I joined my first gaming community just after midnight on August 12th, 2004.
I remember the date well because I had been trying (and failing) to get Hotmail to load for a solid hour before the damn thing finally showed up on my screen, the HDD on my aging Pentium II whirring as if the effort to keep Internet Explorer going was too much for it to handle... and I don't blame it. Watching me hit F5 until the key stuck was probably sheer torture for the poor thing, specially because the only reason this was such a chore was because FullZero (my crappy dial-up provider) couldn't even approach its promised 56k of speed, resulting on a half-loaded inbox that taunted and teased me with its banner over and over. But when I finally got through it, I was surprised to see that the e-mail I had shot blindly had actually been responded to by the webmaster of said community.
His response was the kind of brief, clipped thing one could expect to land at such a ridiculous hour: he basically told me to ask around on the forums when I told him that the site's background music (one of its most lauded features) wasn't working for me. He probably got tired of listening to complaints by a bunch of 14-year-olds who could barely figure out how to get online and decided to have his community shoulder the troubleshooting. I can't blame him.
After playing yet another round of "Will It Load?", I was finally registered as the latest member of a forum that had been around for more than a year at that point and that was attached to a site that had apparently existed since late 1998 (damn! That made me feel old even at the time).
This is actually much better than any of my own attempts at web-building using FrontPage Express (and the admin was apparently completely inexperienced!).
Like most teens using forums for the first time, I joyfully committed all "online sins" without looking back, consequences be dammed: CAPSLOCK POSTING, an absolute massacre of grammar, punctuation and spelling; double-posting (and, one time, quadruple-posting)... the whole thing. I was guilty on an all accounts and completely unrepentant. But what was funny to me was that my posts were edited long before I could actually see them because they usually spent so much time loading that many of them were already bearing the classic "EDIT:" tag at the bottom by the time I could properly read them. I really wasn't the mods' favorite user, is what I'm saying.
... Not that that was going to stop me, because I distinctly remember adding one of them to MSN Messenger within months of posting on the forum for the first time (and wasn't it awesome that we could just list our contact info on public profiles without batting an eye?).
What you gotta understand is that the site we were both part of had come with some serious credentials, including being the most-visited gaming site this side of the puddle, and was also so well-known as to being featured on the damn news multiple times. It was for that very reason that I was actually very surprised when my moderator friend told me, in no uncertain terms, that our shared site was nothing special. She went as far as to tell me that she only remained a member (and staffer) because she really enjoyed the possibility to chat in Spanish (something that simply wasn't possible on that other, mysterious page she was goshing over) but that our little corner of the internet really wasn't all that. She then dropped a contextless link on our chat window and urged me to follow it.
What I found upon clicking on the thing (and waiting a full five minutes for it to finish loading, as usual) was a site not unlike ours -- an Abandonware community boasting an impressive catalog, bright colors and those tiny, tiny texts that made reading them into an exercise of eyestrain that would make the makers of the Virtual Boy proud! But I couldn't enjoy it at all because the whole thing was in English, a language I didn't understand at the time (so much so that even "download" was a puzzling word for me). So, I just closed the window and continued on my way, posting long, nonsensical rants for her to clean up later. Thank God phpBB2 didn't have a warning system.
In case it isn't clear by now, the site I was linked to was Home Of The Underdogs, the true household name of the Abandonware community.
Just a few months in and is already starting to look legit!
I regret not giving it a chance when it was still online and functional (you can visit it as a sort of "WIKI" now -- but its enormous Abandonware catalog has long been removed to comply with the many take down notices that had besieged it since the very beginning), but that language barrier was too real for me to just "feel" my way around the whole layout... besides, the games I was interested in needed to be in Spanish in order for me to enjoy them, which is something only that other site provided. Whatever I was missing out on, I was perfectly fine with it.
But then, in 2009, HoTu closed its doors after its hosting provider filed for bankruptcy.
I didn't think much of it (since I hadn't grown attached to it in any meaningful way), but the communities I was a member of at the time were openly GRIEVING it. The outpouring of sadness, support and regret that filled many of those online spaces was actually shocking to me... and was also what compelled me to finally take a look into what had made this one so special for so many people.
It is not terribly surprising to me that my fourteen-year-old self didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but it is only after diving deeper into what HoTU really was that I can confirm that I had totally missed out, man. I'm also convinced that its story needs to be shared, because we are here right now, on this site, in large part because of what that crew started nearly three decades ago.
So, without further ado, let's dive into what Home Of The Underdogs was, what it meant, and how it shaped the entire scene.
