I hope all of our readers are healthy and well. This week was a mixed bag, we have both news on shut-downs and preservation so sit tight!
Starting things off BANDAI NAMCO Classic IP, a Japan-exclusive service for indie and student devs to develop their own games using classic arcade characters, is scheduled for shutdown on the 31st of March. News Announcement: http://blog.niconicommons.jp/2019/01/post-169.html
The No Context Pac-Man Twitter/Discord Server have worked tirelessly to spread the word to as many preservation groups as possible and we hope to provide further updates on their progress some time later this week.
Next off was another shut-down announcement, Capcom-Unity will be closing their forum and most of their social features throughout several phases in April and May.
A more hopeful development in these dark times has been the launch of the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library initiative. With the goal of making textbooks and other learning materials widely accessible to students unable to travel to a physical library given the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak, the program will allow users to borrow books by bypassing the usual waitlist requirement.
This is complemented with a number of other changes throughout the site such as the limit on borrowing at most 5 books per user being extended to 10.
Last but not least, BlueMaxima has released another Flashpoint Status Update as we enter April. The focus is on collecting games from Sploder, a once-popular website for creating games using Flash, as well as what’s in store for the 8.0 release. Be sure to check out Flashpoint Status Update: April 2020 for more details.
Stay tuned for next week’s summary, where we’ll hopefully see each other again same time next week at EST 9 AM!
