This is the 'backlist' of rings which we once listed in our resources, but which died for some reason or another. It's here only for historical purposes. Don't expect any of the links to work.

Webmasters: Voh, Phib, Bunny, Borgol Despite its size, Abandoned Places has had a long history! It was founded in 1999 by Mr. Cee. It never grew to a large size though because because it was never very stable. Then it suddenly shut down in early 2000. Some month later it was brought back by its original webmaster (who was then known as John Gotti) and Vohaul. John Gotti quickly disappeared again and after running it on his own for a while, Vohaul gathered a new crew which then continued to change quite frequently. Abandoned Places was a pure Abandonware ring. It claimed to have the strictest rules of all its competitors. Those rules are supposed to ensure a certain minimum quality standard of their member sites. Sometimes, these rules simply weren't applied, though - especially during the last one or two years of its lifetime. For people/webmasters the crew knows/likes it seemed. It updated daily, the crew seemed dedicated and reliable. Several times, AP tried to include 'reviews' of their member sites, but it mostly stayed an unfulfilled promise. The few reviews which did appear were written in 'buddy-style', and there wasn't much information to find which you couldn't see for yourself by visiting the respective site for half a minute, but it certainly showed good will. AP's last few months were dominated by missed updates galore and every site being blindly admitted. In May 2004, Vohaul finally pulled the plug stating that it would be better to shut it down for good than to keep it up as the 'sorry mess' it had become.

Webmaster: Asher This was a very short-lived ring back in late 1999 which never had more than one or two members. It seemed to be only the subsection of the webmasters download site.

Webmasters: DJ Spoof A short-lived ring (dated February 2004) run by the webmaster of a few 'projects' with a dubious history, such as 'DJ Spoof' and 'Abandonware Games' (vividly remembered for the famous quote 'you have to pay to keep this site free'). Rules were repetetive (5&6 said exactly the same), joining and updating was not done via forms, but e-mail. And of course the webmaster couldn't resist spamming members of other rings to 'invite' them. Apparantely abandoned to start another content stealing site again after three days.

Webmaster: Keplini One of the rings founded by an oldwarez supporter in early 2000. Keplini strongly disagreed with the Abandonware-only policies, but he always kept it polite and nice: Instead of flaming, he just started his own alternative ring. This was probably also why he didn't get any attention. Apart from his own site, there was just one other member. A speciality of this ring was that it gave out "The Abandoned Trophy": All sites were rated on a pretty objective scale, incorporating many more things than any try at site rating before or after it. Each member would display some script on his site and this script would display the trophy for the one with the highest rating and a button saying 'running for the Abandoned Trophy' for all the others. Neat idea, but with mentioned lack of members, it was pretty obvious the 'other' member would get it. The ring was actually shut down not because of the little member count, but because of some guy who called himself "Dr. Scrapper". He ran a site called "Steelinkers" which was dedicated to stealing links from other sites (yes, 'good old days'). He targeted Keplini's download site, and Crosswinds (who didn't allow remote linking) deleted all of his accounts when they noticed. Instead of reviving his download site and his ring, Keplini was pissed off enough to set up a short-lived site dedicated to exposing and fighting linkstealers called "ALSP" (The Anti Linkstealing Project), predating the better known "Abandonwhore" by more than a year.

Webmaster: Zaxxus Run by the webmaster of "Magic Abandonware", this ring used the same design as the mentioned site. It survived longer than most rings, stopped only by the fact that it used the infamous Namezero for its domain and cheated their AUP. Zaxxus tried reviving ABWL in 2001, however, it just lay dormant for a long time before it finally closed again.

Webmaster: ckrack.kid2 Running for a brief period in 2000, this ring managed to get a handful of members, but never had any real attention, because nobody really knew the webmaster and he didn't seem to be present in any of the big forums of the time.

Webmaster: Ugurcan Aktepe AbandonXring was online for a few months in 2001, during the last incarnation of the ROA. The webmaster was someone who hadn't been into Abandonware before and whom nobody really had known. He became known pretty quickly, though, because a group of 'older sceners' proclaimed this the 'ultimate ring'. The reasons for this are open to speculation, as it was neither a big ring, nor did it offer many services (basically just a site listing with the option for visitors to rate each site in topsite fashion). Rumors say that the ring and its webmaster were just sucked into the boiling conflict between Abandownare (represented mainly by TUOL) and Oldwarez (represented mainly by the ROA) people by this public advertisement of one of the conflicting groups, because they could - for various reasons - side with neither of the 'big ones'. The ring died, because the webmaster also hosted a well-known oldwarez site called "The Joystick" on the same account, whose webmaster had received a cease & desist letter from Lucas Arts for offering their Adventures for download before, but simply (as he said) forgot about it and put these games up again. Lucas Arts didn't like that, and they sent the host of the Joystick and AbandonXring a nasty letter demanding 10000$ in order to avoid being sued. Needless to say this was the end of this hosting account.