Ah... Hell Yeah! This is the stuff.
It's 1998 and college graduate Sarinee Achavanuntakul has just arrived in the United States to work on her MBA.
Like most people her age, she's starting to rediscover nostalgia through the internet, rejoining her favorite UseNet groups in order to nerd out about her favorite "oldies" and to look for potential trade partners and sellers to rekindle her game-collecting ways (which were understandably tossed aside when college became her main focus). It's at this point that our story takes the first of its many delightful turns, as if orchestrated by an ancient force hellbent on doing for its own amusement.
Because, you see, our hero wasn't even interested on downloading a pirated copy of one of the games she remembered the most fondly (in fact, she still had the discs): she just wanted to play Sword of the Samurai, a quaint little gem from her past that had since gone bad due to improper storage and just the passage of time, so she contacted the original developer (MicroProse) in case they could provide her with another copy... only to be replied to with the mechanical, standard response many of us have gotten when trying to buy another copy of a game we had enjoyed in the past: "Sorry, we no longer carry this title". Was it a blow for her? I don't really know, but it certainly wasn't a deterrent, either, because she then took to her browser of choice and decided to look directly for the game on her own terms, maybe hoping that someone out there would be cool with making a few bucks on a half-forgotten title whose floppy they probably barely even remembered owning... but her search results landed her in the middle of something called "The Abandonware Ring", a site that sort of aggregated webpages built around old games and provided them for download.
Many of the greatest sites I visited throughout the early aughts started off this way: with their webmasters (and occasional webmistresses) finding forgotten pieces of their childhoods on those small "Abandonware" corners of the net and deciding to add their own link to this chain, launching their own products to honor their past selves (and the things they enjoyed) in the process, and "Underdogs" wasn't going to be the exception.
After just a few weeks of trying to figure out Microsoft's copyrighted torture device (AKA "FrontPage Express"), the first iteration of Home Of The Underdogs went live. Boasting the kind of eye-melting colors and fonts that were the staple of the time, flanked by the mandatory GIFs that "plagued" every page of its generation, and with an already impressive catalog of 20 games on launch, HoTU looked like it was gonna be the next best thing...
... Until it was unceremoniously deleted by Xoom (its free hosting provider) without warning nor recourse, as was the style of the time (cue Grandpa Simpson).
It probably doesn't feel that impressive now, but having their own "newspaper" was huge back then.
For anyone who wasn't a webmaster at the time, I need to explain something: Abandonware sites were a huge no-no for free hosting providers, meaning that your work was on death row the second it went live.
It didn't matter if you used GeoCities, FortuneCity, Metropoli 2000, or the aforementioned Xoom, those people would not fight for you and would gladly delete your site if it ever brought them trouble. This resulted on many of the scene's pioneer sites being crushed, vanished and never heard from again during their first few months of existence, with the remaining survivors moving onto paid providers in order to stand a chance (effectively costing money to deliver a free service).
I'll give "Underdogs" and her crew a lot of credit for not only keeping up the fight, but also taking it to new heights through their ingenuity and sheer desire to continuing honoring the games they loved... they literally tried everything: from keeping the files hidden under cryptic names and false extensions (.Zips were commonly disguised as .BMPs), to keeping them off-site, to registering more than 50 e-mail accounts on free providers that could then be used as a springboard to sign up for new domains every time a game (or entire collection) was deleted.
I imagine it was deeply demoralizing for them to see the fruit of their labor being torn down day after day with no other recourse than to get it back online, and that really does speak volumes about the kind of passion and drive that was fueling these people.
But it wasn't only that -- they were also reviewing, screenshotting and uploading an average of two new games per day, so they actually had to keep track of even more files every time they looked at their website with anything other than exhaustion. And you know what? The community didn't shrug this off.
When the site was deleted for the fifth time in about a year, a new kind of e-mail started appearing on the webmistress's inbox: not the usual request for games, nor even the messages of encouragement sent by grateful visitors, but hosting options provided by members who really cared and didn't mind paying a few dollars out of their own pockets to keep the project alive. This resulted on the team being able to focus all their efforts towards expanding the site's already impressive catalog, culminating with their 700th upload by the end of the year. Was this the work of insanely devoted fanatics? You betcha! And it kept on growing from there when they decided that uploading games wasn't enough, and they started scanning manuals, related material (mostly choose-your-own-adventure booklets based on games) and box art at a great personal cost and while burning through whatever free time they still managed to have. They didn't care how long this would all take... only that it was getting done.
If you were wondering why the entire "scene" was lamenting the end of this one site, it's in large part because of the tremendous amount of work that went into making it what it was.
