The 2006 Scene Recap - Happy New Year!
So what has this year brought to the scene, the people behind it that keeps the machinery well-oiled, and what impacts have it had to those retro fans out there with a neverending thirst for the old days? Well, let's see:
2006 has been a year full of surprises, let-downs and good moments. Let's recap some of what's been happening:
- Early this year Swizzle starts out "Girls of Abandonware", a site dedicated to the adult only section of video games. Nothing is like 32bit !
- Perhaps the most discussed happening in the scene occured in late March when the Home of the Underdogs domain www.the-underdogs.org became inaccessible due to domain expiration issues. The main person behind it all, Underdogs, said it was due to problems with the payment for the domain, resulting in a search engine/cybersquatter aquiring it. In the meantime however, Underdogs registered www.the-underdogs.info (Link ») and moved the site there. They are still discussing about getting back the .org-domain. More information is available at Wikipedia: Link »
- In march/april I wrote an article over at Da Fast Lane on how to record video footage using Dosbox 0.63 , different shady OpenGL fixes and more. There has been no other article to my knowing yet of this. Not even on Vogons.
- In the beginning of April, Neopickaze, after months of recalibrating his award ceremony to perfection, "Da Awards" blasted the scene by giving respect and honor to those whose been working hard making it what it is. As an extra spice, the whole thing was "live", giving an extra piece of spice to the whole event.
- Also, soon after the award ceremony, the Da Fast Lane started to experience difficulties both with the .net-domain, as well as general site speed and experience. A month or so after they changed into the .org-domain and everything seemed to be fine.
- In late June, DosBox 0.65 was released adding, amongst other things, the option to record footage from your gameplay sessions.
- The Abandonware Blog sees the light during the days of July.
- Somewhere in mid 2006 Ancient Amusements (ancient.dk) announced that they were fed up with the work the ring required, which resulted in that Ancient sealed the lid - once (and for all?).
- On a more mysterious note, The Abandonware Spot just vanished into thin air after existing for a mere of 2 1/2 years. We bet it was the domain that expired.
- Late 2006 (october/november), Da Fast Lane once again experiences difficulties. The site suddenly collapsed into a board full of strange Zend optimization error messages. www.dafastlane.org for more info there. I urge Neo to get the site up again, it means alot to the scene.
- Mid/Late november/december, The Abandonware Ring starts to fiddle with the idea of scene interviews (led by bakkelun and Lone Lee). After the idea is out in the open, invitations start and the feedback is rather overwhelming. As of early december we had around 10 interested webmasters, and more is on the way.
On the 30th of November, The Internet Archive Project won a copyright reprieve, meaning that they overcame an obstacle which threatened the entire work of the not-for-profit group. It could now host copies of obsolete computer games and software (where the agreed conditions were met) without fear of prosecution.
That's a short (and very quick) recap of what's been happening. I know there has been alot of new sites, either completely new or discovered by some ring. One really good example was the "Just Games Retro", a site with an attitude. Same applies to "Gobliiins Old Games".
I would also like to thank Abandonia Reloaded for keeping the community updated on freeware titles - a nichê that's very important.
From all of us to all of you we want to wish you all the best in entry of the New Year. Remember to be safe, use precautions when using fireworks and above all: fire a rocket or two for the Abandonware scene!
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