Abandonware/Old Games -- How to Access HoT Underdogs

[kingcomrade]

(7/22) Fixed links to the Underdogs, they should work now.


Update History-
12/2- System Shock link

9/20 - Copypasta'd the instructions on how to get to Underdogs.

8/07 - added Spanish abandonware site http://www.lamazmorraabandon.com

2/06 - Added FFShrine to Music section
1/22 - Added KHInsider to the Music section, added Realms of Arkania Blade of Destiny
1/11 - Added World of Xeen (Rpg), Wizardry 7 (rpg)
1/10 - Added Reloaded Abandonia, Infamous Adventures, ADG Interative (websites), added link to ScummVM and VDMSound, deleted Natuk, added Sanitarium (adventure), fixed link to X-Com Terror of the Deep, added alternative link for X-Com Enemy Unknown, added C:Dos Abandonware (website)
10/17 - Added Indianapolis 500
9/22 - A fun rifle. I mean, added Albion.
7/28 - Added 101 Airborne, Civil War Generals 2
7/22 Added Ultima V-VIII, Underworld 1 and 2, fixed links
5/17 The Underdogs is now found at www.the-underdogs.info . <s>The links in this post don't work if they are linked to the underdogs, but this list is still here for reference.</s>
3/08 - Added Space Hulk
3/03 - Added Fantasy General
2/20- Added Liberated Games
2/09- Added Crusader: No Regret, Crusader: No Remorse
2/07 - Added Seal Team
2/04 - Added Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Stunts, Death Rally, Discworld 1 & 2, Don's Soundtracks, Recommended Games site
2/03 - Added KGB, Steel Sky
1/17- Added Zeliard, Flashback, Uncharted Waters, Darksun Games, Abandoned Games Room
1/16 Added Lamborghini: American Challenge, Natuk, Abandonwarering.com, Master of Magic, Emperor of the Fading Sun

Alright, I want to create a resource thread. There are a number of incredible, old, games on these sites, and I want to create a list of those that are available and worth downloading. I've been led to these two sites over and over by the Codex to play some of my favorite games.

-(1/10) added a few more sites, fixed link to the underdogs

http://www.the-underdogs.info
http://www.abandonia.com

UPDATE: The new URL is http://www.the-underdogs.info/

Sorry if this old news, but I didn't see anything posted on the subject and I've only just personally discovered this...


From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_of_the_Underdogs

As of March 21, 2006, the Home of the Underdogs website is broken due to the expiration of the domain name registration. Sarinee Achavanuntakul, during a rare public appearance on the site's IRC channel, related that this was due to credit card difficulties and that the domain would be working again soon. In the meantime, the site is still accessible via its IP address (http://209.120.136.195/[1]), but downloads and screenshots will be unavailable as the servers won't accept IP addresses as referers for those files (this could be fixed, though, by adding the servers' hostnames into your system's hosts file; see here for detailed instructions).

And from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Home_of_the_Underdogs&diff=45028468&oldid=44964271

BTW, if you add the following lines to your [[hosts file]], I think everything, including downloads and screenshots (they break because their server rejects [[IP address]]es as [[referer]]s), will work perfectly:

+ 209.120.136.200 community.the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.203 dfg.the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.196 files.the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.205 mac.the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.197 old.the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.207 ron.the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.194 the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.195 www.the-underdogs.org
+ 209.120.136.209 zzt.the-underdogs.org

Again, apologies if this post isn't of any use to anyone but as I said, I haven't heard it mentioned here before...

New sites:
http://www.lamazmorraabandon.com - Lots of games (including Stonekeep), site in Spanish.

http://www.cdosabandonware.com/
http://www.reloaded.org/index.php - Freeware Indie Games

http://www.abandonwarering.com
http://www.agamesroom.com/page/faq - Specialized in Lucasarts/Sierra Adventure Games
http://dso.zidev.com/downloads.html
http://liberatedgames.com/ - Specializes in source code releases

Recommended Games

Just a note: Abandonia usually gets me much, much faster download speeds, but I'm not sure if they have the same selection as underdogs. They seem to have quite a few though, so I'm going to be providing links to Abandonia. However, the reviews on the Abandonia pages are sometimes very stupid. For example, the reviewer gave a pretty low score Doom (which isn't downloadable there anyways).
If a game is available on Underdogs but not Abandonia (like the System Shocks) then I'll link to Underdogs.

