Yes, the full 8-bit and 16-bit libraries were made into Rom's many years back. It's not in question.
I think the only question is: As companies seek to take down ROM distributing websites, how many will survive into the future? We could find ourselves in a position where games once preserved are lost as the means to keep them distributed and archived goes away. We all know many of us have relatives who wouldn't know what to keep in the event of our passing. I seem to recall that's how we lost the masters for the black & white anime Amazing Three- the owner's wife threw them away cleaning out after he was gone.
I definitely remember a MJR pickup video where we went to get some old PC games he found on Craigslist, and discovered the owner also had a massive boxed NES collection. Keyword 'had', as she assumed the console stuff was worthless & had been using those games as kindling. In Nerd & Nintendo Central Seattle, someone was burning NES games believing that's all they were worth! What hope do a few hard drives of ROMs have against a clueless family member if proper boxed games can still be treated that way?
I think it's safe to say that enough gamers have entire consoles worth of game libraries on hard drives, flash drives, phones, etc. in ROM form that we will never fully lose those games.
As was pointed out: I'd be more worried about all those games that are on servers that will be shut down eventually...what will happen to those? The best-selling games will probably be re-released in future generations, but what about those niche titles? Or the ones that weren't marketed well? Or the ones that just weren't very good, but for whatever reason you love anyways?
But only very few people will have the unknown games wich are trash even for those 8 and 16 bit libraries.
Some people that pick and choose will be like that, sure. But plenty of people just download the entire libraries. You can get library packs off of torrent sites and such.
that doesn't chance the fact that of the online services of back in the day of both nintendo and sega certain titles are still missing of the 16 bit library.
So I guess there isn't a full 16 bit library wich has been preserved there are still missing games out there maybe even from some physical games of the 8 16 bit era
Heck 1,5 years ago a few of those kirby mini games have been found on certain japanese exclusive storage carts for those downloads not to mention that there are still many missing games including quite a few of those kirby mini games.
Nintendo's mascot kirby has a massive fanbase and many dedicated people who want to preserve it yet it hasn't and it seems to be lost some games are still missing unplayable. not everything can be preserved and this was an example with many dedicated people. For download only games especially if the interest is low titles will get lost It's not something that can be prevented.
the snes satelliview and it's kirby games is a nice example of games being lost of a franchise with a huge fanbase and many 16 bit fans wich try their hardest to preserve them.
I find it really hard to believe that all crappy 16 bit games or even 8 bit games are preserved if you would like to have my opinion especially if you would consider that games of popular franchises such as kirby are not even preserved yet. Maybe Nintendo has them somewhere but on the otherhand the missing games might only be left in some of those carts. however considering that the snes settalaview wasn't that proffitable the games might have been trashed by Nintendo anyways since there is no reason for keeping them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW37Zlh1nygIt's not all about rainbows and sunshine It's not like everything is available at this very moment or ever will. 16 bit has a huge fanbase and even than things might still be lost forever. Things will vanish It's just how the cookie crumbles. Plenty of download only pc games wich are already lost forever.
