VOGONS


First post, by Namrok

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So I've had the reoccurring problem. I'm playing an old game, say, Jagged Alliance, and I'm stuck. Like I just can't seem to get going at all, how to play the game correctly is just totally lost on me. I try to google it, bing it, etc but all I get are pretty terrible wikis or gamefaqs pages which don't really tell me how people played that game in the era when it came out. Sometimes I can find an old strategy article in Computer Gaming World, but what I want is a good old fashioned fan site.

Sometimes I get lucky. With respect to Jagged Alliance I found this old walkthrough that was the exact sort of concise hints I needed to finally really get started. Turns out The Computer Show had all sorts of walkthrough, interviews etc from the 90's and early 00's.

When I first went digging I found this Tyrian fan site, but it's since been forgotten off the internet. I also found this Syndicate fan site which seem to have been maintained the whole while. Lastly, I found RPG Classics which seems to maintain "shrines" to a pretty good number of old RPGs. My quest for a Might & Magic fan page lead me there.

And of course, who can forget A Hackers Guide to Sin or TTLG.com in general.

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Reply 2 of 17, by Joseph_Joestar

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NMA is still up: https://www.nma-fallout.com/

I think that may have been the first Fallout fan site ever.

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Reply 3 of 17, by newtmonkey

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I was going to post RPGClassics. I love that site, and still use it to this day.

I really miss these old fan sites. They were so unique, because they were usually just written by one person, maybe with some regular contributors, and they were truly fan sites and not meant to just regurgitate crap from PR departments and make some money.

It was so nice back in the day to search for some game and get a bunch of useful resources on the first page of results, instead of the Internet wasteland we're living in now, where the first three pages consist entirely of stores, clickbait, and AI articles.

Reply 4 of 17, by Namrok

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Yeah, I really miss the personalized and amateurish nature of a lot of old fan sites, versus everything being on wikia, reddit or gamefaqs. It's so weird too, because I know I visited a ton of those fansites back in the day, but I can scarcely remember a one of them. I think a lot went up in smoke when Geocities died.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 5 of 17, by Martli

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I found this old site for cricket 97 when I was playing it for dos game club in august: https://ourdigitalheritage.org/hostedArchives … ouse/cricket97/

Looks like it might be an archive site based on the URL

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Reply 6 of 17, by gerry

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Namrok wrote on 2024-09-17, 15:19:

Yeah, I really miss the personalized and amateurish nature of a lot of old fan sites, versus everything being on wikia, reddit or gamefaqs. It's so weird too, because I know I visited a ton of those fansites back in the day, but I can scarcely remember a one of them. I think a lot went up in smoke when Geocities died.

yes exactly that, in the 90's especially there was something great about finding some site hidden in tripod,angelfire, geocities or similar full of tips, save games and so on

i remember a few too, "temple of the conqueror" for c&c i used to frequent

very few remain and they are not so easy to find now - searches always favor anything big and new over old and small

Reply 7 of 17, by schmatzler

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I actually run one - the fansite for the Independence War games from Particle Systems.
"I-War" and " Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos" are not-that-well-known space pirate simulation games with Newtonian physics.

Although the site has been upgraded and somewhat modernized by me, all of the old content is still available in mostly unmodified form and we even have a backup of the first iteration for nostalgia's sake. Atari put the games up on Steam and GOG after I modernized the website, so I guess the site is successful in their eyes. 😀

While our fanbase is very small, it's also very loyal. We have some hardcore people in our community that built a NoCD patch and disassembled the proprietary mission logic of the game to fix some bugs after over 20 years. It's really amazing.

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 8 of 17, by UCyborg

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Arokh's Lair - Drakan series

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Reply 9 of 17, by DracoNihil

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Namrok wrote on 2024-09-16, 22:53:

And of course, who can forget A Hackers Guide to Sin or TTLG.com in general.

DOUG The Eagle's (aka tapewolf) website is still alive and well: https://www.it-he.org/front.php

“I am the dragon without a name…”
― Κυνικός Δράκων

Reply 10 of 17, by MrFlibble

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Here's a shrine for Avalon (the game's website is till up, although this is not the original one).

FED2k (which originally stood for "First Ever Dune 2000 (website)") is about all things Dune, including all games in the series.

Duke4.net -- everything Duke Nukem.

I also believe Pete's QB Site is a fairly old site dedicated to QBasic games.

Project Perfect Mod is a pretty old C&C modding website. Similarly, The Hive Workshop is a modding site for Warcraft III.

DOS Games Archive | Free open source games | RGB Classic Games

Reply 12 of 17, by andre_6

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The Pharaoh Heaven website has long since became a staple for longtime Pharaoh players like myself. Still going strong albeit very slow nowadays. They have many similar websites conveniently linked in a vertical bar on the main page, such as Caesar III and Zeus, also from the Impressions series of games. Still charmingly 90s:

https://pharaoh.heavengames.com

Reply 13 of 17, by Namrok

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Some of these are great. I think I'm going to find myself needing that Caesar III site when I get around to that game again.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 14 of 17, by andre_6

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Namrok wrote on 2024-09-30, 18:34:

Some of these are great. I think I'm going to find myself needing that Caesar III site when I get around to that game again.

Glad to know that. I've been wanting to properly dive in the other games of the series (Caesar III, Zeus and Emperor), the problem is I just love Pharaoh too much. But I'll get there.

If it escaped your radar, be sure to check out the Augustus "Mod" for Caesar III, it's fantastic on every level. I wish they made that for Pharaoh, it'd be nice for people who aren't a big fan of the remastered version (Pharaoh: A New Era). Or if the nostalgia is too strong for that, at least consider gettting the basic widescreen fix for all games of the series. I love playing games on period correct hardware, but the nature of this series of games really makes it nearly impossible to go back once you play them in a 16:9 ratio with a modern mouse. The axonometric pre-rendered style of graphics still looks so good after all this time, it's remarkable

Reply 15 of 17, by TheChexWarrior

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Famous Build Engine creator website with a lot more still run and cool: http://advsys.net/ken/

Reply 17 of 17, by thp

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Obligatory mention of the Wing Commander CIC

https://www.wcnews.com/