The term abandonware refers to games (or other software titles) that
are no longer sold by their publishers. It is, of course, of no legal
relevance (just as my driving instructor told us: there is no legal
difference between driving without a license on an abandoned parking
lot for practice, or on a thoroughfare at rush hour), but the term has
become generally accepted, and abandonware sites are widely respected
even by the industry. Only the ESA harasses them occasionally.
Ah well, it's final now: Home of the Underdogs is no more. On
2009-02-13 it went down due to the hosting company going bankrupt.
It seems that Sarinee Achavanuntakul has no backups, or no intention
to continue it, or both. After all, the last update was more than
three years ago. All in all it had lasted for ten years in full
function, from September 1998 to September 2008. Quite some time
for an abandonware site.
2008-11-09
Some more info about
Home of the Underdogs.
The site was offline only for a few days, from September 10 to 14.
But the files have been missing since then, that's nearly two months.
There are forum threads about it here and here.
2008-11-05
There's something wrong again with
Home of the Underdogs.
All the listings still work, but the downloads don't, and no screenshots
and boxshots are displayed. The site hasn't been updated since January
2006, but I think it is still maintained, so hopefully this will be
only temporary.
2008-05-31
Added
Abandonware Paradise,
checked all the links and removed or updated where necessary.
2007-09-28
Alone in the Past ?
is back up again. Added Vetusware,
removed Polskie Centrum Starych Gier, Abandonwarez, and
Flashback Abandonware.
Lost Treasures Fr
is undergoing some revisions or whatever, anyway it's temporarily down.
2006-07-17
XTC Abandonware is down. BHlegend has removed all the adult games. Their downloads
are still not back. Re-added The Nostalgic Stuff Collection that has been back for a
while.
With regret I have noticed that the Nostalgic Stuff Collection has
vanished from the web. It was not only a good abandonware site with
many games from the early 80s you wouldn't find elsewhere, established
in 1996 and not updated since 1997 it was one of the few remnants of
the Netscape era web. Sorry to see you go!
2006-04-24
Home of the Underdogs
is back in all its glory. As I thought, the new domain now resolves
correctly, you do not need the hack I suggested a month ago any more.
Thus all the Underdogs links on this site will work; many other sites
still link to the old domain.
2006-04-23
Since yesterday, Home of the Underdogs is completely inaccessible.
Strangely it can be pinged, and the .info domain now resolves
correctly, but the website itself cannot be accessed.—Added
The House of Games.
I noticed that the downloads on BHlegend are disabled. If you click on a download link, you are
taken to a page with the following message:
Unfortunately, our previous host has gone out of business
and we're currently unable to host the files on our new
server.
2006-03-30
Sarinee moved
Home of the Underdogs
to the-underdogs.info, changing all the settings accordingly.
Unfortunately the domain does not resolve yet. What you have to do
is change the-undedogs.org in your hosts file to
the-underdogs.info, and everything will work again.
2006-03-27
Nothing's changed about the situation of
Home of the Underdogs,
but I found a better way to deal with it and thus restored all the
links to the domain name. Just find the hosts file on your
system (on Unix-based systems, it's in /etc; on Windows 9x,
in the Windows directory; on 2000/XP, in system32\drivers\etc\)
and add the following lines:
The domain the-underdogs.info has been taken over by a search engine.
Obviously the webmistress, once again, forgot to renew it on time.
Home of the Underdogs is still
accessable over the IP address itself. Screenshots and downloads,
however, don't work. Since this is just a question of server
configuration, it might be temporary. The hosted sites like Macintosh
Garden and z2 are not accessible at all.
2005-05-22
Abandonia is up again,
this was obviously just a temporary glitch in the web as they sometimes
happen.
2005-05-20
Sim Abandonware and then some is back in all its glory, on a
new server where there shouldn't be any problems with exceeded
traffic quotas. Abandonia is currently unreachable, last update
cached by google was two days ago.
2005-02-17
21st Century Oldies is obviously gone for good. Noticed that
The Ultimate Oldgames Linkpage
has shut down with the end of last year, and removed the "Linklists
and Search Engines" section completely, since it had become rather
pointless.
Added The Good Old Days.
XTC Abandonware is back,
has been back for a couple of days actually, but it needs JavaScript
to work now. Ugh.
2004-08-06
Bunny Abandonware is obviously gone. There is a redirector on
the old domain, it leads to a 404 error.
2004-07-29
21st Century Oldies is obviously gone for good. I won't remove
all the links on this page, since you're just redirected to the
main domain it was hosted on, but I've removed all the links from
the individual game pages. Bunny Abandonware cannot be reached at
all at the moment, since it's still cached on google I'll wait a
bit longer before taking any action. XTC Abandonware is obviously
gone, it should have moved to a domain of its own but never arrived
there. I removed it.
2004-07-11
21st Century Oldies
is down. The domain itself gives a 403 error, any specific pages a
404 error. Let's hope this is temporary. XTC moves to a new domain,
xtcabandonware.com, but this domain isn't active yet, so the site
is currently inaccessable.
2004-05-14
A few sites that were hosted on geocities were shut down for
inactivity. I have removed them. They were mostly small and without
screenshots or descriptions, so it's not such a big loss.
2004-04-13
Bunny Abandonware
is alive and kicking, but at a new address.
