It depends on the person who owns it and the expense/level of effort required.
Some game collectors are motivated by the idea of owning something that no one else has. For decades, there were no preserved, shares versions of Marble Madness 2 available for that reason, but looks like that finally changed last year.[1] Akka Arrh was a similar case.
If a collector is interested in preserving and sharing, there's still the expense/effort factor. For an arcade game, they need to buy (or find someone with) specialized equipment, and may need to desolder chips from the board. I.e. there's a non-zero chance of destroying a one-off artifact, even when performed by people with experience.
The production ROMs for Discs of Tron have been preserved for quite awhile.[2]
However, if this was a test machine, it would be neat for someone with the necessary gear to dump it and see if the code is different.
blincoln|2 years ago
Some game collectors are motivated by the idea of owning something that no one else has. For decades, there were no preserved, shares versions of Marble Madness 2 available for that reason, but looks like that finally changed last year.[1] Akka Arrh was a similar case.
If a collector is interested in preserving and sharing, there's still the expense/effort factor. For an arcade game, they need to buy (or find someone with) specialized equipment, and may need to desolder chips from the board. I.e. there's a non-zero chance of destroying a one-off artifact, even when performed by people with experience.
The production ROMs for Discs of Tron have been preserved for quite awhile.[2]
However, if this was a test machine, it would be neat for someone with the necessary gear to dump it and see if the code is different.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/05/after-30-years-the-wo...
[2] e.g. http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/dettaglio_mame.php?game_name=dot...