Prototopia - Video Game Preservation Community

With the amount of new people lately doing stupid things, and destroying history. I've decided to put together a simple guide on best practices for dumping betas.

For most disc based systems redump.org have thankfully covered most steps, while their guides are strict we feel they're best and their guides plus tools can be found here: http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=Dumping_Guides

We do understand some people may not have the correct drive types, so in these cases we highly suggest dumping with an means available. DVDisaster is a very handy tool and can dump most disc formats to an ISO. This sadly won't work on Dreamcast/PS1/Some PS2 games or the likes of 360 retail discs but will work for most other disc types. In the case of PS1/PS2 discs with multiple tracks IMGBurn will work by dumping as a BIN/CUE. Later versions of IMGBurn contain adware so older versions are recommended.

For Hard Drive based...

With the recent lack of care in some sites and the inability to even join to get help, we have decided to open the doors to people that need our help or wish to contribute to the efforts.

Upon registration, you will receive a message asking for additional information about the projects you have worked on and the communities you are in. While you don't have to answer these, it would make the validation process easier.

The purpose of this community is to teach and help people in the general preservation effort on video games. We intend to make this place enjoyable for everyone and avoid people who scam, hack or exhibit toxic behaviour.

Happy New Year!

So I am totally against Shadowboot, as it's normally used by clueless kids who are destroying history contained on HDD's but this one I'll allow as it can help us preserve retail discs if you don't have a DVD drive. This was passed on to be shared as people don't understand the do not share requests.

This will not enable you to play online, we don't allow rubbish like that here.

Features/instructions

1. 17150 Shadowboot
2. Retail DVD Key
3. Place HDD Partition Root
4. Do Not Update with it on HDD
5. This is for XDK recovery 21256.12

Download: https://mega.nz/#!gNdXQaiT!yZMDdN4jF3yKKT5sbwKAQbxBDW3q-AXqxDQlyKkvf-g

Greetings! For years the Xbox 360 Alpha Development Hardware was cloaked in secrecy, details about this piece of hardware were scarce, and only a handful of pictures existed, much less of the XenonOS itself. Team XeCanada is proud to announce that we have obtained and analyzed a hard drive image from a working Xenon Development Kit. Hey, we’ve been on this project over the last few months working out all the kinks. Now, we can finally look forward to a release of XenonOS. This hard drive image will give people the ability to create their own alpha hardware and restore genuine kits which were long shoved aside. With your help, we plan to raise the funds (650usd) to recuperate the cost of the hard drive image, and project a Christmas/NYE release. Linked below is the Wiki containing everything involved with extensive detail, as well as a link to the fundraiser itself.

Credits go out to the following for their contribution to the project

AlphaDisruptor/Alpha (Wiki and extensive...

It is with great news we can finally share our first video for Prototopia!

The first video is based on Backyard Heroes and was made by the same team as HaloMegaBloks you should checkout @Borman's video for that!

You can watch the raw gameplay or voice over versions below. Enjoy!

Commentry

Raw gameplay

This guides a work in progress. It doesn't cover data recovery at this time.

It'll work on most hard drive based systems even if encrypted.

DISCLAIMER: if you mess it up, we are not responsible! Perform this at own risk!

1. Most important! DO NOT EVEN USE THE SYSTEM! Using/Booting it can cause data to be overwritten/lost permanently, many of you may be eager to dig into the contents but this is how data is lost.
2. Install Ubuntu Desktop 16.4 on a seperate drive, Windows can be risky and damage data to the point it is permanently lost! Linux/Ubuntu is the safest and best free option.
3. Make sure your current HDD has enough free space to dump the drive you are wanting to preserve, If the drive is 80GB you need 80GB exactly free, more is best.
4. Remove the hardrive from the system being cloned.
5. Connect the HDD needing to be preserved to your Linux/Ubuntu setup. DO NOT CONNECT IT WITH...

As you're all aware, we had a long discussion about the future of the site a few months back and we decided that it's not worth keeping up. The scene was crashing due to all the childish people, the scammers, the people attacking game developers along with the influx of idiots who damage preservation and what it stands for.

We feel all information should be archived. It was decided to make an HTML archive of OG and release, but due to how XenForo works we couldn't get the CSS working as the file had letters Windows/Linux wouldn't allow so we tried fixing but gave up.

We're releasing the OG archive as is, the CSS is broken, but the posts that are public should all be here. anything that was private, such as builds which were contributor rank only, have not been backed up in this archive. Pretty much this archive is what google/guests could see.

You can download the archive here, https://archive.obscuregamers.com/ObscureGamers.com-August-28th-2018.zip

While things have...

Greetings and welcome to Prototopia! Your new home for video game preservation.

What is Prototopia?

Prototopia is the new home of video game preservation, development and research into gaming history, brought to you by the former team behind ObscureGamers. We aim not to be the biggest, but to be the best.

What is our goal?

Our primary goal is to work together to preserve and research important parts in video gaming history. Prototopia is the new home for those looking for a mature, civilized and coordinated platform.

All important finds will be announced on our blog/front page with important research.