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Home Of The Underdogs





Website Information

  Name Home of the Underdogs
  Favicon Home of the Underdogs faviconpng
  Url http://wwwthe-underdogsinfo
  Type Abandonware Video Games
  Registration Not Required
  Owner Sarinee Achavanuntakul
  Author Sarinee Achavanuntakul
  Launch Date September 1998
  Current Status Hiatus


Home of the Underdogs (often called '''HotU''') is an websites on the Internet. While at first hosted on free Web Host s, it began using a dedicated server due to its high Bandwidth usage in February 2000. The original Domain Name was ''theunderdogs.org'', in 2002 it was changed to ''the-underdogs.org'' and in 2006 to ''the-underdogs.info''. The reason in both cases was that the domain was not renewed in time and was subsequently taken over by Cybersquatters . As Of 2007 , the site appears to be on hiatus, having not been updated since January 14 th, 2006 . However, the site does have an active forum community.


SITE CONTENT

The site provides reviews for over 5,300 games, as well as offering download of software and manuals for a number of those games that are no longer commercially available. While the majority of games available on the site are for DOS or Microsoft Windows , the site also contains a section with games for other platforms. Where downloads for these games are provided, these are usually present in formats that are compatible with Emulator s. The site also has scans of several Gamebook series, many of them complete. In addition to commercial titles, the site contains a small number of 'freeware' titles.

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

  • ''Top Dog'' refers to games perceived by some as gems, but that for some reason failed commercially, for instance because of poor marketing.

  • ''Hall of Belated Fame'' refers 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. All of its members are also considered "Top Dogs" by definition.

  • ''Real Dog'' refers 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.


The site claims to be more of a Museum than a download site, offering what are by them considered "great" games that never received due attention upon their initial releases. It is also asserted that the site is careful about Copyright concerns, so if a game available for download becomes once more available for purchase, or if a game's copyright holder so Requests , the downloadable files are removed, replacing them 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 has a store in which independent games are sold, and maintains an active member community by means of its Forum and IRC Channel .

The last update to the site was in mid 2006. As the owner has moved on to other projects, it is increasingly unlikely that the site will continue to expand. The site, however, continues to stay online (despite large web-hosting bills), and its community still actively post in the forums.


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