For the folks at Unlimited Video Games Superstore and Arcade in Pinellas Park.

Nothing beats the classics through the art of restoration and preservation, they ensure that classic arcade and home console games can continue to be played by future generations.

[♪♪♪♪] Preserving some of these games can be considered an art in a lot of ways.

It's a fine line between keeping it original, keeping it correct, and making it good.

One of our jobs here is to maintain these games in a way that preserves the feel of these games when they were made, while still allowing them to operate into the future.

It all makes sense when you sit there and actually start playing on it.

All the bad graphics and clunky mechanics and lack of depth, all of it immediately disappears as soon as you start playing it, and all you can experience is the gameplay as it was meant to be.

It is a hobbyist driven industry.

There is no financial motive for any company in the world to put resources and effort into figuring out how to preserve and repair these games, but there are individuals out there who work on these as passion projects.

There's definitely technique in knowing the right equipment, right tools to use to keep it going on, and not just throwing it away, as many would probably do if they're like, oh, this doesn't work, and not knowing like how to fix it or what ways to go about fixing it.

Nowadays, you kind of see the money aspect of video games instead of, oh, how can we become like one of the best video games, man?

Like, there's a lot of, like, legwork and hard work to really make this become what it is today.

[♪♪♪♪] I think all games are worth preserving in all honesty.

It would be a shame to lose any game in any regard, because I think everything has its value.

Whether or not the game is good or bad, there's some games that are older that I never played back then, that I find super cool and better than a lot of games in modern times.

Now I understand that people value older games not just for nostalgia factors, but they want to keep it alive.

They want to keep the art of gaming available to everyone.

Being able to fix that thing that brings them back to those memories, or goes into that time frame of when they had a good time.

Because it's interesting how they take very big cautionary steps when it comes to like pieces like the Mona Lisa to preserve it, because it is a famous piece and it was done by a great artist for someone to come in and be like, man, Pac-Man on the Atari.

I haven't been able to find that anywhere and now I can actually have it.

So like us being able to restore that so that that one person or many people that do come in here, being able to have that themselves and continue to keep those games alive.

[♪♪♪♪] I have a Galaxian in my arcade right now.

The cabinets are in great shape, but the side art is starting to peel.

So what do I do?

Do I glue it back on, making it really difficult to get off in the future because it's original.

Or do I buy new side art for it and put it on so it looks perfect, but it's fake?

These are the types of artistic choices that need to be made for this type of situation, and it's not always an obvious answer.

What you should do.

[♪♪♪♪] The whole look of the arcade cabinet kind of gets that the feel of its arcade cabinet.

If it was just a blank, you know, black cabinet and it had the game, it would still be, you know, functionally, you know, an arcade cabinet.

But when you walk up to it and you see, you know, either Simpsons on the side or blitz on the side or Mortal Kombat character, it's like it just I don't know, it just brings more of that, like the whole feel all together.

[♪♪♪♪] I feel like if we didn't preserve these things, no one would know where this rooted from.

Or maybe what a good game is.

Also, it's just that, you know, the people that did have those games growing up, it would be, you know, heartbreaking knowing that there is no more doom threes out there in the world because everyone decided to.

You know, throw them out.

Or if there was no more Mario parties on the Gamecube.

It's kind of, you know, those memories attached as well to those games that.

Me growing up had, it would kind of like fade with that if no one cared to or.

Want to keep these things alive.

[♪♪♪♪] People nowadays getting nostalgic for games that came out in 2011, 2015.

So I think, of course there's always going to be some people enjoying older games and finding passion for that.

I feel confident that as time goes on, future generations will see how things are going now, and it'll continue more as a domino effect for more and more people to want to preserve games for more and more people to see the beauty and the art form of the medium, and for more and more people to take care of it in a better sense as well.

[♪♪♪♪] Visit unlimitedvideogames.com for more information.