l i n k s

c u r r e n t   l o c a t i o n
http://home.freeuk.com/a51/links.htm
stuck in somebody else's frames? click on the above link to get rid of them.


a b a n d o n w a r e   s i t e s

t h e   a b a n d o n w a r e   r a t i n g   s y s t e m
--- http://pheatsols.com/~ars
a new rating's page for abandonware sites. rates sites according to design, rarity of downloads (not number of them), quality of reviews, etc. you get a rating out of 10; worth visiting to see what your site would get. hosted on the very kind pheature solutions server.

c a s c a d e   a b a n d o n w a r e
--- http://home.c2i.net/olant
a very good site with lots of games on it. it follows a policy of only putting up games that they've really liked in the past, which distances it from most other sites. the one problem i found was that the frame layout limited the viewing area badly for me, with my resolution setting (640x480). another nice touch about it is that unlike most other sites, you can write to them in one of about 5 languages.

h o m e   o f   t h e   u n d e r d o g s
--- http://underdogs.cjb.net
a large abandonware site which, unlike the usual nonsense, it concentrates almost solely on games that are good, but were either over-looked or not well enough marketed to get the sales they deserved. there are very few games i'd heard of there, but, having said that, many of the ones i downloaded were good. Underdogs is possibly the last real abandonware webmasters left (so is superultra, his site's below); a true collector of abandoned games.

m e c h a   w a r e
--- http://welcome.to/mechaware
a site dedicated to games in which you stamp around in huge, robotic suits, killing anything that moves. except those on your team. has a nice selection which is growing. worth looking at if you have even a passing interest in 'mech games.

m o b y g a m e s
--- http://www.mobygames.com
mobygames is run by one of the first ever abandonware webmasters: Trixter. this ambitious project is aimed at cataloguing all old games. but if anyone can pull it off, Trixter can. worth popping by to see if you can dig up anything on a certain old game you liked.

p h e a t u r e   s o l u t i o n s
--- http://pheatsols.com
home of many sites, and the former roa. hosts the official abandonware faq (my one) and also abandonews. also, home of hte best forum in the whole world.

s u p e r u l t r a c l a s s i c s 2
--- http://superultra.cjb.net
superultraclassics2 is what abandonware sites are about: old games that people enjoyed during their childhood and now put up to help keep them alive. probably the only other real abandonwareist ot there, apart from the god that is Underdogs. the design is also phenomenal, superb and very suiting for the site.

t h e   k e e p
--- http://thekeep.tsx.org
a well-designed site (the medievil look is quite, quite cool) with a good selection of games from most categories. well-webmastered, with good reviews and links (they link here, need i say more?) combine to make a good site.

o t h e r   s i t e s

a l t a v i s t a :   b a b e l f i s h
--- http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com
a really cool site (powered by the best search engine who are owned by the best computer manufactures - i'll let you work it out) which allows you to translate from english to, french, german, spanish and italian and back again. useful if you intend to register accounts from non-english speaking providers.

c d e x
--- http://www.surf.to/cdex
the only ripper that i've tried, but also the best. rips tracks off cds with huge precision; you can rip a few seconds of one track or a whole album or anywhere in between. essential download for any avid mp3er.

f i g l e t
--- http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/chai/figlet.html
go here to get figlet (or figwin, the windows version). figlet/win makes large text out of standard text characters. i use it for my 'mail signatures. worth a look if you fancy spicing up your 'mails.

m a i l c i t y
--- http://mailcity.lycos.com
my favourite free e-mail provider. fast, reliable ad free. much better than lycosmail itself. you have 4 megs of storage space, which should be ample for most requirements. one problem that arose recently was that you now need to accept cookies to use it, but apart from that it's hard to beat.

m e t a p a d
--- https://welcome.to/metapad
a freeware replacement for notepad. has many more options and also the ctrl+s command now works! worth the download even if you only infrequently use notepad. it's also very small, 17k zipped about 40 unzipped.

m o j o p g 3
--- http://listen.to/mojopg3
a nice little mp3 player, not quite as good as winamp, but good nonetheless. it's got a slightly quirky interface (no doubt what made me fall in love with it) and it's well designed too. the interface takes the form of a bar that sits where you want it too (but the default is over the blue bar at the top of every windows program. keeps reminding me that i should put hte res upto 800x600 though.

r e p l a y   a s s o c i a t e s
--- http://www.replay.com/remailer/anon.html
a free, anonymous e-mailer. put in the message, select the servers it's to go through and send it. you can also make it appear to come from any address, even that of the recipient. not sure what you'd ever use it for, but it's cool.

s t a r   t r e k   :   c o n t i n u u m
--- http://www.startrek.com
the main website for star trek. has loads of information, as well as trailers from almost every ds9 and voyager episode to download. worth visiting if you like star trek (notice i avoided saying "the show"). slightly over-graphical approach and endless amounts of cookies are the only criticisms i have of this site.

v i s u a l   i r c   ' 9 7
--- http://www.megalith.co.uk/virc
the best irc client available for the pc (trust me, i've tried nearly all of them). it's better looking interface-wise than mirc and has more functionality in it's raw form. i strongly reccommend downloading it if only to see what it's like. development has sadly been stopped on it, but the latest version (version 1.0) works fine. also, it's freeware, which means you aren't obliged to pay anything for it.

w i n a m p
--- http://www.winamp.com
*the* best mp3 player on earth - well designed, small (around 600k) and fast. also, they've started giving it away free. definitely the best mp3 you could ever hope for.

l i n k i n g   t o   a r e a   5 1

if you want to link to area 51 abandonware use the following button and code:

area 51 abandonware

<A HREF="http://home.freeuk.net/a51">
<IMG SRC="a51aban.gif" ALT="area 51 abandonware" HEIGHT=35 WIDTH=215>
</A>


site © Michael