Webmasters: Lost Gamer, TZ One of the many rings founded during the last incarnation of the Roa. At first it had a bad reputation because of its design and the lack of rules, but then it changed. In spite of the average member count, AC Ring offered almost daily updates. The rules were the standard set of Abandonware rules. AC Ring offered quite a few extra services such as a search engine, short site descriptions, and some tutorials which were mainly aimed at newbies who want to start a site. This was certainly the ring which changed most and also most successfully! In 2002, TZ (who had taken over from the original founder) left Abandonware and the ring was closed.

Webmaster: Gravedigger Gravedigger founded Backlane as a protest against the AR and TUOL going Abandonware only in late 1999. He 'promoted' it by flame wars in other rings' forums and personal attacks on webmasters who didn't share his views. This strategy obviously worked, and the ring grew quickly! But only sites of 'non-concerned' webmasters (i.e. webmasters who weren't active in the 'community' but just concentrated on their site) joined, the 'establishment' stayed clear of Backlane. In early 2001, Gravedigger promised to get rid off at least the worst warez and porn sites. He failed because he didn't update anymore though. The members list stayed up for quite some time after that, but visitors weren't surprised if they found very low quality sites flooded with porn banners. It also offered a search and a support section.

Webmaster: RyanT Before it became fashionable for basically everyone to run their own ring, and also long before search engines were openend galore, there was CGS. Opened in late '99, it stayed open and active for a bit more than a year. During that time, it switched its focus from "search engine" to "ring" and back again several times. From today's point of view, it was basically a ring of which all members were listed in its search database. In 2001, the site went through the limbo of not being updated for months, losing hosting and losing their regular URL - all just to reappear for exactly one day with a new design. It never got to the stage of accepting members again, though.

Webmaster: Hawk On January 1st, 2000, the AR and TUOL had changed their rules to allow Abandonware sites only. They didn't start kicking oldwarez sites out immediately, though. TUOL placed these little next to 'clean' sites, the rest was just kept on the listing to give those webmasters time to decide about their future plans. Hawk, then running The Abandonware Dungeon, had been a vocal supporter of Abandonware-only, so he set up a small ring which only served one purpose: listing only 'clean' sites. When both bigger rings finally removed all 'non-clean' site, Hawk felt it wouldn't be needed anymore and he shut it down.

Webmasters: LuNaTiC, Dojo Warrior, Bunny The main point of this one was - as the name implies - reviewing sites (although its first incarnation was called "Abandoned Planet Reviews" which was closed after the initial opening only to return as CSR). The staff took its time to write up a comprehensive text on every member site. They tried to describe all the parts of the site although some details were quite futile because they also had screenshots. The member sites were rated in design, navigation and contents. At the initial launch, there had been some kind of mix-up which ratings meant what quality at first, but the crew sorted this out later. The most useful part was probably the 'suggested improvements'. The downpoint: 'high quality' oldwarez sites were accepted. This was in 2001, and the webmasters were supporters of the ROA way of doing things. They never told what 'high quality' is, though, and since there was never more than one update in the whole site's history, we never learned...

Webmasters: SDarkness, ShadowD, Cat_Head As the name suggests, this ring was never really an Abandonware ring. This is not surprising, as it was active in the late 90s, when Abandonware rules weren't actually enforced on any ring. A relaunch was planned in 2001, but never occured.

Webmaster: Cokemachine Founded in 2000, this ring stood the test of time for quite long. Coke Machine was involved in the oldwarez discussion in early 2000 only for a short time and he stayed mannered, so his ring didn't grow as quickly as Backlane. On the other hand, this has given him a better reputation which enabled Cosmic Gateway to outlive Backlane. It was one of the last remaining rings allowing oldwarez when Cokemachine changed these rules under public pressure in 2002. That turned out to be the beginning of the end, though. Along with the rule change, there came a 'professional' design and lots of new crewmembers. It never really pulled off anymore, Cokemachine left the scene and the domain name was sold to Swizzle who didn't put it into any use.

