Any person who downloads and uses the emulator MAME has seen its initial games list screen. For some fucking reason, instead of booting to the games you can actually play, you start off with this enormous, impossible list of games that it can emulate. On a pure numerical basis, it can emulate 39,000 different roms on the build i've got on my PC, probably way more if you mess about with it. Sure, you can ignore the vast, vast majority of these as either semi-duplicates of the same thing, some trash MAMEdev bizzarely puts their time into (yes, there are over 100 different variants of Deal or No deal gambling machines supported, i have no idea either), and an awful amount of truly terrible games no one cares for.

But the thing is, even if you recklessly discard 95% of that ludicrous figure, the amount of games left is still enormous. The history of Arcade games alone at this point is large enough to make games that brought joy to so many reduced to nothing more than a list entry, flashing by for a few frames as you scroll along for something else. If you're an arcade game in SNK, Sega, or Capcom's pantheon you may be lucky enough to get in a compilation or so. If you're ridiculously lucky and M2's Founder loves you, you might get a bespoke ultra-high quality re-release - and most of those would amount to commercial failure if they actually had to answer to investors.

And then there's Hamster.

As I write this, it has been almost exactly 300 weeks since the Nintendo Switch's launch. And on every single one of those weeks, at midnight JST on Thursday, the ever dilligent, plucky Hamster Corporation has released a title to their arcade archives lineup of games, sometimes multiple. Right now there are 344 games available in total in the series. For comparison, the might of every other developer and combined for the Wii Virtual console was able to put together 75 Arcade games. And only around 400 games all together, the rest all for consoles that shared emulation. On Switch and PS4, Hamster has almost matched the entirety of that catalogue, emulating at this point dozens upon dozens of different models of Arcade Hardware. It is an absolutely insane production rate, and with it, Hamster are ablet to turn the spotlight on those games that fly with the scrollwheels, give them a chance in a spotlight. As you'd expect Hamster's cuts are often deep, with the likes of UPL, NMK, Video System and Nichibitsu among many others getting the spotlight.

And the thing is, it's also good emulation. The existence of MAME (itself a god-tier games preservation project) threatens to make ACA irrelevant. But it doesn't. Whilst not up to quite the ridiculous standards of M2's work, ACA games almost always turn out to be "slightly better than MAME" thanks to online leaderboards, bonus caravan modes, often hashing out the emulation bugs that MAME will have for the game in question and if the game has some quirk, like say with Thunder Dragon 2, where the ship selection is based on 1P/2P side of the cabinet, will contain a function to simplify and generally make things more comfortable. There's a template that's always followed because of course there is, they're pushing out one a week. And at £6 a pop, you definetly get your money's worth.

But there's more to it all than that. If Hamster was doing nothing more than shitting out all these titles to modern platforms, it would be a great service they're providing, but not an amazing one. What makes Hamster special is their revereance.

Every week, on Thursday night, Hamster puts on a stream on youtube. It will usually run for over 4 hours. And they are absolutely joyous. The first two or so hours of every stream consists of discussions with their original developers, many of which have seemingly been dragged out of retirement just to talk about some weirdass tennis game they made in 1988 that two people remember. And it is extensive, with their most recent talks with the staff on Metal Black lasting over two hours, and they'll dig up some truly wild unseen dev materials to talk over too. Absolute peak games preservation content, and what's more, everyone involved seems to be having an absolute whale of a time. The staff at Hamster seemingly have an endless well of enthusiasm for each and every game they port, and are just as excited about a mid tennis game as it's biggest fans 30 years ago.

After the dev details though, comes the truly fun stuff. After a playthrough of the game, they'll proceed to go through the leaderboards of the title. On every console, for both high score and their additional caravan mode. And for every single person that makes it into the top 100, they will bash a drum, ring a tamborine, and shout "NICE PLAY!!". 400 TIMES.

This of course, makes for a rush, as in the twelve or so hours between the game's launch and the stream there's a mad dash to learn some janky arcade game from the early 90s. And it with everything else, all comes together.

Even if it's just for one day, Arcade Archives gives these games, mostly reduced to footnotes, one time in the sun. A few days where tales of the game end up on twitter, a few hours where a bunch of maniacs are grinding out it's scores.

However fleeting, even if just for a small circle of arcadeheads, Hamster raises these forgotten titles to the status of subjects of unconditional, infectious love and enthusiasm. And in the online era, all those streams documenting it are preserved - documenting a celebration of the joy of the forgotten for as long as we'll last.

I absolutely adore it all. Of course not all the releases are as amazing games as Thunder Dragon 2, NMK's eternally underappreciated masterpiece. But that's just my opinion, and with Arcade Archives, I truly get the feeling that with every release they are dredging up someone's favourite game, and they treat it as such. They truly highlight there is more to games preservation and history than the game just being there to play.

Long live Hamster.