Also: You need DosBox to play a lot of the games.
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net
Also: For many adventure games, you can use the program ScummVM http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php
Also: An alternative to DosBox is VDMSound, which is also an organic component to Windows
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound

Anyways, I'm going to create a list, and you guys let me know about games they have and I'll edit this first post. Maybe if we get enough the thread will be worth a sticky.

If there are any games that you think should be added or removed from the list, say so. Also, the selection isn't limited to these two sites. If there are any others (like the Ur-Quan Masters site), definitely let me know. It also might be worthwhile to add a separate section for things like game soundtracks and such. I will say when this post has been edited with new games and such in the thread title and mark them.

Always go to the bottom of the download pages to see if there are special instructions on how to get it to work

Not Sure What Category-
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
Uncharted Waters
Pirates! Gold
Reunion
Star Control 2
The Ur-Quan Masters: It is probably more worthwhile to get this, which is a Windows adaptation of the 3DO version of Star Control 2, than the original PC version.
Space Hulk

Adventure-
Sanitarium
http://www.agdinteractive.com/games.php - King's Quest 1, 2, Quest for Glory 2
http://www.infamous-adventures.com/kq3/ - King's Quest 3 Remake


Albion
Discworld
Discworld 2
Beneath a Steel Sky
KGB
Fable (Note: read his instructions on how to make it work in DosBox, pretty simple)
King's Quest: Quest for the Crown VGA
King's Quest 2: Romancing Stones VGA

Death Gate (This one is based off a series of books called Death Gate Cycle. It's pretty interesting even if you haven't read them. Brought back memories for me, at least. You should try it out, just to check out the magic system.)

4X-
Emperor of the Fading Sun
Master of Magic
Colonization
Civilization 2
Settler's 2 Gold
Supremacy/Overlord

Turn Based Strategy-
101 Airborne: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy
Civil War Generals 2
Fantasy General
X-Com: Enemy Unknown
alternative download for X-Com Enemy Unknown
X-Com Terror from the Deep Collector's Edition
X-Com: Apocalypse
Jagged Alliance

Fighting-
One Must Fall: 2097

Puzzle-
Arkanoid
Indianapolis 500

Racing-
Death Ralley
Stunts
Ignition
Lamborghini: American Challenge

RTS-
Dune 2 To get around the copy protection you need this text file: http://www.destinys-darlin.com/play/dun ... 2hints.txt

RPG-
World of Xeen
Wizardry 7

Ultima 5
Ultima 6
Ultima 7
Ultima 7-2
Ultima 8
Ultima Underworld
Ultima Underworld 2
Betrayal at Krondor
Albion


System Shock
System Shock 2

System Shock Portable (Updated Original, plays in XP)


Anvil of Dawn
Realms of Arkania: Star Trail
Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny
Darklands
The Elder Scrolls: Arena
Eye of the Beholder 3
Dungeon Master (With a screenshot of Section 8's avatar)

Simulation-
Hind: Russian Combat Helicopter Simulation

FPS-
Blood
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

Tactical Shooter
Seal Team

Third-Person Shooter
Crusader: No Regret
Crusader: No Remorse

Platformer-
Prince of Persia
Flashback
Zeliard

Soundtracks
Blue Laguna's MP3s
This site has very fast download speeds and the soundtracks to a huge number of games, mostly jRPGs but not limited to them at all.

Kingdom Hearts Insider Downloads
FFInsider Downloads
These two sites have a humongous selection of soundtracks.

VG Mix
Overclocked Remix
These two sites do remixes. A lot of them are crap, but there are also many that are well done and worth listening to even if you've never heard the source material.

Don's Music Page

 

[Rat Keeng]

I would definately put Colonization under turn-based strategy, barring the existence of a genre dealing with economic-exploration type games.

Also, Lamborghini: American Challenge is a great old racing game (FYI, it's European name is Crazy Cars 3). Simple, but heaps of fun, and it has a lot of nice little features.

 

[Jason]

Another fun one to add to the list is Natuk. It's a turn-based combat oriented RPG where you form a party made entirely of orcs on a dark mission to kill something or other.
http://www.proudft.com/natuk.html

 

[Jasede]

I won't contribute to your list just yet, kingcomrade, but if it suits your fancy you might find every 'abandoned' game at http://www.abandonwarering.com.

 

[kingcomrade]

Economic/Exploration/Warfare games are called 4X games, no? Exploit/Explore/Expand/Exterminate or something like that. I haven't played Colonization, I just know it's famous. If it's sorta like Civ then it's a 4X game.