Webmaster: Dy66 What can be said about D-Ring? 'Not much' - that describes it perfectly in every field. Not many members, not many rules (More like..... none at all! They allow even off-topic sites, linkstealing and alike.), not many updates, not many buttons (two), not many extras (links to other rings). Not much use, and also very ugly. Closed after a few weeks and lots of bad publicity.

Webmasters: Iceman, Miles This ring used to be reliably updated every day with only very few exceptions. With one of the crewmembers joining the army, though, the ring then began being updated only every other day. Some rules sounded a bit strict earlier (like for example the point about broken links), but those more controversial ones were removed quickly - you could expect the usual set of rules. As a special service, DOO randomly displayed a banner of one of the members on its main page for extra exposure (no extra requirements for that). A basic ring offering the basic service - until the webmasters lost motivation and shut it down in Echoring III Webmaster: Defunct The name of the webmaster says it all: it was an unsuccessful 'relaunch'. Total number of updates in its history: one. Historically interesting for being one of the typical effects of websites being sold for money. Echoring 4.0 / 5.0 Webmasters: Bobosama, JaG, muaddib Taking the name of an already existing ring to "continue the original's legacy", this ring lasted about 6 months in late 2003 and early 2004. It took a very 'laid back' approach on things. The positive effect of this: Getting into trouble with this ring if you were a member was nearly impossible. They'd never say anything bad about you, your site or what you're doing. A perfectly friendly place - friendly to anyone. A 'laid back approach' can get too far, though, and then it's usually called 'irresponsible acting'. When this line is crossed is a subjective interpretation. However, when reports about rulebreakers disappear into a black hole instead of being used, it's certainly debatable whether it is. The webmasters were dedicated enough to keep the ring running and ensure daily updates. Being fourth of fifth generation Abandonware webmasters, their knowledge about scene history is of course a little lacking, and it showed. That should only be interesting for a few grumpy old man, though. When it comes to knowledge about classic games, this proved more fatal. Claims like "nearly all Atari titles are currently for sale" were all over that site - and it made even the common visitor wonder if the crew has any idea how many games Atari or EA have released in their long history... Shut down in March 2004 when the excitement of the webmasters to run a ring faded. Elite List Webmaster: Caz Elite List wasn't really a ring by the common definition, because one couldn't apply for membership. It was more like a personal linkpage of the webmaster, on which he listed Abandonware sites which he considered high-quality. Closed after one or two months. Emulation Ring Webmasters: Diskboy, hanging This ring tried to set itself apart by insinuating it was dedicated to emulation (it even used the terms 'original' and 'official' for some time - yeah, right). The members were the same as on every other Abandonware ring though, the webmasters were 'moving through' the same 'scene' and so on. In fact, there were only very few real emulation sites on their listing. Rules were pretty much the standard for Abandonware rings. Both rule enforcement and regularity of updates went up and down. It turned into a warez ring in mid-2004. Emuware Webmaster: Bobosama Founded in 2003, "Emuware" was apparantely a try to be 'different' by insinuating affiliation to the emulation scene rather than Abandonware. It was promoted in the same circles as all the others on this list, though, so it's just another case like "Emulation Ring". The rules included some quality control in addition to standard Abandonware rules, member count never exceeded five. It was shut down by the webmaster in favour of running one of the Echorings. Gamering Webmaster: MD Pontiac About the same age and size as Cosmic Gateway, Gamering mainly differed in its popularity towards the end. Namely the lack of this. You just had to put up their button and no new warez are allowed. Their definition of 'oldwarez' was pretty vague though. The webmaster didn't fight on the oldwarez side in the forums. He just founded his own ring instead. After a period of inactivity, MD Pontiac got his act together again, redesigned to some really ugly metallic look, but only kept it running in a dedicated for for a few weeks. After that, he would still be seem in forums from time to time, claiming he'll revive his ring and defending it, but that never happened. Whether it was for the lack of support or just his own personal reasons is unknown. Gaming Tomb Webmasters: Mythran, GodOfTheKorn Gaming Tomb had been a download site opened in late 2001. Some time in 2002, the webmaster decided he wanted to run a ring instead, so he made his site into one. The design looked a bit amateurish, most pages were just placeholders and 'under construction'. The highest member count it achieved was two, and after that didn't change after a few weeks, it was shut down. Just Another Ring Webmaster: AnTi Set up in the 'feature-crazed' times of 2001, JAR was started by AnTi as a basic ring reduced to the core functionality