Thanks and Credits
Special thanks for HOTU v3.0
Because the current incarnation of the site, dubbed "HOTU v3.0," is a collective effort of dozens of people who donated a lot of their time and expertise in various areas, we'd like to thank them specifically below:
- Philip: PHP guru who coded reams after reams of new PHP codes that make this whole thing hang together. Philip not only coded the game comments & gamehost feature, but also optimized our existing codebase, most notably the search function. He also mang... err, I mean, *modified* our forum codebase (phpBB) to integrate that spiffy login box you see on the site. Contact Philip at Cornado.com if you want a PHP guru on your side :)
- DJ: HTML designer who create an all-new look for the site and the store, including all the spiffy graphics and HOTU template buttons in our forum. Visit his site if you are interested in hiring him for HTML design services.
- Knyght & morals: two volunteer forum admins who helped us upgrade phpBB forum and fix numerous niggling cosmetic and non-cosmetic issues so the forum would work and look just right across all browsers.
- Datazoid: forum regular and all-around great guy who designed the new default template for our forum. Visit his site for more Zoid-y goodness :)
- John: affectionately known as "SirJohn," a wonderful maintainer of HOTU Community website who helped integrate community pages into the forum, and coded the wonderful Members Worldwide page. John also pitched in with numerous helpful comments about how to improve our FAQ and forum integration.
- Reverendo & Teesh: two wonderful forum regulars and immensely creative couple who created a set of smileys specifically to fit Datazoid's HOTU template.
- bill22: our resident expert at our Technical Help forum, edited and added numerous helpful utilities and links to make our FAQ more useful than ever before.
- Frosty840, Gendo Ikari, Magnificent Linnard, Malcolm, Porcius, quaz, Reverendo, Risingson, John, and Sytass: forum regulars who comprise our "review admins," volunteers who have agreed to donate their precious time to help us approve/edit user-submitted comments and gamehost reviews.
- RastaJew, Frosty840, and Positronbob: dedicated gamers who help us review shareware/indie games submitted by small developers for potential listing in the HOTU Store.
Other credits
Boxshots on this site are scanned from our original boxes, as well as from various sites, including MobyGames, EBay, and LEMON.
A lot of design credits are from manually reading title screens on games and/or manuals, but we are also indebted to MobyGames, The Legacy, and The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers for many entries.
Most .pdf manuals are scanned and compiled from our collection using Adobe Acrobat 4.0 by Underdogs and Krovax. Special thanks goes to Soulblazer and Tommy P. for lending some manuals for us to scan. Most manuals in text format are obtained from various websites, including Project 64, Amiga Games Manual Archive, Lazarus Doc Disks, and Mouse Master's Sewer Docs. A special thanks to Decker who contributed dozens of text manuals extracted from Sewer disks for the Amiga.
Most game solutions and FAQs are linked directly to where they are originally found, most notably The Spoiler Centre and GameFAQs.
Game information and company profile are mostly from the companies' websites, our collective memory, information printed in game manuals, and various oldies-related websites, in particular MobyGames.
Many of you might think it's unbelievable that we have all these games lying around in our basement, and you are right: this site cannot be what it is today without the guidance and help from numerous kind individuals who offer help out of a sincere wish to improve this site and support its aim. Therefore, we would also like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the following individuals. This is regrettably only a partial list due to our usmory lapses or e-mail problems, and because the number of people who've responded to our requests is staggering. If you've sent us games or told us where to find them, please let us know. To those of you who've e-mailed us about broken links / comments / criticisms-- a big THANK YOU, and keep them coming :)
Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: Oldwolf, Anym, Benedikt H., Trojax, Krovax, Profile, Duglis, Rascal, Druadic, Jim (formerly webmaster of Jim's Place abandonware site), ^Nemisis^, Paul Vern, The Notifier, KSS, Ungi, Hugh F., Decker, Anita H., Thomas, Jester, Xenonwulf, Soulblazer, Lone Lines.
Programmer extraordinaire: without whose coding skills this site will never be what it is: Philip, Hank, Bjorn, Nathan, Jonathan, Bryan.
Master hackers/crackers/archivers: without whom countless rare self-booting, 5.25" keydisk-protected, copy-protected CD-ROM abandonware would be lost forever: john doe, Demonlord, Mok, The War Criminal, jeff, JJ Sonick.
Site designers - without whom the site would never look this spiffy: DJ - see his site if you are interested in HTML design services, Exodus3D - who designed cute dog graphics in our previous design - visit her site for more awesome artwork and a ton of MAME related stuff :) Also, TTGGuy helped us fix the earlier site design, Datazoid created the wonderful default HOTU template for our forum, and the nice set of default smileys were made by Reverendo and Teesh.
Game reviewers - kind volunteers who have contributed reviews over the years: Reverendo, Eino, Frosty840, Davide Mascolo, Iwan, Tiago, Magnificent Linnard, Barely Einstein, RedFox23, Demiurge, and many more.
Forum administrators - people who help us upgrade/maintain the forum: Knyghtmare, morals, and SirJohn.
Forum moderators - dubbed "Watchdogs," people who help us keep our forums nice and tidy: Tommy, bill22, Joan O Arc, BrendanD, Manna, Mounrou, George Pear, and Quicksilver.
Review admins - people who help us review gamehost applications and submitted comments: Magnificent Linnard, Risingson, Malcolm, Sytass, Frosty840, Davide Mascolo, Reverendo, and Porcius.
Walkthroughs, Hints, Manuals, Games Contributors/Uploaders: PreCAP, Meddy, Skyfish (and his amazing Bloodrose fserve in #Oldgames channel on EFNet), Kenneth R., Neilz, Jim, Nadav, EddyB43, InVibes, J. Lawrence, Ville, SirJoe, Thomas B., Howard H., Rene M., bradman, Daniel O., En Flux, Hamu, eviltim, Erro L., Chris T., David L., Yair S., Daveman, DwArF, Chris L., Gee, ^Cyc, NSY, Brain Artifice, Gianfranco, En Flux, Jas, Leon, and dozens more.
Kind Souls (who frequent our technical help board for no other reason than to help others in need): Anym, Magnificent Linnard, bill22, Tommy, SoulBlazer, Joan O. Arc, Jefe Picaro, Karzon, puzzler, Joq-- and everyone who's ever responded to a cry for help :)
Games Collector Extraordinaire: Wolfgang, Kenn Rice, Kim Ake, Felix C., R. Hasselaar, Gozer, Trixter, G. Baszak, Grunt Vicious, S. Marsh, Mr. P., MoBliss, Ted Douglas, Ro Laren, |Hexie|, Pfil, Roberto T., Dr_Acid, Altizaar, Adam W., Thomas, Uukrul the Darker, Roberto, Harry Lous III, Sugoll, Tommy P.
Keeper of Nostalgia: Mr. Bill, T. Borras, Superultra, Munypenny, and everyone on #Oldgames and #PColdies IRC channels at EFNet and abandonware newsgroups.
Keeper of the Same Flame: Anyone who enjoys this site and gets a bit misty-eyed after a visit ;) Also, a very special thanks to Jim of MobyGames, who kindly let us link directly to MobyGames' search page. Keep it up, Jim!
Again, THANK YOU. Let's continue to keep the classics alive!
