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Comment by whatevertrevor | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like this was pre search engines, so Tommy's bookmarks might just be a collection of cool sites that was spread peer to peer. I remember getting CDs of curated games and demos in the late 90s (and not just licensed demos from computer magazines, but also cracked versions of games that went around).

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Sounds like Craig’s list.

There was a point before search engines of course. And, there was a point before people outside of, say a university, had any real Internet access.

But via my personal experiences in the late 90s, I recall search engines working just fine (eg, Alta Vista) then slowly degrading, then one day they were just completely useless. I mean, any search term would just returned page after page of spammy links. You could find nothing, ever.

There was Yahoo's curated list, with lots of volunteers keeping it going, but it had dead links, and was always a tiny tiny fraction of what was out there.

Just a few years later Google appeared, which at the time was absolutely gob smacking insanely good. It was no contest. Yet even this nascent google didn't have a large portion of the web, I remember people trying to get their links on larger sites so Google could find them. I think Google even had a submit link page too? Not sure when that appeared.

So I can imagine in this time period, someone might have had a list of links they found and spread by email. I remember using the 'bookmark' function of my browser a lot, it was easier than searching.

Any rare games that you remember that stood out?

Not many that would stand the test of time unfortunately. I remember sinking lots of hours into a racing game I found like that, I think it was called Breakneck. And an RTS called Tzar. Those are the two I remember the most.

This Breakneck? https://discmaster.textfiles.com/search?q=Breakneck

And Tzar? https://discmaster.textfiles.com/search?q=Tzar

Indeed. As I expected, they didn't stand the test of time very well.

"Hot Death UNO" was a standout for me.

Its half-dozen or so robo-players made the game come to life.

They all bantered back and forth, made pop culture references, etc., got vindictive...

I printed physical cards, made a Geocities website for it (still zombie-mode on "oocities"!), learned Photoshop just so I could make my own higher-fidelity cards, and when I finally learned to program I started on a new version only to get a Cease and Desist from Mattel. Heh.

Meanwhile, I and a couple other fans tracked down the original authors via a Yahoo Groups channel and learned about the original game...

... good times.

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