Somewhere outside Karlstad in Sweden there is a building that holds tens of thousands of video games, and Digital Foundry's John Linneman has been inside. His DF Retro episode is a tour of the Embracer Games Archive, and a good explanation of what a games archive is actually for, beyond looking impressive.
What it is
The archive's mission, as its CEO David Boström describes it to Linneman, is to build an extensive physical archive of the world's video games that can help research and preservation (00:46). In the video's own words, the ambition is a complete physical collection across every system, plus the hardware to play it. Linneman says the archive now holds more than 90,000 items (01:25), kept on mobile shelving with complete sets of systems like the Super Famicom, SNES and Game Boy, and of the NES and Famicom alongside rarities (02:39).
The rarities
The most memorable stretch is about a console most people have never heard of: the Super A'Can, a 16-bit system from Taiwanese maker Funtech (04:22). Linneman plays several of its games and is honest about them. He finds the machine itself fascinating and of its era (06:24), but says the games mostly look and feel like authentic 16-bit software while being, in design terms, pretty poor (04:54). There is also a lounge with a complete LucasArts collection and boxed oddities such as the FM Towns Marty and TurboDuo (03:20).
Why physical preservation matters
The interesting argument is about use, not display. Boström explains that physical preservation is valuable beyond objects sitting on shelves (06:49), and the archive has a testing and capture station with retro systems, multiple displays and an early-1990s Virtuality VR pod (07:34). He talks about partnerships with universities and gives a concrete example: Plaion, he says, used the collection to test compatibility while developing the Atari 2600+ (08:24). That is the case for an archive in one line: real hardware and original media let people check how things actually behaved.
Bringing old games back
The second interview is with Ali Manzuri, founder and CEO of Clear River Games, which shares the building (09:28). Manzuri talks about producing physical releases of classic games and scanning original materials for them (10:14), and about why physical media still matters to fans and to long-term access (12:10). The headline is *Terranigma*, Quintet's Super Famicom action RPG that never came out in North America. Time Extension reports that Clear River's re-release launches on 14 January 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2 and PC, with physical editions up to a collector's "Gaia Edition".
The catch
Viewers brought their own context to the comments. A large share were sharply critical of Embracer's record with the studios it has owned, contrasting the care spent preserving games with the treatment of the people who make them. Others simply enjoyed the tour and asked Digital Foundry to do more archive visits.
As a piece of preservation work, though, the archive Linneman shows is serious: a real attempt to keep games, hardware and the context around them playable and available to researchers.
From the creators
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