Thank you for your attention. All rights reserved. Please read our privacy policy. Advertise here! How you can help. Random Pick. By Company. By Theme. By Alphabet. By Year. Choose a year Title Search. Company Search. Designer Search. Hall of Belated Fame. HOTU Store. HOTU Merchandise. Multiplayer Games. Alternate Boxes. Featured Article. Freeware Titles. Master List. Community Forum. Most Wanted List. Chat in Underdogs. File Format Guide. HOTU Affiliates.
Recommended Links. Site History. Link to Us. Designer Search. Freeware Titles. File Format Guide. Help: Non PC Games. Help: Win Games. Help: DOS Games. Recommended Links. Site History. Link to Us. Design Goals What is Home of the Underdogs? What is the Scratchware Manifesto I see on the left menu bar? What are the criteria for choosing games for the site? Is Home of the Underdogs an "abandonware" site? But isn't abandonware illegal? I'm confused!
Can you just summarize your upload policy? Do you upload full version of shareware games? What isn't Home of the Underdogs? General Usage Is there a fee for using Home of the Underdogs? But I want to express my thanks for the site.
How can I help? Why do you use ad banners? Are cookies required to use Home of the Underdogs? What are themes and how are they different from genres? I want to see only downloadable games on the lists! Why can't I? How do I get back to the homepage? What does mean? Download Issues How can I download anything? What is Bittorrent and how do I use it? My download manager won't capture the download link! What does "Oops-- this link is broken" message mean?
I keep getting the "Tricked" page! What's the problem? How do I download PDF manuals? All I see is a white screen! Why do I keep getting CRC errors when trying to extract files? What are these. Download limitations and banning. What are those? Why the banning? What triggers the ban and when is it removed?
What should I do to do it "right"? What should I NOT do? I haven't downloaded anything yet, but I'm still banned! I was only downloading one file, and I got banned?! How does transparent proxy evasion work? How do I verify that the download manager is working properly? How can I help increase speed? How do I contact someone about the ban, or ask for help? Why am I getting very low 0. My download immediately stops and I can't resume! What happened? What are your criteria for comments? How long does it take for comments to get approved?
What is this "gamehost" stuff on the comments page? Okay, that sounds interesting. How can I host a game? What are your requirements for gamehost reviews? Why is my gamehost application declined?
I'm now a gamehost. What can I do now? How many games can I host? I no longer want to be a gamehost. How can I resign? Technical Issues I clicked on a manual link but all I see is a blank page.. What do I do? Ok, the game unzips okay, but I can't get into it. What now? The game says some. What are those files and where can I get them?
When I start the game, a copy protection screen appears. How can I pass it? The game runs way too fast! How can I slow it down? I can run the game, but the text is all garbled! Is there any other way to run DOS games in Windows? What is abandonware? What is a CD-rip?
What is freeware? What is shareware? History Who is behind Home of the Underdogs? Why did you create Home of the Underdogs?
How was Home of the Underdogs constructed? Where did all of the Home of the Underdogs database information come from? What's next for Home of the Underdogs development? Miscellaneous Can I request games to be added to the site?
Hey, game X is an underdog. Why isn't it on the site? Can I submit my own review? Can I use the Home of the Underdogs database for my own purposes? What are your favorite games? How often is Home of the Underdogs updated? How can I contribute to Home of the Underdogs? Select one of the above links to jump to that section or question. Take the time to smell the roses : In addition to keeping the games' memories alive with informative reviews and downloads, we also aim to make HOTU as nostalgic and content-rich as possible.
Many games are commercial and critical failures for the right reason: they are terrible : Of course, not all underdogs are created equal, so you will find that sometimes the reviewer will really criticize a game and concludes that yes, it is underrated, but not by much. Beside being a good game, every underdog on this site must fulfill one or more of the following criteria: It remains relatively unknown and undersold despite critical acclaim or because of a lack thereof. Great games often get overlooked because of poor marketing campaign, market saturation, or simply a change in consumer behavior as reflected in the current trend.
Multiple "Best Adventure Game of the Year" awards, for example, hardly helped Dreamforge's outstanding Sanitarium gain a foothold amid 3D action games. Sometimes a game itself is relatively well-known, but its developers are not. Master of Orion , for example, was a big hit for MicroProse, but hardly anyone recognized that it was developed by SimTex and the head designer, Steven Garcia.
This partly explains why SimTex' last game was a commercial failure: it was released by Avalon Hill, a big name in wargaming but an obscure one to strategy gamers. Some games on this site may have been best-sellers when they were released on non-PC systems, but failed when they were ported to PC, usually due to the fact that the PC as a gaming platform was inferior to many others.
Most Cinemaware games, for example, were both commercial and critical successes on the Amiga, but failed to attract the same following on the PC. Since HOTU is a site devoted to PC underdogs, we feel it is natural to honor such games alongside underdogs that were designed specifically for the PC.
