[laumars]

Most of that last post is taking sentences I've posted out of the context of the paragraph they were posted in just so you can argue an unrelated point I never made to begin with. Of course I think old games should be preserved and of course I think source code serves greater perpose than just for academic curiosity. I never claimed otherwise and don't appreciate you claiming I did just to win an internet debate.

Also, I have reverse engineered games before. Albeit on a very small scale. I've also ported existing code on a number of occasions. I'm aware of the positives and negatives of both methods. Sometimes though, it's just easier to reimplement something than port old incompatible code to a new platform because the old code might have the graphics calls embedded in with the core game engine, and what not. Thus meaning that huge chunks of the core game engine would need to be rewritten regardless. Or in instances where the core game logic is written in 16bit assembly, so couldn't be ported regardless.

I'm not saying having access to the source isn't an advantage, what I'm saying is that sometimes it's not always as much help to the port as you claim with your generalisations.

Edit, freeing the art and sfx resources would be a massive help in almost all instances though