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SUDDEN DESU is a blog dedicated to digital archaeology and related topics, such as data preservation, hardware emulation and the culture/history of the video game industry and the players who enjoy the games.

What is Digital Archaeology?

Digital archaeology is part of a wider field of study called archaeogaming. Archaeogaming considers video games as constructs to which archaeological study can be applied, both internally as part of the game experience and externally as data and physical media. Our corner of this field deals with examining the data itself as an “archaeological site” from which we can excavate artifacts to tell us more about the software itself. We can learn how a program is structured, how it uses or doesn’t use hardware, about features that may have been planned but cancelled part way, even about the personality of the devs themselves by way of easter eggs.