I actually knew of a few sites that had "family albums" (where users could submit their own pictures) back then. Oh, how the times have changed!
Unfortunately... just because the site had escaped the threat of total annihilation at the hands of free hosting providers, it didn't mean that it was out of the woods yet, as another serious hurdle had just started to materialize in front of it: link-stealers.
Having been a webmaster myself at the time, I can tell you that there was nothing quite so frustrating as having your files being hotlinked by other sites, effectively taking advantage of your material and bandwidth to keep attracting people to THEIR place while stealing from yours! A lot of sites began modifying their games in order for them to start with little prompts telling you where they had been downloaded from and urging the visitor to tell them if they had gotten the files somewhere else. I personally never went the extra mile because my site was free (and crappy), but you gotta remember that a lot of the others were being hosted on paid, private servers that needed to keep traffic on check, so this practice wasn't only hurting their sites... it was hurting their wallets, too! And when your page was averaging 35 GBs of DAILY traffic (!) like HoTU? Yeah, that could wreck you.
The sixth time the site went offline was because its owners wanted it that way, as a protest against this scummy practice.
This also should have been the end, but this one dog cannot be put down. Not by others, nor by itself. Site was back up and running after the one competitor that had been doing most of the link-stealing (and hotlinking) publicly apologized. But that wouldn't be the last of the interesting e-mails gotten by the webmistress.
Even if you were like me and only saw the site in passing, you probably remember its mascot: the goofy-looking, astronaut dog that adorned its banner and most of its internal images. It's as classic a mascot as they come, and it continues to be closely associated with the site and its people... but would you believe me if I told that that was an afterthought? Yep! The original logo was a medieval-looking shield made by someone else and added to the banner without their knowledge or consent, so they asked for it to be taken down, which caused it to be replaced by our beloved canine.
It's almost shocking how good a fit this $5 image was. And it's kinda beautiful, isn't it? This whole thing started because of a search going sideways, which then evolved into a massive game on cat-and-mouse between people and corporations, and ended up getting its "battle banner" after a huge misunderstanding between groups that were nonetheless friendly to each other. Whoever was pulling the stings on the cosmic level must have had the time of its life steering this little pirate ship along the online seas.
But because this brave little thing could dodge no storm, it also fell victim to the same practice that buried some of the largest sites of its time: cyber-squatting.
An Abandonware site... With a store?! Yes, but it was to the benefit of small developers.
I remember reading long discussions on the Abandonsocios forums about sites being lost left and right to companies buying popular domains the second they became available (a practice that was tested in court due to massive lawsuits by pissed webmasters, which were ultimately thrown out because the practice of "sniping" expired domains was seen as legal). Sites like LaPutaParka were destroyed by this and never came back, while HoTu was taken but resurfaced somewhere else before getting their own URL back after paying a $400 ransom to whoever had gotten their domain first. Was that scummy? Absolutely, but that was just the way the world rolled... and hey! "Underdogs" got to celebrate this return to the former kennel in style by announcing her 3000th game posted.
It's very interesting to me that the last really big push for this site came just a few days before I entered the scene myself: with its 3.0 design being launched and its 5000th game added (!!!!) on August 6th, 2004.
I honestly can't think of a better match than Threads Of Fate and HoTU.
Of course, many other things happened in the meantime (not all of them pleasant, as this was about the time when companies really started pushing back against the Abandonware scene and take-down notices were received daily on inboxes across the globe), but I didn't want to go into too much detail about those developments, lest I risked started sounding like a heartless instruction manual or history book of sorts. I just thought I'd take a few minutes to properly credit the site that, in a very real sense, kickstarted this whole thing and is likely the reason we are all here today, discussing games released way after (or before!) our time, games that are only now becoming available to most players due to the tireless (and often thankless) work of archivists, curators and translators, who stepped up when developers and publishers simply would not and allowed us to enjoy them without worrying about availability or language barriers, only requiring a decent internet connection in order to relive our memories or even pass them down to a younger generation long after our original discs had gone bad. And that? That's priceless.
But I guess it just makes too much sense that this whole thing was built on a series of coincidences and the incredible effort of a college graduate tapping into her enormous caffeine stores built during endless study hours, helped along by a really loyal crew, IRC dwellers who wanted to give something back to the community and whom continue to carry the torch to this day through its revival, WIKI-style efforts... efforts I got to contribute to myself by submitting Threads Of Fate to the Hall Of Belated Fame, completing a circle I didn't even know I was drawing in the first place.
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