Around 400 games had entries on the site, only for Xoom to delete the site, presumably for copyright violations.
#What is abandonware games free
The site continued to rely on free accounts - archives mention around 60 webhosting accounts and around 50 separate emails accounts - but it continued to grow nonetheless. BMP images attracted less attention than. It was enough to get the site going, however, and before long fans and retro collectors began to email in.īy November of that year, the site had grown to chronicle around 80 games - and then Xoom promptly deleted the entire website without warning.Īfter a Christmas break, which was helped by the release of Baldur’s Gate, the site relaunched in early January. The site launched with descriptions for around 15 to 20 games, including ones that were popular online at the time: The Fool’s Errand, Nomad and Sea Rogue. “ wrote the entire thing in HTML using Dreamweaver, complete with flashing banners and even animated GIFs of dancing babies which were on so many websites at that time,” she told me. So on October 2, 1998, Achavanuntakul started her own site. There was nothing about iconic interactive fiction from the 1980's. But there was no information about classics from Infocom.
#What is abandonware games download
One click lead to another, and eventually there was a site with a download for MicroProse’s samurai simulator. So looking for an alternative, Achavanuntakul stumbled across The Abandonware Ring. So when MicroProse replied that they didn’t carry the 1989 DOS game anymore, it wasn’t surprising. Hoping to replace a busted copy of Sword of the Samurai, she contacted MicroProse to see if they would send another copy.īut games were physical products. “That was the only way to get most games in those days, and I would have no idea at all which game was bestseller, which game wasn’t, outside Thailand.”īut the idea for the website, which became one of the largest databases for games in its time, was actually spawned in the United States.Īn archived version of the Abandonware Ring front page, which still exists to this day, although many listings and ads point to digital retailers now.Īccording to an archived history of the site, Home of the Underdogs was born when the Thai journalist was completing her MBA studies in the USA.
“Growing up in Bangkok meant that I was exposed to lots of different kinds of games, through the early piracy scene which vendors would sell copies of games on 5.25" floppies,” she explained. The lack of an official, curated outlet also meant that the HotU founder ended up playing a lot of less popular and unusual games, ones that would have never been at the top of a bestsellers list or sitting in the front window of a games store. The gaming community in Thailand actually owed a lot to piracy, because there was a dearth of official distributors and outlets. “Home of the Underdogs began around October 1998 or so, after I wanted to find a copy of ‘Sword of the Samurai,’ a game I played years ago but never finished,” Sarinee Achavanuntakul, the Thai journalist, author and activist who founded the site, told me over email.īeing based in Thailand meant Achavanuntakul had access to a wide variety of games and genres, thanks to the rampant piracy scene at the time. So in those instances, Home of the Underdogs was the place to go. Or you discovered a game from a developer you loved, but their earlier works weren’t available where you lived and there was no way of ordering a copy without an international phone call and borrowing a credit card. Or sometimes games came out before you were born. Publishers moved on.Īs a gamer, that meant you would sometimes read about a game online, or in a magazine, and it’d simply never be available locally. MMO’s existed, but once a game was published, that was basically it. But there was a time when “games as a service” wasn’t a thing. It’s hard to pinpoint today just how much impact Home of the Underdogs (HotU) had, especially in an age remasters and HD remakes are a fashionable way for publishers to make money. But you could download them, and one of the biggest and most important sites around was Home of the Underdogs. Before the emergence of online stores, if you wanted to play old video games and they weren’t available locally, there was simply no way to buy them.
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