Home of the Underdogs

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"HotU" redirects here. For the expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights, see Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark.
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Home of the Underdogs
Image:Hoftheu.jpg

Home of The Underdogs as of 14 May 2006
URL http://groups.google.com/group/hotu-revival
Type of site Abandonware video games
Registration Not Required
Launched September 1998
Current status Rebuilding

Home of the Underdogs (often called HotU) is an abandonware archive[1] founded by Thai Sarinee Achavanuntakul (สฤณี อาชวานันทกุล), aka: Underdogs or Fringer on her own blog, in September 1998, and grew to be one of the most significant abandonware websites on the Internet, despite losing its domains to cybersquatters and then briefly going offline.

Contents

[edit] Content

The site provided reviews for over 5,300 games, as well as offered downloads of software and manuals for a number of games that were no longer commercially available - this allowed it to be a valuable resource to players who lost the original discs or manuals. While majority of games available on the site were for DOS or Microsoft Windows, the site also contained a section with games for other platforms. Where downloads for these games were provided, they were usually present in formats compatible with emulators. The site also had scans of several gamebook series, many of them complete. In addition to commercial titles, the site contained a small number of 'freeware' titles.

Downloading was strictly regulated, due to bandwidth costs and limitations. Users could not download more than one file at a time or would be banned anywhere from three hours up to one week. This included speeding downloads using tools such as Getright. One common complaint users shared towards the site regarded the typically extremely slow download speeds, which have been known to go as slow as 10 kbit/s on a high-speed connection. This did not, however, prevent the site's continued expansion.

The site tended to focus on underdog games; that is, games that were not a huge commercial success for whatever reason. Some games were classified with one or more of three distinctions:

  • Top Dog referred to games perceived by some as gems, but that for some reason failed commercially, for instance because of poor marketing.
  • Hall of Belated Fame referred to a small number of games that should have received a number of awards and high ratings in the opinion of the site's staff.
  • Real Dog referred to games that failed for a good reason, usually poor gameplay, but that were requested to be included on the site by fans, or fans of related games. These were classified with a "thumbs down" logo.

The site claimed to be more of a museum than a download site, offering what were by them considered "great" games that never received due attention upon their initial releases. It was also asserted that the site was careful about copyright concerns, so if a game available for download became once more available for purchase, or if a game's copyright holder so requested, the downloadable files were removed and replaced with a link to the site selling the game, if applicable. The site has also removed a number of ESA/IDSA members' titles from its download archive.

The site also had a store in which independent games were sold, and maintained an active member community by means of its forum and IRC channel.

[edit] History

  • While at first hosted on free web hosts, Home of the Underdogs began using a dedicated server due to its high bandwidth usage in February 2000. The original domain name was theunderdogs.org. Achavanuntakul long resisted the commercialization of the site with ads and popups but eventually agreed to it after donations were unable to cover mounting bandwidth costs.
  • In 2002 the domain name was changed to the-underdogs.org and in 2006 to www.the-underdogs.info. The reason in both cases was that the domain was not renewed in time and was subsequently taken over by cybersquatters.
  • After January 13, 2006, addition of any new entries to the site ceased completely.
  • After a brief stint of being offline during the month of September 2008, HotU seemingly returned late in the month; however, the games once offered were no longer available.
  • On February 13, 2009 the original Home of the Underdogs went offline. According to a message posted on Twitter by the site's owner[2], this was because of the webhost's bankruptcy.
  • On March 8, 2009, the first of the "new" Home Of The Underdogs sites went online at www.hotud.org, based on the Joomla! CMS.
  • On March 24, 2009, a second site went online at www.HomeOfTheUnderdogs.net. It retains the design of the original site and does not use a CMS. The two sites work independent of each other, neither is endorsed by Achavanuntakul.[3]
  • As of 30 March 2009 both sites are still under construction, neither has added downloads yet.
  • As of 6 April 2009 downloads on hotud.org seem to work.
  • As of 8 April 2009, several sites are still working independently of each other. Some share common goals, but none are allegedly endorsed by Sarinee, the webhost of the original site. Partial list of the sites involved.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Simon Carless, Gaming Hacks New York: O'Reilly (2004): 2 - 3. "Sites such as Home of the Underdogs ... have major copyright issues but can provide valuable resources, for example, for people who've lost legitimate copies of the manuals."
  2. ^ Fringer (2009-02-09). "Home of the Underdogs webhost went bankrupt T_T". http://twitter.com/Fringer/statuses/1194153273. Retrieved on 2009-03-03. 
  3. ^ Site reconstruction forum thread

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_of_the_Underdogs"
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