Archive hunt: help us find new games!
 

Whenever we have some difficulty locating a game that we want to add to Abandonia, we ask the user community for help on this thread. If you have an archive that we're looking for, please let us know and we'll tell you how to upload it to Abandonia. When the game is published the upload will remain credited to you (even if you only point us to where it can be downloaded, for example).
:thanks:

About each archive, please tell us all that you know about its condition; we want the closest to the original that's practically possible. We may accept modified versions if the original one's too hard to run (but this isn't usually the case, see our Troubleshooting board). We want portable archives, so they can be easily played by Abandonians without need of technical knowledge, but most times it's ideal if you give us something like the original disk image, and we can come up with a way to make a portable archive, preserving as much as possible. We also value and need the opinion and collaboration of technically knowledgeable contributors.

Please let us know if your archives are cracked (we prefer that they aren't, if we can get the copy protection codes), or ripped (missing material to reduce size), if they have saved games (non original), etc.

List of archives currently wanted
 

- Magic the Gathering AKA Shandalar + ManaLink

Magic the Gathering AKA Shandalar + ManaLink
 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/magic-the-gathering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_...g_(MicroProse)
Expansions:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/magic-...f-the-ancients
http://www.mobygames.com/game/magic-...-planeswalkers

The original (for Windows 95) is very hard to run on modern computers--and for that reason it's in low demand and hard to find--and quite buggy. Modded and patched versions are more popular, as well as easier to run and more stable. The following forum is dedicated to this game:
http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=74

We haven't yet taken the necessary time to look at the different versions and mods discussed there, and convert the installers to portable archives, which we need. We want both parts of the game: Shandalar and ManaLink, together if possible.

Mission Critical
 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mission-critical

We already have the CDs actually:
http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=16709

But it would be good to have a rip that we could host directly in Abandonia (in addition). It's OK either to find a way to rip those CDs into 300 MB or less, or to find an existing rip for download anywhere, and you get some credit either way.

HOTU had it before...

No more. :/ Also, they (HOTUd) lose forum recently, as I see. :(

I will check my archives, I believe, I still can have it (HOTU-rip) somewhere...

What about
 

Would a .rar file work? Quick question, too. Is the 300 MB size restriction the reason some games don't have their intro's?

Any compression format is OK (on site we use 7z or zip is also OK for very small archives--but we can convert any format to those).

When a game is too big, we often host a "rip", that's the game with something removed (movies, speech, etc.) but still working correctly otherwise. That's what we need here.

Checked. I have HOTU rip of Mission Critical, and it's 70Mb. It need also "movies fix" that will add another 35Mb to it.

If I can upload it on FTP, I must say that my old 2012 password for incoming files doesn't work anymore.

PM sent :)

If it can include the movies that's better, as it's still way below 300 MB

Umm... It's still rip, and still home-made fix. :)

As I understood, initial release was missed movies altogether - but in result it was totally impossible to finish game, as some key info was in movie. So they include several key movies. Not all of them, no way (it's 3 or 4 CDs for game with full movies :).

Ok, I will try to upload both archives today at evening. Thank you for new password.

---update---
Both files are on site in original structure. It means that you must re-pack sound files after installing (manually), and then put needed movies in it's right place (manually). Thinking about it, I can do both tasks and re-pack it back into new, single archive, ready to use. But it will mean increase for another 20-30Mb.

As I see, "Requests" didn't work too good after Japo left.

So, I can say that: I can offer quite a bit of requested games for the site. But I will not review it - my English is too far from good, and my literature talents is even worse.

So my offer: if someone want to review any game that missing on site, tell me, I'll try to found this game in my archives.

Which would be unaccaptable, since we only host perfect English reviews with high literal value for future generations :D :p

To play or not to play... this old game...

Do you have any nice educational games? Sims? Cute adventures maybe? I wouldn't mind reviewing some games like that.

Promise my reviews will be delivered in English that passes muster for this site :ouch:

Educational games is only category that I definitely haven't much over usual suspects. Anything else I have in spades, or can aquire. Give me the name, and I'll look into it.

Could you maybe make some sort of list of what you have?

Umm... Well, I have about 20K games locally, and also know where to get all games from the former HOTU site, some rare adventures and shooters, some warez collections, DOS Collection, and have access to the bigger Russian old game preservation site (that is www.old-games.ru).