We strongly encourage you to buy them-- their developers need all the income they can get to make future classics for our benefit : But isn't abandonware illegal? For more in-depth information on this issue, We recommend the following articles and websites: Abandonware in a Nutshell: Why Nobody Ever Wins Flashbacks for Free: The Skinny on Abandonware Warez, Abandonware, and the SIIA Anti-Piracy Information at the IDSA The World Intellectual Property Organization Despite the illegal status of abandonware, we believe that we are offering a valuable service to the gaming community: classic game collectors have a chance to retrieve games that have otherwise been lost or rendered defective with the passage of time.
If you want to voice support for abandonware, check out the following petition sites: The AbandonWare Petition the International Campaign of Abandonware Supporters ICAS Aren't you impairing profitability of the games' publishers and retailers by uploading them?
The following chart should make 'our policy' clear to everyone: Do you upload full version of shareware games? As such, you will not find the following on Home of the Underdogs: "Warez," i. Although we are aware that both warez and abandonware as we define it are illegal, we do see strong differences in moral justification simply put, there is no moral justification behind a warez site. Our rationale on uploading abandonware is outlined above.
Due to space and bandwidth limit, it just isn't possible for us to upload full CD-ROM versions of most games, even though they were discontinued. We try our best to link to on-line vendors that still carry them in stock, and although we normally abhor CD-rips because it strips the game into the minimum playable denominator, we sometimes decide to upload CD-rips for games that are really difficult to buy anywhere, and where stuff that are left out from the rip e.
Best-selling games or non-PC games with a few exceptions. Please re-read our criteria section above on how we choose games for the site. Patches or bug-fixes we have neither time nor space to maintain this; Games Domain and The Patches Scroll are your best bets of finding patches Technical support for game-specific problems.
If you have a problem with a game that neither the "Technical Notes" section on the game's info sheet, nor this FAQ does not address, please post in the "Technical Help" section of our forum and hopefully someone can help. If you have never downloaded anything from the Internet before, here are 2 easy steps you should follow: Step 1: Make sure you've got the archiver programs. We highly recommend PowerArchiver and WinRAR , which unzips all the compression formats we use here, including multiple files.
Most files are in. Step 2: Download and set up download managers such as GetRight , or Netvampire -- they are download assistant programs that will save you a lot of time by allowing you to resume broken downloads later. Make sure you set up "browser integration" so every time you click on a. Recommended Links. Site History. Link to Us. Game Fortunately, the idiom "third time's the charm" holds up with this underdog. The game retains the excellent military, economic, and diplomatic models of the first two games, with a significant improvement in user interface although it remains far from user-friendly and graphics.
The range of scenarios and options is probably the best ever seen in games about the Civil War, although the lack of a tactical module is slightly disappointing. Interactive Magic, the original publisher, also added a lot of multimedia elements pictures, etc. This is not the letter this quarter's new entry will be filed in, articles being relegated. Don your tricorn hats and buckled shoes, and bow in the grand Count Lucanor!
That's an order. Until next time! In case you missed it, there's now a HotU Discord chat. Join it for real-time exchanging of underdog ideas and such. Is there anyone reading this who would like to join the diminutive team as an editor? If you're someone who plays interesting, non-mainstream games anyway, you might as well be sharing your experiences. Find the appropriate thread in the forum. Upcoming Changes! I was observing for a long time how the community was still hanging around, regardless of my laziness and negligence.
And finally I gave up, you do want HotU to exist and you do want it to grow, so let it be your stubborn way : Since you really love it that much, let's bring HotU to its former glory or at least make it fully functional again. Of course there are several obstacles, but I think I got all or most of them covered.
At the moment there is a discussion going on at the forum about the details. All rights reserved. Please read our privacy policy. How you can help. Random Pick. By Company. By Theme. By Alphabet. By Year. Choose a year Title Search.
Company Search. Designer Search. Freeware Titles. File Format Guide. Help: Non PC Games. Help: Win Games. Help: DOS Games. Recommended Links. Site History. Link to Us. Quarterly update Q4 Whenever you've gotten into one of many kinds of TV entertainment, a large part of the titillation was always likely to have been the fantasy of living it vicariously.
Quarterly update Q3 Managed to get this double update out in time! Quarterly update Q2 Salutations once again! Dungeon Crawler Jam results The jam organized by www. Quarterly update Q1 Happy two thirds through the second quarter of !
Quarterly update Q4 Hope you're not greatly suffering from vicious ailments, dear reader! Quarterly update Q3 Another quarter has whooshed past like that time when you were still pretty, Ma'm. Quarterly update Q2 It's known to be very difficult to sell games of a more obscure strain.
Quarterly update Q1 Yet another game finds its way onto pastures greener with Endless Forms Most Beautiful , something that's novel in a very quaint kind of way. Quarterly update Q4 There's nothing left of the unruly and frequently grammar-defying Top Dog entries since the final few letters which I shouldn't have to tell you, are 'X', 'Y', and le 'Z' are also done and certainly dusted so those you with allergies can come hang out, too.
Quarterly update Q2 More and more top dogs get spanked into submission: this time everything under 'T'.
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