of a site listing, because he wanted to do it. A very laid back and peaceful ring, staying out of all conflicts, using standard Abandonware rules and attracting a nice number of members (around 20). Half a year later, AnTi didn't want to run it anymore, so he shut it down. MPA Ring Webmaster: Metal Painkiller One of the many rings set up to give oldwarez sites, which had been removed from the two biggest rings, a new home in 2000. The webmaster was one of the more vocal supporters of oldwarez, and so the respective webmasters joined. In 2001, MP was leaving the scene, looking for someone to take the ring over. Apparantely, nobody reacted to his 'job advert'. Nostalgic Gaming Ring Webmaster: Yotz This ring had two brief incarnations in '99 and 2000. Both times, it was rather unspectacular, but that's not to say it was bad. It just didn't stir up any controversy. Later rings with a similar concept would be JAR and TART. Ring of Ages Webmaster: PsOmA The first 'rebel ring' set up against the lone rule of the AR back in 1998. Until its final incarnation in 2001, it opened, closed, merged with the AR, and quite often also was online, but unmaintained many times. It was never active much longer than half a year at once, but every time it was, it managed to stir up some controversy. There were also several attempts to turn the self-proclaimed "people's ring" into a more quality-focused one. The 'ROA Gold Class' never pulled off, though, just like their try to ban all topsite members from their listing. With the domain name now being expired, it is unlikely we'll see this ring again - although never say never... Ring of Truth Webmaster: DaRkSiDe One of these very small rings (typical of 2003) which nevertheless have survived for longer than the usual lifetime of rings (i.e. one week). There didn't seem to be any rules at all, at least not visible to the common visitor. That is why nothing can be said about enforcement. It did happen that sites were removed, but some rulebreakers and dead sites managed to remain on their listing for quite long on the other hand. ROT also featured a game search. Not much could be found there, but that was again due to the low amount of members, not the webmaster's fault. Their design was based on a free template which can be found on the net. Overall, this ring was well-maintained, but not overly exciting. It was shut down in September 2003, because the main webmaster felt he couldn't do the ring justice anymore. Space Federation Webmaster: Kingpin In spite of what some people think, this site actually started out as a 'normal' ring, allowing oldwarez and a lot more bad things. It was setup as a reaction of the download site of the webmaster being kicked out of all respectable rings for linkstealing. Space Federations was a subsection of said download site. After nobody joined, it was turned into a hoax, with some sites which never joined just added to the listing and all links leading to some kind of sponsor. The Abandonware Community Triumph Webmaster: blargy A few months after the two big rings had started enforcing an Abandonware-only policy in early 2000, everybody was waiting for blargy's 'oldwarez analysis'. He had made it his task to check how well the rings are enforcing their new policy. The results were shocking and saddening: Each of the rings had quite a percentage of member sites which still (or again?) carried non-Abandoned titles. That was the reason he set up TACT. Using a name resembling his old site "The Abandonware Community" (which probably was the first 'community' site of the scene), he not only tried to ban all kinds of warez from his ring, but also offered site reviews (long before every second ring did this) which were actually helpful (in contrast to many other rings' tries) and a huge 'search list', listing all games, apps and docs of all member sites (without the use of any scripting - just html). Due to this large ambition, he never managed to updated on a daily basis, but none of the members complained. In October 2000, the workload got too much, and blargy shut TACT down. The Abandonware Ring Webmaster: Stoo, Saint, Diskboy The Abandonware Ring was the oldest ring in existence (that is probably why they lamely called themselves "official"). It was the direct follow-up of the Abandonware Ring Central. But it had also always been the most controversial of the rings! Since 1997 it (more or less) survived leisure periods of its own 'lone rule' as well as several 'ring wars' and mergers. But there were also times of closure and severe technical problems, so the AR wasn't really around all the time. Especially the last few incarnations were supposed to look and be run in a professional way. But this image was damaged a lot by a lot of system crashes, non-working databases and (hilariously funny!) the webmasters not having any backups of any page! The respective 'new' crews often had to fight this problem which caused some funny news posts like "Does anyone still have our old buttons or our FAQ?". Their stance on oldwarez has also been pretty jumpy. Swizzle was the first ring admin to enforce 'Abandonware only' by kicking oldwarez sites. But only a few weeks later, they switched to oldwarez again - first 'silently' then officially. The latest incarnations promised to be pure Abandonware, but they admittedly didn't enforce any of their rules because of 'lack of