Abandonia
Encyclopedia
Abandonia is an abandonware
website, focusing mainly on showcasing computer games
and distributing games made for the MS-DOS
system.
Abandonia also features a music section and an Abandonware List, a continuously expanded database of over 4600 games including information about their publishers, release dates and whether according to the staff's knowledge the software is sold, protected or abandoned. This list is a sum total of research and enquiries made by the site crew, with sources including but not limited to MobyGames
, Wikipedia
and the company registry at Home of the Underdogs
.
Reloaded (sometimes referred to as "AR" or simply "Reloaded") is a sister project of Abandonia, with the focus upon freeware
games.
Every game showcased is accompanied by a set of screenshots, and reviews written and proof-read by members. As non-profit sites, both Abandonia and Abandonia Reloaded are community-driven projects. With the exception of the featured games themselves, all content available on the sites is created by their community as a volunteer effort.
Both also feature a progressive system of game evaluation, in which the quality of the game is rated not just by the reviewer but also by votes of regular visitors.
site, with popular games like Monkey Island and Doom available for download, even though these games were still being sold in stores. The site gained a major boost in popularity throughout 2003 and 2004 as a discussion forum was opened, updates became more frequent, and the focus shifted towards abandoned games.
The site is maintained by people from all over the world, including Belgium
, Netherlands
, Germany
, Norway
, Sweden
, Poland
and Croatia
. At the present time Abandonia has been translated into German
, Spanish
, French
, Dutch
, Portuguese
, Swedish
, Italian
, Danish
, Polish
, Croatian
, Norwegian
, Slovene, Icelandic
, Slovak
and Romanian
, in addition to the main English
. Other translations currently being worked on include Hebrew
and Russian
.
In September 2006 Abandonia was acquired by Studentis Group, a Swedish online community company. This meant that Studentis would take over the hosting responsibilities for Abandonia and support its upcoming versions. In October 2007 Abandonia received a new layout and had been transferred over to the Drupal platform by Kosta Krauth and the Studentis team consisting of Andreas Swahn, Marcus Johansson, Daniele Testa, Fredrik Holm and Carl McDade.
If the site staff discovers that one of the games placed on the site no longer fulfills one of those criteria or has been accidentally misqualified as Abandonware when it was not such, they remove any downloads of that game on their own initiative.
In order to facilitate status identification for games not yet introduced in its abandonware list, the staff of Abandonia maintains a constantly updated list of known ESA member and subsidiary companies which can be found incorporated in the ruleset of the site's Requests forum.
games. It was created on 2005-05-07 by Kosta Krauth, Monica Schoenthaler, Maikel Kersbergen & Tom Henrik Aaberg.
The site is maintained by a large number of staff, most of whom are (or have previously been) involved with the original Abandonia.
from the abandonware
already featured on Abandonia. He was joined by Maikel Kersbergen and Tom Henrik, both already admins for Abandonia. Soon after, Monica Schoenthaler was invited to join the team. These four are listed as the original "Founders" of Abandonia Reloaded.
Although currently a major portion of AR's library of games is Adventure genre titles, it is currently expanded to offer a more diverse selection.
The games showcased on AR are both old commercial games released as freeware (like The Elder Scrolls: Arena
, The Black Cauldron and Beneath a Steel Sky
), in addition to newer independent freeware (like Ark 22, Trilby's Notes and Enclosure).
Nearly a year after its unveiling, AR was nominated for "Best New Site" by DaFastLane, a gaming news site.
On October 14, 2010, it was announced that "Abandonia Reloaded" was going to be renamed "Reloaded". The "Abandonia" part of the name is being phased out. Both the forum, and main website sport the new logo.
Abandonware
Abandonware are discontinued products for which no product support is available, or whose copyright ownership may be unclear for various reasons...
website, focusing mainly on showcasing computer games
Computer Games
"Computer Games" is a single by New Zealand group, Mi-Sex released in 1979 in Australia and New Zealand and in 1981 throughout Europe. It was the single that launched the band, and was hugely popular, particularly in Australia and New Zealand...
and distributing games made for the MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
system.
Abandonia also features a music section and an Abandonware List, a continuously expanded database of over 4600 games including information about their publishers, release dates and whether according to the staff's knowledge the software is sold, protected or abandoned. This list is a sum total of research and enquiries made by the site crew, with sources including but not limited to MobyGames
MobyGames
-Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...
, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and the company registry at Home of the Underdogs
Home of the Underdogs
Home of the Underdogs was an abandonware archive founded by Thai Sarinee Achavanuntakul , aka: Underdogs or Fringer on her own blog, in September 1998, and grew to be one of the most significant abandonware websites on the Internet, despite losing its domains to cybersquatters and then briefly...
.
Reloaded (sometimes referred to as "AR" or simply "Reloaded") is a sister project of Abandonia, with the focus upon freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
games.
Every game showcased is accompanied by a set of screenshots, and reviews written and proof-read by members. As non-profit sites, both Abandonia and Abandonia Reloaded are community-driven projects. With the exception of the featured games themselves, all content available on the sites is created by their community as a volunteer effort.