 

[Vival]

Master of Magic Great 4x game. I burned significant time playing this one. The only downside is,that even with the latest patch(don't even try without), there are still some annoying bugs left in the game.

Emperor of The Fading Suns 4x/Turn Based Strategy. Lots of potential here, unfortunately the AI is very weak which reduces the replay value.

 

[Section8]

System Shock isn't really an RPG, and I don't think it ever claimed to be. It's more of a "thinking man's" FPS.

Additions:

Uncharted Waters is a high seas trader in the same vein as Pirates! with more of an emphasis on trading, although it does feature great turn-based hex combat.

Flashback is a superb descendent of Prince of Persia, part platformer, part adventure and all beautifully rendered with rotoscoped sprites.

Zeliard bears several similarities to the JRPGs of the early 90s, except that it is packaged into a side scrolling platformer. Slightly deeper than a standard platformer, it's well worth a play.

--
I'm thinking that it might be worth adding a comment to every game, otherwise it's just a steadily growing list with no real reference to what makes the game stand out.

 

[Quigs]

anyone work with dosbox before? I seem to be mucking something up.

Drives are mounted, all well and good. trying to play xcom apoc.

c:\? cd ll (apoc directory)
c:\ll>xcomapoc


long pause, follwed by

c:\ll>

Just sits there for a good 5 min.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

anyone work with dosbox before? I seem to be mucking something up.

Drives are mounted, all well and good. trying to play xcom apoc.

c:\? cd ll (apoc directory)
c:\ll>xcomapoc


long pause, follwed by

c:\ll>

Just sits there for a good 5 min.

Increase the CPU cycles or memory. You can do this in the dosbox.conf file in the Dosbox main directory.

 

[Mulciber]

There are a couple of great fan modifications for Emporer of the Fading Suns. Home of the Underdog details how to get at them, if I remember correctly. A lot of the game issues are fixed.

 

[SlavemasterT]

Drives are mounted, all well and good. trying to play xcom apoc.

I've had similar problems trying to get that game to run on dosbox. I think the problem may be sound related. I think I read that there was some program that was supposed to help with it, but I never did get it running properly.

 

[kingcomrade]

CTRL+F12 increases the CPU cycles. Is there a DosBox hotkey to increase memory?

 

[chaedwards]

Natuk's not abandonware - it's shareware 'cos you still have to pay for the full version.

 

[corvax]

Great idea for a thread! I've always wanted to look into older games but those sites usually overwhelmed me. Keep up the good work.

 

[Bidjou]

Don't know if the sites you mentionned has them but you can find the darksun games there:
http://dso.zidev.com/downloads.html

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

For those interested in old Lucasarts and Sierra adventure games, I'd suggest The Abandoned GamesRoom. It has nearly all of them, plus EGA, VGA, CD and Speech versions, along with links to the required apps to play them.

 

[Pr()ZaC]

I don't know why Rapidshare didn't take them out already. Normally it's Rapid enough to do so for copyrighted material which is not abandonware.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[LlamaGod]

#oldgames on efnet

 

[Elwro]

Don't know if the sites you mentionned has them but you can find the darksun games there:
http://dso.zidev.com/downloads.html

Thanks very much! Cool links; I've got the games already but have never seen the guides.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

CTRL+F12 increases the CPU cycles. Is there a DosBox hotkey to increase memory?

Not that I know of, you have to go directly into the dosbox.conf file and play around with it. Real PITA.

 

[Mulciber]

A better idea is to get DFend. It is a grapical front-end for DoxBox and comes with a configuration wizard so you can set seperate settings for all of your games. Very handy for the not-technically-inclined.

 

[Pr()ZaC]

D-Fend is a must if you use DosBox.

 

[DaViLLaN]

anyone work with dosbox before? I seem to be mucking something up.

Drives are mounted, all well and good. trying to play xcom apoc.

c:\? cd ll (apoc directory)
c:\ll>xcomapoc


long pause, follwed by

c:\ll>

Just sits there for a good 5 min.

I was able to run it in xp, no DOSBox needed.
When you run it in XP, it goes to a black screen and hangs. I hit ALT+F4 and it started the game. It must have been playing the intro or some crap.
Try it in XP, and if you have issues, you may have to set compatibility mode to Windows 95.
I got alot of games to work in XP that were supposed to be DOS only.

good luck.

 

[kingcomrade]

Just letting you guys know this thread is still around, if anyone wants to add anything.

 

[Tintin]

A good adventure game, pretty hard though

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=586