But there was a time when “games as a service” wasn’t a thing.
MMO’s existed, but once a game was published, that was basically it.
Or sometimes games came out before you were born.
So in those instances, Home of the Underdogs was the place to go.
But games were physical products.
So when MicroProse replied that they didn’t carry the 1989 DOS game anymore, it wasn’t surprising.
Disappointing, but not unsurprising.
So looking for an alternative, Achavanuntakul stumbled across The Abandonware Ring.
But there was no information about classics from Infocom.
QQP’s wargames were nowhere to be seen.
There was nothing about iconic interactive fiction from the 1980’s.
So on October 2, 1998, Achavanuntakul started her own site.
Files were renamed with .BMP extensions, as .BMP images attracted less attention than .ZIP files at the time.
That forced another site relaunch, which brought along with a redesign.
Once permanent hosting resolved concerns about the site being deleted, the biggest red flag for HotU was publishers.
What eventuated became one of the first major fights online around game preservation.
Some of whom would go on to influence the gaming industry in their own way.
Troy Goodfellow works at Paradox Interactive.
He’s been there for almost four years, as well as a regular on theThree Moves Aheadpodcast.
But before any of that, he was a fan of the Underdogs.
“I found it when I was wrapping up grad school (late 90s).
I had more time for gaming, but not a lot of money.
(Croshaw was contacted for comment, but didn’t reply by the time of publication.)
“Game curation of the sort that Frank Cifaldi does was almost unheard of.
But abandonware sites like HotU were a vital stopgap in preserving the memory of many, many games.”
Achavanuntakul agrees, arguing that HotU filled a role that is still a vacant today.
at least sporting SVGA graphics.”
Gaming history is much richer than that.
Think about the early days of interactive fiction.
The early era of hex-based wargames.
RPGs before Ultima Underworld.
By the middle of 2002, over 4,000 games had been reviewed.
Today, that number doesn’t sound like a lot.
Hell, more than 4200 games were released on Steam last year alone.
But from 2004 to 2014,only 4010 games launched on Steam.
HotU, a fan-run website, reviewed that many in the space of a few years.
Not a bad effort for a passion project.
Perhaps the best way to define the Underdogs legacy is by the memories those have left behind.
I asked on Twitter: did people remember the site?
What was their experience like?
It was a stream of childlike joy.
But more than anything else, the common theme was one Achavanuntakul would be proud of: discovery.
A formative place for young me.
HOTU was (and still is) a legend and role model for abandonware/games archiving website.
There’s a long way to go.
But HotUstill lives on.
There will never be another site like Home of the Underdogs.
The internet has moved on.
Life is different now.
Not a bad effort at all.