Both also feature a progressive system of game evaluation, in which the quality of the game is rated not just by the reviewer but also by votes of regular visitors.
History
Abandonia was created by Croatian Kosta Krauth on June 21, 1999. At that time Abandonia was a typical oldwarezWarez
Warez refers primarily to copyrighted works distributed without fees or royalties, and may be traded, in general violation of copyright law. The term generally refers to unauthorized releases by organized groups, as opposed to file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar...
site, with popular games like Monkey Island and Doom available for download, even though these games were still being sold in stores. The site gained a major boost in popularity throughout 2003 and 2004 as a discussion forum was opened, updates became more frequent, and the focus shifted towards abandoned games.
The site is maintained by people from all over the world, including Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
. At the present time Abandonia has been translated into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Slovene, Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
and Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, in addition to the main English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Other translations currently being worked on include Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
.
In September 2006 Abandonia was acquired by Studentis Group, a Swedish online community company. This meant that Studentis would take over the hosting responsibilities for Abandonia and support its upcoming versions. In October 2007 Abandonia received a new layout and had been transferred over to the Drupal platform by Kosta Krauth and the Studentis team consisting of Andreas Swahn, Marcus Johansson, Daniele Testa, Fredrik Holm and Carl McDade.
Software hosted on Abandonia
Abandonia's definition of abandonware is one of the more clearly defined (and possibly the most restrictive) in the abandonware scene. In order for a game to be considered abandoned - and therefore hosted on the site - it has to pass three very specific criteria:- First, the game has to be unavailable on the retail market and no longer distributed by its publishers nor by legitimate retailers in any form.
- Second, official support for the game must have been dropped both by its publisher and developer.
- Third, the game must not be under active protection of any anti-piracy agency, such as Entertainment Software AssociationEntertainment Software AssociationThe Entertainment Software Association is the trade association of the video game industry in the United States. It was formed in April 1994 as the Interactive Digital Software Association and renamed on July 16, 2003...
, nor directly by the copyright holders themselves. If a legitimate copyright holder for any game requests its removal, any downloads of it (or links to thereof) present on the site and its forum will be subject to removal by site staff (although the review of the game would still remain onsite).
- Only the PC version of the game needs to fulfill the above three criteria: whether any console versions do or do not is considered irrelevant, as Abandonia follows a strict policy to not deal with ROMs or disk images for non-PC systems.
If the site staff discovers that one of the games placed on the site no longer fulfills one of those criteria or has been accidentally misqualified as Abandonware when it was not such, they remove any downloads of that game on their own initiative.
In order to facilitate status identification for games not yet introduced in its abandonware list, the staff of Abandonia maintains a constantly updated list of known ESA member and subsidiary companies which can be found incorporated in the ruleset of the site's Requests forum.
Reloaded
Reloaded (Previously "Abandonia Reloaded") is a sister project of Abandonia dedicated to the development and distribution of freewareFreeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
games. It was created on 2005-05-07 by Kosta Krauth, Monica Schoenthaler, Maikel Kersbergen & Tom Henrik Aaberg.
The site is maintained by a large number of staff, most of whom are (or have previously been) involved with the original Abandonia.
History
The concept for AR was conceived by Kosta Krauth, Abandonia's owner, in 2004, due to a desire to separate independently produced freewareFreeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
from the abandonware
Abandonware
Abandonware are discontinued products for which no product support is available, or whose copyright ownership may be unclear for various reasons...
already featured on Abandonia. He was joined by Maikel Kersbergen and Tom Henrik, both already admins for Abandonia. Soon after, Monica Schoenthaler was invited to join the team. These four are listed as the original "Founders" of Abandonia Reloaded.
Although currently a major portion of AR's library of games is Adventure genre titles, it is currently expanded to offer a more diverse selection.
The games showcased on AR are both old commercial games released as freeware (like The Elder Scrolls: Arena
The Elder Scrolls: Arena
The Elder Scrolls: Arena is the first game in the Elder Scrolls series. It is a first-person computer role-playing game for MS-DOS, developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1994...
, The Black Cauldron and Beneath a Steel Sky
Beneath a Steel Sky
Beneath a Steel Sky is a 1994 science-fiction point-and-click adventure game in the cyberpunk genre. Like many point-and-click adventure games, it features comedy elements, and was developed by Revolution Software, a British developer, and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. It was...
), in addition to newer independent freeware (like Ark 22, Trilby's Notes and Enclosure).
Nearly a year after its unveiling, AR was nominated for "Best New Site" by DaFastLane, a gaming news site.
On October 14, 2010, it was announced that "Abandonia Reloaded" was going to be renamed "Reloaded". The "Abandonia" part of the name is being phased out. Both the forum, and main website sport the new logo.
External links
- Abandonia Official site
- Reloaded - Abandonia's Sister Project, dealing with remakes and "retro"-style games.
- Abandonia's archive of press and web articles referring to the site