I would think this is the case with a lot of free- and shareware that was basically only published as magazine listings, on floppy disks of CD-ROMs packed in with magazines, or in shareware collection CD-ROMs back in the 1990s. Many small software publishers back then had no website, maybe a BBS system, usually only a postal address where you could send your cash, money order or credit card payment in exchange for a full copy or serial number. Those that had a website often used free website hosts such as GeoCities, which are now all long gone, so unless you know their website address to look them up on the Web Archive you're pretty much stuck, especially because many of those publishers predate the (current) big names in gaming reviews.

Perhaps a good place to look for traces of them is usenet newsgroups, as they will likely have advertised their product on a computer-related newsgroup, provided you can get past Google's horrible mangling of DejaNews that makes searching for old usenet posts a massive pain in the behind...

So what is the game's name? Why so secretive for a freeware fangame?

another place to submit it is here: https://www.classicdosgames.com/

xjas wrote:

What do you guys think?

To be honest, why you didn't share at least the title 🤣

Sorry, not trying to be secretive. It's a Starcon2 fangame that was made around 1998~1999, released direct to the Web 1.0. I didn't mention the title because there are presently zero hits for it on Google or any other search engine I tried. If I post the title here there will be one hit, but still no game. 😁 I kind of want to put this up with a bit of fanfare so I can see if it spreads, and also to get people to actually try it. It's not a good game, but the creator must have put a solid bunch of time & effort into it and it has some campy charm.

Edit: so actually it turns out if you search for part of the name, the skeleton of the old homepage full of broken links does still come up, along with three forum threads where it gets mentioned. But the full name (six words) is still not posted anywhere on the modern web. Give me a few days and I'll do a nice bundle of this one with some screenshots and put it up on Archive.org. Maybe somebody else can do the world's first Let's Play. 😀 If you think you know what it is, please don't name it for the time being.

Freeware games exclusively hosted on their author's personal web pages past 1996 and up to 1999 tend to be lost in the sands of time by not being the same overpromoted visual basic trash to slap on a shovelware disc, not ASP associated, no promotional deals (i.e. the "you could win $1,000,000" wizard) or put on some big name shareware-only games site (Jumbo, Nonags, Happypuppy, Gamedomain, Winsite, Tucows etc). They're also often nuked when a pirate tries to "lame" them out, so no precious "software preservation" warez scene helping you there either.

Also i'm guessing you're talking about this one. I have the original archive for it somewhere. It was hosted on Tripod in 98-99 IIRC.

If not that game, then this game which is more literally a StarCon2 fangame, is old, and is also still hosted on Sourceforge and is more well known than the above game

leileilol wrote:

If not that game, then this game which is more literally a StarCon2 fangame, is old, and is also still hosted on Sourceforge and is more well known than the above game

Well, TimeWarp isn't a one-author game and doesn't have goofy (or any) writing...

If we're in the neighorhood of Star Control fangames, then Fibs & Brags in Outer Space! would fit the bill more closely -- it's another so-called "lost" one which I somehow kept on my drive all along (and recently contributed for preservation elsewhere) 😉

xjas: whatever it is, no need to be secretive about it or have any 'fanfare' really - if you don't have the time/energy for writeups and such, someone will get to it sooner or later as long as it's out there. Availability is more important. Why, you could even attach it here. 😁

I understand that keeping it secret is more about "retro dork control".

After the secret's loose, prepare for "hey guy's remeber the 90's rember this <insert recently unearthed/emulated game here> i rember it i play it all time!!! im bigest fan of <insert recently unearthed/emulated game here> i am snowflake o yea </peter griffin voice with nintendo-franchise/apogee-franchise avatar>"

Hah, maybe, but that only happens when you try to artificially build up anticipation and create 'fanfare'... which is why I personally don't do anything like a tour-de-force on youtube or the archive.org-satellite twitter circle. If you just put it up somewhere without the noise, those who *do* remember it and actively look for it end up finding it, and the you neatly circumvent 99.9% of the "special" crowd...

indeed. and a few years after I did powervr youtube videos there's some dorks bothering me for how great and holy powervr is blah blah dreamcast blah "underrated", requests to record virtual on/ resident evil / hex incontinence of blackmarsh, offers to send me warez etc. etc.

The pretension is real

Ah well - looks like VileR's already done it, yeah it is Fibs. Nothing more to do here then. (Although I'm not sure where you uploaded it to - there's still no functional place you can download it on the web in my searching.)

Before you guys give me too much shit for the ego angle, I just want to mention I wasn't after any "fame" or retro cred whatsoever - I wasn't intending to attach my name to the "release" at all. That's part of the reason why I didn't mention the title here yet. I have zero presence on Youtube/Archive/Mobygames/any of the other sites mentioned so no 'status' to gain from it.

As I said, the game is not "good" in the traditional sense, but it's totally playable & obviously a love letter by the creator to his subject matter and he put a ton of effort into it even if it wasn't "polished". That kind of stuff is worth saving IMHO. I really did just want people to see something new and maybe give it a try.

Heh, I get ya. It's a neat coincidence anyway, since I somehow came across it on my hard drive just the other week and had a brief replay (turns out I still had a save from just before the end). Thought of using it for the "Guess the game!!" round, but ruled it out as it's way too deep in obscure-land. 😉

I recall talking to the author quite a lot around the time this came out (he was involved in TimeWarp as well for a while), nice dude. It's certainly far from a polished game, true... but at least in the writing department, that may just be a second-language / quirky Italian humor thing.

(BTW, you might have come across it already, but at least the old Fibs website was archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20010803025210/htt … arcontrol/fibs/)