Spectrum download | oral examination
In my FRQSC-funded dissertation, Afterlives of the SNES/SFC, I explored the informal, unauthorised, and unofficial user practices that grow alongside videogame consoles. I successfully defended my dissertation on August 28 2025.
My research builds upon the epistemological provocations posed by Apperley and Parikka (2018), who urge scholars to interrogate and expand the platform studies archive. Using a post-humanist media archaeological approach that embraces hands-on tinkering and collaborations with expert communities, I destabilise the SNES/SFC’s by centering informal technologies, practices, and industries that have emerged following the console’s commercial lifespan. I situate my scholarship as a productive expansion of videogame platform studies, joining a growing number of academic projects that challenge the field’s preoccupation with top-down corporate narratives and formal documentation. My case studies include:
- The Super Nintendo Emulation System: a select history of SNES/SFC emulation where I chronicle how developers have transformed a closed hardware platform into convivial software, fostering various new hobbyist and corporate practices.
- Satellite Archaeologies: a participatory investigation that centres the work of citizen archivists who restore access to the Satellaview, a long-defunct SNES/SFC add-on that once allowed users to access game content over satellite.
- Pixels and Plastic: a study of how SNES/SFC cartridge reproductions are manufactured and distributed, sparked by the discovery that HyperBound—a videogame hack I created in 2007—is now being sold online as a lime green cartridge.
- Final Fantasies: an investigation into Final Fantasy VI (re)translation and ROM-hacking communities, where I interrogate the instability of videogame software as it is endlessly ported, re-released, and localised.