time'. Updates were quite irregular for the same reason, too (two or three updates a week, but those sometimes all on the same day then). It all ended with Swizzle making a newspost telling everybody how the Abandonware 'scene' sucks and how it doesn't deserve his greatness. The rest of the crew (i.e. the people who had actually been running the ring) left as a direct effect of this post. Two months later, Swizzle renewed the domain name again (in spite of what he posted in his own news before), and he apparantely found a caring (or naive, depending on your viewpoint) soul to run the ring 'for' him again. However, apart from the marking updated sites, not much was getting done. A few subpages which had broken been for more than a year were repaired, the search engine was still in a horrible state with lots of inaccurate and also fake entries and 'security' seemed to be a foreign word and concept to them. Newsposts consisted 90% of copied texts from History Channel's "This Day in History" for a time, then they degenerated into mostly incomprehensible babbling. After a short time, the ring changed hand again already. The future looked at least questionable - and shortly after this, the ring indeed went down. The Abandonware Ring Thing Webmasters: Paully, Seb, Pyrate, Marrsy Basic design, basic functionality, basic features. This maybe described TART most accurately. Now this may sound negative but comparing with many other rings, it wasn't! It was a wanted approach by the webmasters who ran this ring. Similar to the previously deceased JAR, they concentrated on the main point of a ring: the sitelist. The only extra feature consisted of the irregular posting of new 'rants' During most of their run, the big crew ensured daily updates and the standard non-warez rules were mostly well enforced. And maybe it was just this simplicity which had attracted quite a few members within a short period of time. TART died with half of the crew leaving. The Abandonware Ring of Oldies Webmaster: Trix Opinions differ when this was started. Either in late '99 or early 2000 - most likely the latter. AROO was a very plain ring, never had many members. And that in spite of sending out spam invitations (which contained exactly one sentence: "Do you want to join The Abandonware Ring of Oldies"). People were probably repulsed by the nonsensical name. After a few months of the usual service and a long time of inactivity, the webmaster added some button saying "Enter here" linked to a sponsor. That was the end of AROO. The Foundation to Save Abandonware Webmaster: Chairman In 1999, the number of Abandonware sites was exploding. Amongst the new ones, many low quality sites which were nothing more than big lists of direct downloads. Long-time webmaster were moaning about it in the forums and on IRC all day. That was why the FTSA was set up: To seperate the good from the bad sites. Webmasters couldn't join, but existing members had to propose them - and then they got an invitation. The 'chairman' (and founder) was a well-known webmaster of that time, but he always made a big fuss over it on the FTSA website that nobody should know who he is. In late '99, nothing happened over there anymore. In 2001, there was a new FTSA website for a brief time, but only very few people noticed. The Scroll Of The Ancients Webmaster: DvE, Neohack In the time of big conflicts in 2001, only very few rings were opened without bashing one of the sides and thus 'allying' with the other. TSOTA was the exception to this rule. Featuring a very personal and aestetic design, this ring was a friendly haven in a sea of fire. It never really got started, though. The first few members were accepted and listed, but the webmasters had more, bigger plans which never came into action, because one of the two crewmembers left. It was never updated again. The Oldwarez Abandonware Ring Webmaster: Warmonger Obviously founded exclusively to stir up trouble, this 'ring' didn't have any rules, any design or any actual members. The 'webmaster' just added sites to his listing without the webmasters of the 'members' knowing about their 'membership'. TOP Abandonware Sites Webmaster: (V)ister Davidsen Founded by a former TUOL crewmember in 2000, this ring took a stand by allowing oldwarez (the webmaster wanted to keep offering Duke Nukem 3D more than anything on his own download site...). It picked up the idea of the recently deceased first incarnation of the Abandonware Rating System by writing short reviews on their member site and rating them. These reviews weren't really good, though, their only purpose seemed to be showing off the webmasters 'l33t html skillZ' (as they consisted mostly of html code examples which 'would make the site look better'). It never reached more than five members and it was also never 'officially' shut down - it was just abandoned and at some point deleted by its host. Search Engines: Abandongames Webmaster: J-Who Abandongames had its 'big' time in late '99 and during the year 2000 when it quickly became the replacement for the deceased Gangsters.org. Later, its downtimes exceeded its normal working, though, and never really got an up-to-date listing started again. For some time, they tried to revive the site by offering reviews and screenshots of the games in addition to links to download sites, but this idea never pulled off. In mid-2004, they started accepting warez again.