The video game preservationist who runs the Silicon Classics YouTube channel appears to have acquired some Silicon Graphics Indy workstations that were once the property of Acclaim Entertainment — and still have source code for some of the now-bankrupt company’s published games.
Most notably, as Kotaku helpfully points out, it appears the workstations contain source code for Iguana Entertainment’s Nintendo 64 game Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, as well as source code and assets for Sculptured Software’s NBA Jam Extreme.
This is a big deal given that both games are roughly two decades old, though it’s possible there may be other copies of this data floating around somewhere.
The channel’s operator claims to have acquired these workstations “from a Russian in Brooklyn” last summer, who in turn claimed to have purchased them from the Acclaim bankruptcy auction in 2004. It appears the Silicon Classics operator is still going through these workstations, too, so it’s yet unclear what other assets may be found.
The fate of the data pulled from these machines is also a bit hazy. Last month the channel operator published a video saying that, due to legal concerns, he wasn’t interested in publishing the contents of these workstations online for free. Instead, he would sell some of the materials online in order to temper his legal risks (and make a bit of cash back on his investment.)
However, in the video detailing the NBA Jam Extreme source code find he says he’s looking into the possibility of working with the Internet Archive, or with the CEO of old game revival shop Night Dive Studios.
“So for everyone who was concerned about this stuff getting, you know, lost to time or whatever, please don’t worry about that,” he said. “It’s getting taken care of.”