Omg, I pictured that moment and genuinely felt like my current partner had cleaned out my room of "junk." You've definitely saved more than one programmer's nerves. People without technical predispositions or those not working in a similar profession won't understand why these notes or records are so important. As you say, even with "notes for notes" written on simple phrases, you can recreate the thought process.

A fair point – they didn't know the standard, they programmed however they felt most comfortable. No one back then could predict which trends would prevail. What mattered was profit in the here and now. As for "disappearing codes," it's likely no one was keeping track of them. Many much more recognizable series/games (I'm thinking of Blizzard or Konami) lost their codes and were found by luck... or not. As for the PlayStation, if my memory serves me right, I think they only realized the limitations of their hardware over time.