underground gamer is offline for good

[Ziggy]

But there were so much stuff on UG that is not available anywhere else, even for sale, it can not be compared with any music/movie tracker. Manuals, complete sets of gaming magazines, books, ancient games and software, all with perfect descriptions, tested and working...retro-gamers' paradise. It's a horrible loss.

Yeah, seconded. All the popular stuff can be found elsewhere, for sure. Bought used, or re-releases even. But UG had a shit ton of stuff that no one normally shares, or even thinks to shares. Stuff that will be lost forever if no one shares it.

I nominate this song to be the unofficial RIP UG song:

Maybe a little joke to lighten the mood for the people that are sad: I guess we can lock this thread now, eh?

edit: Dammit, Popo, taking my great idea like it was your own!

edit: Maybe change the thread title as well, or just the word "now" for "good."

[RCBH928]

Well I am late to this topic ...
Although it saddens me , I am ok with this now simply because today we have stuff like PSN store, Virtual Console(is this alive? is it available for Wii U?) , and GOG . They do not have everything but it eases the process . Also we are getting re-releases like MGS and remakes like Wind Waker.

I remember when I joined UG maybe back in 07 all these options didn't exists. What is worse than buying the actual game was having to own the system for it , it will be pretty hard to buy SNES, NEO GEO , Arcade cabinets(MAME), etc.. just to play a game. Emulation is so much more convenient .

Hopefully with growing classic games on PSN and GOG we will not need sites like UG any more . My only issue is that whoever owns rights to the games, is probably not making any kind of money off it any way. Lets be honest with ourselves , how much money is Theme Park going to make for their owners? or Zombies ate my Neighbors ?
Then again, GOG is making a whole business by getting just a portion out of a sale price of older games. I am not sure if GOG is pulling enough money to pay its employees and hosting, with games at $5-$10 , how much money can you make?

[RCBH928]

I have always found it interesting that it is often through "piracy" that some games get preserved for the future - stuff that would otherwise be "locked" in physical media destined for obsolescence.

One thing I learned in life, that there is always some one out there preserving an old item. UG has been on for years , I am pretty sure some one out there have HDD filled with everything that site had so nothing will be lost. Even if that happens, some one owns the originals game and will probably give it a "rom" release. Games (and software in general) is fairly new medium and easy to copy.

[Ivo]

I have always found it interesting that it is often through "piracy" that some games get preserved for the future - stuff that would otherwise be "locked" in physical media destined for obsolescence.

Games (and software in general) is fairly new medium and easy to copy.

Not the old stuff. Dumping stuff from optical media is easy and with Blu-Ray and DVD reading CDs that should continue for a good while longer.
Getting stuff from cartridges I think it is accessible only to very few people.
Cassettes and floppies, the cassette players and floppy drives are not very common nowadays (3.5'' drives are still fairly common I would say, but even then it would be an hassle trying to preserve e.g. an Amiga floppy on a "PC" drive)... And that is without going into the subsection of originals that don't even work (at least cartridges are quite durable).

[RCBH928]

yes but I think everything out there needs to be copied have been copied already they have been doing it since probably 1995 when floppies were still popular.

I mean, the only thing that probably is going to be lost is some kind of obscure software that was developed in Sweden in the early 1980s that was used by couple hundred people .

[sneth]

says the man collecting VHS tapes.

[RCBH928]

says the man collecting VHS tapes.

What is upsetting you about that?

[Retrodude]

I think he was referring to the statistic that something like 50% of the stuff on VHS isn't available on DVD.

[dsheinem]

I think he was referring to the statistic that something like 50% of the stuff on VHS isn't available on DVD.

that seems highly unlikely. where is that from?

[Retrodude]

I can't find the official stats, unfortunately, but here's a whole thread about it on another forum: http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=214830