Gaming preservation group "Forest of Illusion" abruptly closes down

[MaxiBash]

It's certainly a sad day for anyone among the gaming preservation corners of the internet. Forest of Illusion, a group who's been preserving and hosting prototype and internal game content for six years, abruptly pulled its Twitter, YouTube channel, Discord server and website offline at around 01:00am CEST. Their final contribution before closing down was on April 25th, releasing never before seen ROMs of LodgeNet's Nintendo 64 Gateway System. Only their uploads have remained on the Internet Archive.

As of note, Nintendo has had nothing to do with the group's sudden closure. In an official announcement published on the Internet Archive as a separate item after their Twitter came back online reads as follows:

As we reach the end of a 6-year journey dedicated to game preservation, we must regretfully announce the closure of Forest of Illusion. We've come to the decision that we can no longer keep the site running. This is for a few reasons, but is primarily due to not being able to provide the necessary time and energy needed to maintain our cherished platform. We express our sincerest gratitude to our supporters and followers. Thank you for being part of this extraordinary adventure, and thank you to all past and present patrons who helped us get to where we are.

All previous releases (along with their original documentation) can be found here via archive.org. Enjoy!

togemet2, the group's founder, has also stated that they didn't have the energy or funds to keep the group going. The site was being paid out of his own pocket with donations barely keeping it up, and the person responsible for running the site's backend is also moving on to other things. Neither could he find anyone else trustworthy enough to keep it afloat. The reason on why everything was shut down so suddenly is something the group wants to stay quiet about for the time being. All uploaded items will stay up on the Internet Archive, and there's plans to reupload the group's YouTube catalog as well.

Lets all compliment the group's maintainers and what they've done to preserving video game history. Without them, we wouldn't have gotten some bonkers stuff. What's your favorite piece of video game history they've preserved?

 

[rvtr]

Forest of Illusion has always been the best proto collection. People could have their own dumps on their respective profiles, but I don't think a bunch of scattered dumps would have had the same impact as FOI. It feels like FOI brought some organization to all the files, while also bringing collectors together to help preserve new things.

While I never had anything to contribute, FOI led me to meeting some dumpers who I'd now consider friends. Those friends have let me waste my money buy development hardware from them, and they've inspired me to do a little documentation on things myself. I got to see a whole new world of "top secret" Nintendo things. I've always wanted to be in some way a part of the community (even if I only can know a few people) and FOI helped make that happen.

It's sad to see the website gone, but the content will forever remain on my hard drive. Thanks FOI for all your hard work over the years!

 

[duwen]

That's a real shame. FOI and their various contributors were doing essential work in the realm of preservation. Hopefully something else will fill the void.

 

[SylverReZ]

FOI will always be a name in history. Amazing efforts they put into preserving loads of new things for the public eye.

 

[Jayro]

Their readme sounded pathetic tbh.

It summarized like this to me:
"We bit off more than we could chew, oops. Thanks, and peace out. "

 

[Harsky]

I always kept thinking that one day FOI will drop the ultimate prototype out of the blue. The N64 Mother 3 build.

 

[rvtr]

Their readme sounded pathetic tbh.

It summarized like this to me:
"We bit off more than we could chew, oops. Thanks, and peace out. "

I don't know much and I'm not sure FOI wants people to pick things apart, but it sounds like it's much more serious. It does not seem like a pathetic reason why they stopped.

(source: RGD Wiki Discord)
From what we can know, it's shit inducing levels of bad, nobody wants to talk about it, and it forced them to shut everything down. They're being lighthearted here, but it is probably much more than "biting off more than they can chew". Sounds like something awful in the real world, which is definitely not covered in that readme. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the readme was a hasty and gentle way of telling people they can't continue without acknowledging whatever big thing is going on. And it's quite understandable if so. I don't think they should need to say what happens.

Though I suppose it's not really our place to speculate.

 

[Wolfy]

Their readme sounded pathetic tbh.

