Home of the Underdogs
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Home of the Underdogs (abbr. HotU) was founded by Sarinee Achavanuntakul in September 1998, and has grown to be one of the largest abandonware sites on the Internet. As of 2004, it offered reviews for over 5000 games, as well as providing downloads for many games that are no longer available for purchase. Most games available on the site are for the PC (DOS and Microsoft Windows), but it also contains a section with games for other platforms.
HOTU 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 of three distinctions:
- Top Dog refers to the real gems that somehow failed, for instance because of poor marketing.
- Hall of Belated Fame refers to a very small number of games that should have been receiving awards and high ratings everywhere
- Real Dog refers to those games that failed for a good reason, usually poor gameplay, but that were requested to be included on the site by some fans, or fans of related games.
The site claims to be more of a museum than a download site, offering what is now argued to be "great" games that never received due attention upon their initial releases (the "underdogs" referred to in the name). Also, the site attempts to comply with copyright regulations; in that if a game available for download becomes once more available for purchase, or if a game's copyright holder so requests, they remove the downloadable files, and replace them with a link to the site selling the game.
The site has a member community with which it communicates through an Internet forum and an IRC channel.
External links
- Official Site (http://www.the-underdogs.org/)
- Wired News article on HotU (http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62975,00.html?tw=wn_story_related)