title: A Gift to Another Age: Evaluating Virtual Machines for the Preservation of Video Games at MoMA
abstract: This preservation project investigates the use of virtual machines for the preservation of video games. From MoMA’s collection, Rand and Robyn Miller’s classic adventure game Myst (1993) is used as a sample record to evaluate the performance of four different emulation options for the Mac OS 9 operating system—SheepShaver, QEMU, Apple’s “Classic Environment,” and Yale’s University Library's Emulation-as-a-Service-Infrastructure (EaaSI) platform. Serving as the control for the experiment, Myst is first documented running natively on an original PowerMac G4 and iMac G3 at MoMA. The native performance is then compared with each emulation software. Finally, a fully configured virtual machine is packaged as a single file and tested in different contemporary computing environments. More generally, this project clarifies the risks and challenges that arise when using virtual machines for the long-term preservation of computer and software-based art.