It summarized like this to me:
"We bit off more than we could chew, oops. Thanks, and peace out. "

Do tell what from their readme gave off that notion. Having to keep a platform up isn't an easy task, especially for trying to recover and preserve seemingly lost/unknown content.

Honestly getting to play around with Dinosaur Planet was amazing to me!

Edit: They found Iwata cryo-frozen and now their being hunted by Ninty.

 

[Reploid]

Why shut youtube account? Can't it just stay on? It's free to do so.

 

[rvtr]

Why shut youtube account? Can't it just stay on? It's free to do so.

Again, they aren't willing to explain why, but it sounds like they do have a serious reason (as in more than just money, time, or energy) for all this. Though it's best to accept their wishes of closing that and not to pry too much.

 

[MaxiBash]

Why shut youtube account? Can't it just stay on? It's free to do so.

the guy who operated the channel bailed as soon as he heard the news. togemet2 doesn't seem to understand either why he did this.

 

[SylverReZ]

I think that was a dumb move for togemet2 to delete his YouTube and Twitter accounts though. However, I feel like Nintendo is trying to take legal action and track him down.

 

[MaxiBash]

I think that was a dumb move for togemet2 to delete his YouTube and Twitter accounts though. However, I feel like Nintendo is trying to take legal action and track him down.

1. I think me and several others have repeated a few times now that there's a reason that he can't disclose right now other than that we'll shit ourselves.
2. If there was legal action against him, his Internet Archive account would've been sent down the drain as well with hundreds of gigabytes on uploads. I've put this in bold text on the page as well.

Whatever the underlying reason may be for the site's sudden shutdown, we'll probably don't know for quite some time, and it'll be that way.

 

[rvtr]

2. If there was legal action against him, his Internet Archive account would've been sent down the drain as well with hundreds of gigabytes on uploads. I've put this in bold text on the page as well.

Even if there was legal action, I and a few others have everything that was uploaded to FOI. I don't think there will be any risk of loosing things.

 

[Wolfy]

Don't know if anyone has, but should whatever's remaining on Archive.org become at risk of deletion, someone should try and keep a copy of it. I've got the Dinosaur planet and probably many others, but all of it? Can't let any of it become lost again after all they've done.

 

[rvtr]

Don't know if anyone has, but should whatever's remaining on Archive.org become at risk of deletion, someone should try and keep a copy of it. I've got the Dinosaur planet and probably many others, but all of it? Can't let any of it become lost again after all they've done.

See my post just above yours lmao. Me and a few others have all of it. I'll put up mirrors at some point in the future and I'm sure everyone else will do the same.

Still wise to make your own backups though.

 

[Wolfy]

See my post just above yours lmao. Me and a few others have all of it. I'll put up mirrors at some point in the future and I'm sure everyone else will do the same.

Still wise to make your own backups though.

Ah gotcha, beat me to the punch in saying XD

Good to know it's safe, it's the sort of thing that is gone, and then someone grabs it off a decade old external hard drive and uploads it.

 

[Viri]

Did they piss off the Mexican Cartel or something?

 

[Wolfy]

Did they piss off the Mexican Cartel or something?

Knowing people, they probably play games too so doubt it. Would sooner be the US government than a Cartel I think.

 

[duwen]

It's generally unhelpful to speculate. There are a multitude of reasons why this may have gone down this way, and while the breadcrumbs of info we have make it all extremely intriguing, we may never know what went on behind the scenes.
There are some very well off, unbalanced/crazy, people in the game collecting scene - moreso in the prototype collecting scene. And it's no secret that they're often pissed off with 'preservationists' supposedly devaluing their 'investments' (investments they're often devaluing themselves by locking them away while the undumped eeproms go bad... That's HOW crazy we're talking).
...so, when you're adversaries are rich, crazy, and pissed off pretty much anything from legitimate legal action to doxxing to death threats is possible... but like I said, speculation is generally unhelpful.