Film enthusiasts hoping to screen the 1917 version of "Cleopatra" with Theda Bara or the 1928 version of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" are plum out of luck; those movies have gone with the wind, along with a growing list of titles that have turned to dust over time.

If Simon Carless has his way, however, that will never happen to "Elevator Action" or "Lunar Lander." That's because, two months ago, he founded the Preservation SIG, a special interest group within the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), that aims to ensure that video games won't disappear when the floppy disks that house them crumble. According to a study of floppies by the University of Massachusetts, that can be as quick as 10 years or as long as 30.

"The thing about preservation is that it's one of those things that people don't worry about until it's too late," says Jesse Schell, chairman of the IGDA. "That's how we ended up losing so many movies over time. People just took for granted that someone was saving them -- and nobody was."

The timing of the SIG's launch wasn't arbitrary. According to Carless, industry fears about the piracy of intellectual property resulted in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which forbids the circumvention of copy protection schemes for the purpose of making copies of software, even if it's for an archive or library.

"Fortunately for us," says Carless, a former lead designer for Infogrames, "the U.S. Copyright Office made an exemption ruling last October that allows access circumvention for software designated as obsolete or not readily available. But it's just a three-year exemption that will run out in 2006." That gives Carless and his group two years to go.

"If we want to continue after that," he adds, "someone will need to go back to the Copyright Office in 2006 and say, 'Hey, we're making progress. We have thousands of titles saved and we need more time.' If someone doesn't do that, the exemption will lapse and we won't be able to continue."

For now, the Preservation SIG's game plan is to determine what efforts are already underway and then to coordinate those efforts.

"When people talk about game preservation," Carless explains, "it turns out they mean a million different things." For instance, a Web site called MobyGames keeps track of who deserves credit for developing which games. The San Francisco-based Internet Archive, with Carless' help, has started building an archive not of the games themselves but of movie and promotional footage of older games, as well as filmed interviews of designers talking about their creations. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Computer History Museum has a list of games it wants to save. Stamford University has over 20,000 games in its archives, as does the Berlin (Germany) Computer Game Museum. Carnegie Mellon University is creating a database that details the history of innovation in games at GameInnovation.com. And the European CAPS Project -- which stands for "Classic Amiga Preservation Society" -- has dedicated itself to making functional and archiving copies of obsolete Commodore and Amiga games.

"Right now, there are at least 50 projects worldwide relating to preservation," says Carless. "But none have major funding."

Indeed, one of the biggest hurdles, says Schell, is who is going to pay for the massive effort. "If you save everything –- the games themselves, the marketing material, the packaging, all the notes and concept art -- it starts to really add up."

And so, preservationists say it would be helpful if the large game publishers assist in the effort, financially or otherwise. But motivating them has been a challenge.

Some publishers, like Electronic Arts, have libraries that they use mainly for in-house purposes so its designers can research older games.

"One of the things we'd like to save, especially for the more successful games, is all the notes and the concept art that were created," says Schell. "I know that Disney did a really good job of archiving the creative process (and) work that went into its films and its theme park attractions. And when you can go back and look at what ideas were rejected, that can often be very meaningful and useful in terms of moving forward. But publishers are obviously under no obligation to share or save that material. Definitely the publishers and the archivists are at odds about some of these things."

What does motivate publishers, say preservationists, is added revenue, and the nostalgia craze has convinced some game makers that their older properties are worth dusting off and putting out on store shelves again.

For example, Atari has an effort underway to transfer a warehouse-full of old game tapes onto CD-ROMs for preservation purposes. "Our goal," says Rich Roberts, vp of digital distribution, "is to go through it all and, hopefully, find some really cool stuff to take to the marketplace."

Atari has been wildly successful in reaching back to its old code -- games originally designed for the Atari 2600, 6200, and 7800 consoles -- and bringing it back to life using software emulators. The company is scheduled to unveil shortly its $39.95 Flashback retro-style game console which plugs directly into a TV and contains 15 classic 2600 games – from "Battlezone" to "Yar's Revenge" – and five 7800 games – including "Asteroids" and "Food Fight."

"Our motivation in restoring these games is a business one, absolutely," says Roberts.

In a unique move, Atari has also licensed some of its original arcade games to be sold online in ROM format for $5 each from the StarROMs Web site. (ROMs are the original software from a console or coin-op video game. Modern personal computers have more than enough horsepower to play these ROMS with emulation software such as MAME) This time, the motivation wasn't just added revenue, but an attempt to crack down on rampant game piracy.

"This came at a time when the RIAA was going after kids who were illegally downloading songs," Roberts explains. "So I thought, okay, let the music industry be the bad guy. I'll give people a choice. They can either download our games illegally, or do the right thing and pay us a nominal few dollars. I believe that if you give people the opportunity to legitimately purchase these games in the delivery method that they want to purchase these games -- i.e. downloads -- they will purchase them."

As it turned out, Atari and StarROMs made some money on selling the games, but not as much as either had expected.

StarROMs co-founder Frank Leibly explains: "It's been an area of disappointment for us that only Atari has signed on with us, which means the selection of ROMs we have to offer is extremely limited. There are a lot of people who want to buy ROMs legally, but when we can sell them only the Atari ROMs, that means they need to go out and get, say, 'Joust' and 'PacMan' elsewhere illegally. We think that increasing our library of titles is absolutely critical, but as long as the rest of the industry isn't making their ROMs available legally, the majority of users will resort to getting illegal copies elsewhere."

Leibly says that in the two years that StarROMs has been in business, he and his partner have used this anti-piracy message to try and convince many of the major publishers to make their old games available.

"Atari got it right away. You could see the light in their eyes," he says. "But at some of the other publishes, their mindset is 'ROMs plus emulation equals piracy equals bad.' We have had a very difficult time getting past that."

But Leibly is convinced that other publishers will come onboard eventually, recognizing the power of the public's clamor for classic games.

"It's a branding issue, really," he says. "If you make available some titles, it costs you absolutely nothing. But, in return, you are building additional brand enthusiasm and generating additional revenues. And, as more companies add their ROMs, piracy will fall off."

Meanwhile, at the Preservation SIG, Jesse Schell reports that the publishers' fear of piracy is also slowing efforts to build archives of classic games.

"The publishers want to be the only ones who can copy and distribute the data. And the archivists feel that the more copyable something is, the more likely it's going to survive in the long term. Clearly these sort of disagreements don't make our efforts any easier, but they don't make them impossible."

He encourages anyone interested in contributing to the effort to go to the SIG's Web site – at www.igda.org/preservation -- and start participating in the forums.

"If there's one thing I want to stress," says the SIG's Carless, "it's that there's no pirating going on here. We're just looking to get a single copy of each game for archiving purposes; no one's trying to give them away for free to all the kiddies. Promise."

Paul "The Game Master" Hyman was the editor-in-chief of CMP Media's GamePower. He's covered the games industry for over a dozen years. His columns for The Reporter run exclusively on the Web site.