Project Description
Preservation64 is a community-built archive dedicated to the long-term preservation of original Commodore 64 (and related 8-bit) software, sourced from real, physical media.
What this wiki offers
Releases documented here is traced back to actual disks. Therefore entries are based on sources.
- Physical recovery – software is dumped directly from original disks, preferably using Kryoflux or Greaseweazle, capturing the raw magnetic flux changes rather than a best-effort sector copy.
- Verified, working images – the raw flux streams are converted into G64 or P64 disk images and checked to actually run in a common emulator (such as VICE) before being published.
- Multiple independent sources per title – where possible, the same release is archived from more than one physical copy. This makes it possible to cross-check dumps against each other and patch damaged or unreadable tracks in one copy using data recovered from another. It also allows to document differences between releases from different publishers or world regions (PAL / NTSC)
- Full provenance, not just a file – each archived copy is documented with a metadata table (publisher/developer, year, number of disks, media type, region, language, PAL/NTSC, working status, who archived it and when, who verified it) plus photos of the box, disk, disk label, and manual, and in-game title/menu/gameplay screenshots.
- Copy protection documentation – identified protection schemes are named and catalogued per release, and some custom/unusual protection formats are analyzed and described in detail on their own pages.
- Manuals and box content – scanned manuals, box content, posters, and adverts are archived alongside the software itself if available, tagged using a standard legend (media, manual, codes, poster, box, boxcontent, screenshot, cover, advert).
Scope
The archive currently covers, among others:
- C64 games – over 1,600 archived retail/budget releases, plus game compilations and unreleased titles
- C64 applications – several hundred archived programs and utility disks
- C64 magazines – disk-based magazine series such as 64'er, Magic Disk 64, and Input 64
- C64 hardware extensions and their accompanying software
Sometimes we get also some VC-20 or C16 software.
Pages for individual releases generally refer to retail/budget versions; software released on compilations is filed separately. Game titles follow the naming scheme used by MobyGames to keep entries consistent and easy to cross-reference – when searching for a title that was only released as part of a compilation, switch the wiki search to search everything.
Who this is for
This wiki is a resource for retro-computing enthusiasts, emulator developers, and archivists who need reliably sourced, verified copies of original C64-era software, documented and cross-checked dumps with a paper trail back to the physical media they came from.
Community
Preservation64 is a genuine community project: dozens of contributors, largely from the Forum64 and Atari 8-bit preservation (a8sp) communities, have donated disks, dumped media, sourced scans, and verified images. See the Contributors page for the full list.
Get involved
See Special:WantedPages for titles that are known to exist but aren't archived yet – sources for some of these may already be in the project's backlog, but certainly not for all of them.
If you're looking for Atari 8-bit material instead, check out the sister project, the Atari 8-bit Software Preservation Initiative.