2004-02-29
Classic Trash is dead. Its successor
site, Ping! Games, is hardly
an abandonware site in any sense of the word, carrying only shareware
and freeware games, even the reviews of the other games have been
removed.
Bunny Abandonware has been
giving database errors for the last one or two weeks. Maybe it is
dead, too.
2003-07-02
The Keep is gone. Not down once again, but closed.
The Keep is sleeping. For various reasons we decided to
pull the plug… but we plan to be back, sometimes…
2003-05-23
It's back up again, but has not been updated
since 04-26.
2003-05-19
The Keep is down once again.
2003-04-16
I notice that the Keep is updated daily
again.
2002-12-19
There will not be any downloads on 21st Century Oldies any more.
There are some new reviews, many others have
been removed.
2002-09-30
I finally removed the link to the Reservatory
of Endangered Games. It is obviously gone. There are still no downloads on
21st Century Oldies.
2002-09-12
21st Century Oldies are
back with all their reviews. Downloads are disabled and will remain for
a while (at least until
September 22, when Netdanzr will return from his holiday). Due to the change
of servers, the URL has also changed. So all my many links to specific pages
of this site will now lead to the homepage instead. It will take a while to
fix this.
2002-09-07
The Keep is back in all its former glory, well,
almost. The database is back up, but about 80 games are gone. But there are
still 488 left, so I guess it's not all that bad.
2002-09-06
21st Century Oldies is temporarily inaccessable
again. They are changing servers. It should be back up September 9,
but without the downloads. I do hope this will be only temporarily,
too. The situation at the Keep is still unchanged. Till the database
is working again, you can download one game that is changed each day.
Still no news from the Reservatory.
2002-09-03
21st Century Oldies are back again, as if
nothing had happened. The Keep still has trouble with its database.
This might take a few days more. I still cannot reach the Reservatory.
2002-09-02
Nothing changed yet. And I cannot reach the
Reservatory either. But it might not be so serious. On Classic Trash
I read: "The reason for that Abandonweb, The Keep, TUOL and a few other sites
are unavailable is because of technical problems but the crew is currently
working on getting the sites back up." Whew.
Later the same day: The Keep is up again, but without its database. In
other words, you cannot download anything, not even read a review.
2002-09-01
The Keep and 21st Century Oldies are down.
I hope this is only temporary. The last update on the Keep was only two
days earlier.
General
Articles and sites about abandonware. They are all from around
2001, when abandonware got a lot of publicity.
Note: Some of these sites allow you to download only one file at a time.
In some cases you will be temporarily banned if you try to download more,
so be careful. This also means you cannot use certain download managers
like Download Accelerator, which splits a download into several simultaneous
ones. Others like GetRight and Go!zilla will work fine, however.
In many cases you have to have Javascript enabled for the downloads
to work, this is always noted. If a site does not work at all without Javascript,
it will not be listed here.
Abandonia has many games
not found anywhere else, especially adventure and strategy.
The Good Old Days
has lots of German games, including some rather weird government
propaganda pieces. It is also the only site I know that has some
Vectrex games.
The House of Games
is the only abandonware site I know that is completely cross-platform.
If a game is here at all, it will be available in all the versions the
webmaster could dig up. It is a bit confusing at first that Macintosh
versions are listed under Apple. Screenshots require JavaScript.
The Thing does not
have many games, but some for platforms that are not yet covered very
well like the Atari 2600.
Bunny Abandonware seems to
have recurring domain troubles, but in the end always pops up again
under a new domain.
Best Old Games
is a Czech site. It is updated about once a month.
DJ OldGames is a Slovak site. Very interesting collection,
but some download restrictions. Larger downloads are on RapidShare.
Updates are irregular but numerous.
Martin's Old Games:
Most games under 1MB, some shareware titles. No descriptions or screenshots.
Sites in Other Languages
Of course, if given the choice, these sites usually prefer the game
version in their own language. But many games have never been released
in any language besides English, so you will find lots of English games
on these sites, too.
Gobliiins Old Games
has a very good collection, leaning heavily towards action/arcade.
Unfortunately the screenshots are 160×100 only and cannot be enlarged.
The site, including the navigation, is in Slovak, but it's not too
difficult to find your way around.
Starie Igri Pod DOS (Russian) is on a rather slow server, so it
might be wise to restrict yourself to downloading smaller games.
Sito Senza Nome has a nice collection, including some rare
shareware and freeware titles. Many of the games are in English,
the language is always listed. Downloads have a PDF extension, rename
it to ZIP.
Alone in the Past ? is not your typical abandonware site.
It has articles and reviews, all in French. Password for the files is
either www.aitp.fr.st or www.aitpast.com. Downloads are mostly
Amiga/Atari, some unreleased games among them.
Lost Treasures Fr: Most
games are in English. Listed by category, which can be a bit confusing if
you don't speak French. Quite a number of Mac games.
Jeux Anciens does not even
have a seperate page for each game, as most sites do; there is one page
for each covered genre (action, sport, puzzle, platform, strategy, and
"divers"; no adventure or RPGs here), with a short description for each
game. If you click on the little monitor icon, you get usually two (in
rare cases only one) screenshots in a popup window. There is no indication
as to the language of the games, so do consult the screenshots. They
require JavaScript, of course.
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