How to get your nostalgic game fix, and also, so long Home of the Underdogs, rest in peace

One of the things I like to do is randomly select an URL from my bookmarks, I haven’t visited in a while and just go with the flow. That’s how I ended up at Home of the Underdogs. At one point in time, this was the place you went to for abandonware (software that is no longer supported or sold). Discussions of legality aside, sometimes there aren’t many options if you want to relive some random blast from the past.

Sadly it looks like Home of the Underdogs is no longer being maintained. There are a few supporters in the forum that keep the place running, but there hasn’t been any new content since 2006. Naturally, there are many sites that try to fill the void. Many have been overtaken by adds, but some of those can be interesting none-the-less. I especially like Lost Treasures France, however you will need some knowledge of French (or you can always try with machine translations). ISO ART is a recent discovery, that seems to have a few lesser known games, which is always nice.

Be warned if you start to surf the abandonware sites and you remember those days, you will loose a lot of time. Tonight I stumbled upon the first “Lands of Lore” game, “Throne of Chaos“. Lost Treasures FR even has a full video walkthrough, but it is much nicer to play it yourself. Once again, DosBox to the rescue. Is there anything it can’t to. There is already a great tutorial available, but if you want to get started with “Throne of Chaos”, it’s easy:

1. install DosBox
2. create a directory on your hard drive (eg. c:games) and inside it create one for your virtual c-drive (eg. c:gamesCdrive) and also put the Lands of Lore iso image in there.
3. start up DosBox and execute the following commands:
   1. mount c c:gamesCdrive
   2. imgmount d “c:gamesLands of Lore – The Thone of Chaos (1994)(Virgin)(M3).iso” -t iso
4. switch to drive d: “d:“
5. and start the install process: “install“

Before you start playing old games,  a few warnings:

• Most of the games are relentless. Do something wrong and it’s over. No continue, nothing, restart (hopefully from a savegame). In this regard, most games will feel pretty difficult in comparison with more recent entertainment. So save as often as you can.
• Usually the learning curve is a lot steeper than new games. They hardly ever have introductory levels, there’s very little online help, so get a manual if you can, else you will have to experiment a lot.
• The interface is never as streamlined, in some cases, conquering the interface is actually part of the game. Whether you like that or not, will probably be a large part of your enjoyment of that game.
• It’s probably a given, but lets be clear about it, the graphics are nothing compared to the games of today.
• Today’s games have the tendency to fall into few gameplay categories, there used to be a lot more variety, so expect some surprises. Even if you think you download just a regular RPG, you might be in for something quite different than what an RPG is today.

But then again, the last point is exactly the reason why you would want to play old games. That and nostalgia.

So, enjoy.

I also published a screencast on YouTube explaining how to get started.