Vanishing Culture: Preserving Gaming History
Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2025 3:44 am
The following guest post from legendary software designer Jordan Mechner is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
In 1993, I was trying to learn everything I could about the 1914 Orient Express, to help our team recreate it accurately in The Last Express (the game I did after Prince of Persia). We were dumbfounded when the French railway company SNCF told us they’d dumped most of their pre-war archives for lack of warehouse space in the 1970s. The train timetables, floor plans and photographs we coveted had gone to landfill.
Watch a demo trailer for The Last Express
Like most kids of my generation, I grew up assuming that things e-commerce photo editing books, video games, music and movies, newspapers and magazines, once published, wouldn’t just disappear. If I ever wanted to revisit that 1981 issue of Softalk magazine, or read The Manchester Guardian‘s front page the day World War I broke out, surely some library somewhere would have a copy?
In reality, cultural artifacts are findable only so long as someone takes on the active responsibility to preserve, catalog and share them. Once gone, they’re gone forever. Historical oblivion is the default, not the exception.
That summer of 1993, as a last resort, we placed a classified ad in a French railway enthusiasts magazine: “Seeking information about 1914 Orient Express.” One issue later, our phone rang.
The voice on the other end proposed that we meet in their club, in the basement of Paris Gare de l’Est. We passed through a glass door marked “No Access” to discover a cavern of rooms filled with vintage railway posters, books, and the biggest working model train set I’ve ever seen. Our informants—a pair of retired French railway employees—were waiting.
We explained what we were looking for, and what SNCF had told us. A glint appeared in the two gentlemen’s eyes. The elder of the pair leaned forward. “They think they destroyed the archives,” he said. “We took ‘em home. We’ve got ‘em.”
In 1993, I was trying to learn everything I could about the 1914 Orient Express, to help our team recreate it accurately in The Last Express (the game I did after Prince of Persia). We were dumbfounded when the French railway company SNCF told us they’d dumped most of their pre-war archives for lack of warehouse space in the 1970s. The train timetables, floor plans and photographs we coveted had gone to landfill.
Watch a demo trailer for The Last Express
Like most kids of my generation, I grew up assuming that things e-commerce photo editing books, video games, music and movies, newspapers and magazines, once published, wouldn’t just disappear. If I ever wanted to revisit that 1981 issue of Softalk magazine, or read The Manchester Guardian‘s front page the day World War I broke out, surely some library somewhere would have a copy?
In reality, cultural artifacts are findable only so long as someone takes on the active responsibility to preserve, catalog and share them. Once gone, they’re gone forever. Historical oblivion is the default, not the exception.
That summer of 1993, as a last resort, we placed a classified ad in a French railway enthusiasts magazine: “Seeking information about 1914 Orient Express.” One issue later, our phone rang.
The voice on the other end proposed that we meet in their club, in the basement of Paris Gare de l’Est. We passed through a glass door marked “No Access” to discover a cavern of rooms filled with vintage railway posters, books, and the biggest working model train set I’ve ever seen. Our informants—a pair of retired French railway employees—were waiting.
We explained what we were looking for, and what SNCF had told us. A glint appeared in the two gentlemen’s eyes. The elder of the pair leaned forward. “They think they destroyed the archives,” he said. “We took ‘em home. We’ve got ‘em.”