But is it matters? Every such game must go thru "approved" procedure, so maybe it's easier to take something from this list, to shorten the selection? :)

old-games.ru rocks! or some of those russian sites that might have similar name. I remember found lot of gems.

I managed to find and download certain Crazy Collection of rips on CD from russian forum with combine strength of serbian-russian similarites and gTranslate. That was awesome, I had only 2 CDs back in the days and they had fullworking rips...

And I haven't visited Ultimate DOS collection in years. So it's good to have you around, spectre :D Do hang around :)

arete, can you choose some good or at least known educational or kids game? I think 1st June is children's day, so yeah :)

If you are speaking about true "Crazy Collection" thing, it's rather from former torrents.ru (now rutracker.org). It have awesome selection of movies, books and TV series and quite amazing selection of scanned books. (I recommend them for this for everyone - most items are with English sound at least. And they are banned in Russia already anyway. :)). But their games amount are quite limited. They have most of wide-spreaded rip collections, yes. :) Unlike old-games.ru that used the same approach as Abandonia: one game, one review, one fileset selection.
Thank you. :) Actually I am speaking about Total DOS collection, that is (already) bigger and much better organized. ;)
Umm... As I said, educational games are not extremely popular in the Internet, so there could be the problems. arete, if you plan to review _something_, please, choose more than one, for me to found at least some of them. :)

Well I couldn't know what CC is in its entirety, just had a small game portion of everything. Yes, it is not oldgames.ru, although I found many games there that I couldn't find elsewhere, but CC I found on forum with torrent links. I liked that games CDs I could get my hands back in the days because they had interesting rips of various DOS and Win games. Something I wanted to get my hands again during one of my abandonia reviews writing craze :)

Yeah, you probably guessed what I was referring to :) Ultimaty is just that bunch of games, most of them easy to find. Total was that place that managed the full list by years and what archives they were still missing, right? That was very good approach.

So, if you are eager to find something for us :) here is the quest: Popo Car, but that can be played. I never remembered how I got the game but it was not from internet. Had some fun with it and wanted to put it on abandonia. Later, al archives I found on net were not cracked and couldn't be played. It runs but can't play it properly because of protection. I do remember seeing both English and japanese version, though.

Hmm. Language barrier, it seems, because I didn't understand what do you mean exactly... But just in case I'll repeat links! ;)

Crazy Collection. 17 issues. Full warez releases (usually), sometimes from the rare sources.

Classic Fond. 60 main discs and 9 "extras" (that partially repeat main ones). Rips, sometimes cutted too bad, some broken, but sheer amount of games makes it quite unique.

200 best games. 19 discs. Rips, some "borrowed" from the forementioned collections, some original. Each disc have exactly 200 games, and there are thematic ones, so games often repeated from disc to disc.

So, if you want to dig in (semi)trash - you are welcome. ;)

Sounds like the task. Thank you, I'll check it! :)

Found one that looked nice, but it turns out it's sold on GoG. :(

Inherit the Earth - Quest for the Orb

I'll keep looking.

EDIT I found one: 3-D Body Adventure

EDIT EDIT maybe we should look at these "rare adventure" games of yours, as well... :)

Could someone please help me find 3-D Body Adventure? I tried downloading it and the file was some corrupt exe that didn't work in 7zip or dosbox...

marko river, Popo Car is here too, and it's working... but in 11th release. Link above is v.9.

Ah, well, I'll upload it at the my FTP dir on the Abandonia. Done. Enjoy! :)

And that's really fast with Popo Car. Well, it didn't occur to me that they will update :rolleyes: Awesome, mate!

Argh 500 megs is way too big for me to download :(

I'll have to find something else.

Commie Game
 

This one is a special commie game if you can get to the end. It's really simple but you see the commie flag and everytime you shoot into the hole you get a point. No biggie.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dq5mbm...m/HEAVENLY.EXE

Hint* If you don't know how to get out of the yellowscreen just press ESC:OK:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/59bi9e9ldmn8h/pure_DOS

I've checked this version out on MS-DOS 6.22 and for some technical reason one of the screen is different than DOSBox 0.74. It has a Christmas theme. It's old and been out for a while however don't know how wide spread it is.

Hillary Campaign
 

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/7ig...LLARY_CAMPAIGN

This one is for the next president Hillary. No worries. Just a little dos animation for MS-DOS 6.22 Plus.