The Six Levels
Level 1: Documentation Only
What: Screenshots, video recordings, Wikipedia
articles.
Verdict: The ghost of the artifact. You can see what
it looked like, but you can't touch it.
Level 2: Static Archive
What: HTML, CSS, images (Wayback Machine).
Verdict: The corpse. The body is there, but the
interactive soul (scripts, databases) has fled.
Level 3: Emulation
What: Running the original code in a simulated
environment (Ruffle, DOSBox).
Verdict: The zombie. Reanimated functionality, often
severed from its original context (multiplayer, leaderboards).
Level 4: Source Code Preservation
What: The raw instructions (GitHub repositories).
Verdict: The DNA. Future-proof and study-able, but
requires a skilled "biologist" (developer) to clone.
Level 5: Live Preservation
What: Original hardware and software still
running.
Verdict: Life support. The most authentic, but
incredibly fragile and unscalable.
Level 6: Resurrection
What: Rebuilding the platform from scratch in modern
languages.
Verdict: The clone. It looks and acts alive, but it
isn't the original entity.
Field Notes
The Trade-off: Museums cannot preserve everything at Level 5. The strategy is tiered preservation: Archive everything at Level 1-2, select a few for Level 3, and save the Canon for Level 5-6.