straight emulation
• Supports many classic adventures
• Vital for long-term playability

DOSBox

DOSBox recreates a DOS-compatible environment and remains one of the most important tools for keeping older PC adventures accessible. For many players, it has been the bridge between original DOS releases and modern computers.

• Preserves the ability to run DOS titles
• Important for many late-1980s and 1990s adventures
• Often part of modern curation workflows

CASA

The Classic Adventures Solution Archive is one of the most valuable community-led resources in the field, covering classic text adventures across multiple systems and languages. It preserves not only solutions, but also hints, maps, reviews, and obscure corners of adventure history that might otherwise slip away.

• Solutions, maps, and hints
• Coverage of obscure and forgotten titles
• Strong relevance to classic text adventures

World of Spectrum

For Spectrum-era adventure history, World of Spectrum remains a major preservation landmark. It preserves software, hardware references, magazines, books, publisher records, and the wider culture around the platform, making it extremely valuable for context as well as raw data.

• Games, publishers, people, magazines, and books
• A strong example of platform-specific preservation
• Useful for company and release research

Wayback Machine

Old websites are often the only surviving home for interviews, fan documentation, dead download pages, and project notes. The Wayback Machine is indispensable when reconstructing vanished scenes, defunct groups, or the changing public history of a game or company.

• Captures earlier versions of websites
• Useful for tracing lost pages and dead links
• Important for modern research workflows

What Sidon can add

The preservation projects above do essential work. Sidon Adventure Archive can complement them by adding museum-style interpretation: exhibit pages, creator interviews, packaging galleries, technical notes, cross-linked company histories, and editorial context that helps visitors understand why these materials matter.

• Curated exhibits rather than raw listings
• Interviews and first-hand testimony
• Historical context alongside preserved artefacts

Dedicated project exhibits

Create individual museum-style pages for major preservation efforts such as Retro-eXo, the Internet Archive, IFDB, IF Archive, CASA, ScummVM, and DOSBox, each with editorial notes, screenshots, historical importance, and links for further research.

Scans, catalogues, and packaging

Preserve brochures, catalogue scans, box variants, adverts, inlays, manuals, and magazine coverage. Physical material often reveals release order, platform spread, pricing, and marketing language that databases alone cannot show.

Formats, engines, and interpreters

Document the technical side of preservation as well: interpreter projects, reverse engineering work, disk and tape formats, copy protection notes, and the practical work required to keep old games running.