Home of the Underdogs

The Home of the Underdogs, aka HotU, is an archive of many personal computer games, including interactive fiction. The site also contains reviews, community forums, and other resources. Good games might be labeled as a "Top Dog"; not so good games might be labeled as a "Real Dog". The site's original creator and maintainer was Sarinee Achavanuntakul.

HotU is free to use, but there are banner ads and other advertising on the site to help offset the heavy server costs. Also, users are warned not to download more than one file at a time or use download optimizing programs.

HotU is not an abandonware site, per se, but supports abandonware in principle, that is, it wants to preserve and promote games that would otherwise be lost to the public. Most old games no longer have an official venue where players can get the game from. However, HotU also supports official distribution of old games, and if a game's owner requests it, HotU is quite willing to remove a game from its archive, and link to the official distribution site instead.

In February 2009, HotU's host went bankrupt, and the site was abruptly lost from the Internet. As of March 2009, plans are currently underway to recreate the Home of the Underdogs at a new site with a new maintainer. See Sarinee's blog post Home of the Underdogs Revival Project for more info. This project will be led by Dan Pinchbeck of Advanced Games Research Group at University of Portsmouth.

Update: A new HOTU site has been operating since March, 2009, based on Sarinee's original content, taking the form of a community-driven site where members can add, review, comment upon, upload, and discuss underdog games.

Hall of Belated Fame, Interactive Fiction Inductees

The Hall of Belated Fame is a short list of notable classic works within a genre. As of March 2006, these were the featured IF games:

• A Mind Forever Voyaging.
• Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur.
• Bureaucracy.
• Cosmoserve.
• Curses.
• Eric the Unready.
• Gateway II: Homeworld.
• Gold Rush!.
• Heroine's Mantle.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• James Clavell's Shogun.
• Jigsaw.
• Kaged.
• Leather Goddesses of Phobos.
• The Legend Lives!.
• Lost New York.
• The Lurking Horror.
• Magnetic Scrolls Collection 1.
• Metropolis.
• The Mulldoon Legacy.
• Perry Mason: Case of the Mandarin Murder.
• Photopia.
• Planetfall.
• Shades of Grey.
• She's Got a Thing for a Spring.
• Slouching Towards Bedlam.
• So Far.
• Spellbreaker.
• Spider and Web.
• Starcross.
• Sunset Over Savannah.
• t-zero.
• Tapestry.
• Theatre.
• Timequest.
• Trinity.

Links

Note: Links have been updated with the new community-driven HOTU project.

• [1] Home page. A new community-driven HOTU site based on the original HOTU content.
  • Interactive Fiction genre at HotU.
  • All 'Top Dog' Interactive Fiction Inductees.
  • Home of the Underdogs Forum
• Home of the Underdogs at Wikipedia.

Home of the Underdogs Revival Project

• Home of the Underdogs Revival Project - Sarinee's blog post, March 2nd, 2009.
• Home of the Underdogs Revival Project - The Google Groups group. People interested in helping revive HotU should join.