Games preservation is … everything. From physical copies of installation disks that are too fragile to be put into a 3.5" drive (assuming you can find any of those still functioning), emulation of games so that people can have the experience of playing them or watching them being played, to source code, to developers notes, to digging through the code and finding unused things, promo videos, video game magazines, advertisements, etc.
There’s entire genre’s of YouTube videos where an old NES game is played and tinkered with in ways that change the experience. Some of them are as simple as “lets try these 100 game genie codes while playing Super Mario Brothers” and as complex as “lets mess with the hex code for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and change hit boxes in the “Dam(n)!” level and the momentium/gravity the jump mechanic. None of that would be possible without this entire system of hardware being horded, emulaters being emulating, etc.
I’ve often wondered “Why a game does this? Was this an intentional choice by the dev team or just what happened due to needing to slap something together and get it to market?” and its a shame that for all of the oldest games its likely to be impossible to know.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
