HappyPuppy

[leilei]

Anyone remember this web site? I used to go to it daily in 1995-97. Since the change into whatever gamespy competitor they evolved into in 98-99 it hasn't been cool about old dos games and then they folded up in 2005.

Archive.org didn't do a good job archiving it at all. No images, and the site uses images for links to its own pages.

Everyone on the net I talk to don't even know what happypuppy is, so its hard to find fans of that site, especially from the 'boneyard' days.

[DOSGuy]

Sorry, haven't heard of it.

[muffins.exe]

ah man! happy puppy was awesome!

i heard that the owners (one of which was the transsexual unicorn jelly author [on left] and co-creator of the puzzle game boppin' [also coincidentally a personal favorite of mine]) sold it for anime money way back when :(

there's lots and lots of drama surrounding jennifer diane reitz

so now you know :)

[she's long gone]

I also remember HappyPuppy... haven't thought about them for a loooong time.

[DOSGuy]

Well, I took this thread as an invitation to interview Jennifer Diane Reitz. The interview is here. Let's keep this thread specific to HappyPuppy. If anyone would like to comment on the interview, there are now threads for each of the site interviews. Jennifer's is here.

[leilei]

Is it me or the graphics on the Happy Puppy site on the web archive are finally starting to function?

I have no idea how they suddenly improve their '95/96/97 captures but it's fascinating and makes me most happy.

[DOSGuy]

That is nice. It's a shame that HappyPuppy linked to external FTP sites (which Archive.org doesn't archive) instead of hosting locally, but even knowing the filename of an old demo is sometimes enough to find a copy somewhere.

[leilei]

Don't forget Lord Soth.

[MrFlibble]

Wow! I think I've seen random mentions of the site somewhere before, but never bothered to find out what it was. Just checked the archived copy, it seems quite an awesome resource. Thanks for bringing this up leilei

[leilei]

I wonder if there's a way to automagically search leech all the files that were once linked in their games onramp pages for that and lord soth's as of 1997 prior to their 98 redesign (of course they're all dead links). Some of their onramp pages provide file sizes and original filenames.

tl;dr - unofficially recreate happypuppy with working games links

[MrFlibble]

I have actually used the info from Lord Soth's pages when looking for playable DOS flight sim demos. Unfortunately, many files seem to be unavailable on the net these days, like the shareware version 3.0 of Great Air Battles and some others.

On another note, I think there are quite a few playable demos that went unnoticed by the resource, although of course it is quite valuable nonetheless.

[Litude]

I never personally visited HappyPuppy but I've been faced oh so many times with the problem that something I tried to download was hosted on their FTP. I guess they did at least host some of the files themselves?

Is it me or the graphics on the Happy Puppy site on the web archive are finally starting to function?
I have no idea how they suddenly improve their '95/96/97 captures but it's fascinating and makes me most happy.

When the new version of the web archive was launched, some sites had some more files added to their archives. There were some files that had been wrongly indexed previously that they fixed in the new version or something, can't remember the exact details.
Also the new version disregards differences in capitalization and also disregards if the site had been archived with the www. prefix or hadn't and puts them all under the same archive which makes some websites appear significantly more complete and easier to navigate (you don't have to try all the different combinations).

Only bad thing about the new version of the archive is that when you download files you can't get them with their original modify date anymore. Thankfully the mirror still uses the old version so in the rare cases when you might want to get a file with its original modify date, you can use the mirror as a workaround.

[MrFlibble]

Only bad thing about the new version of the archive is that when you download files you can't get them with their original modify date anymore. Thankfully the mirror still uses the old version so in the rare cases when you might want to get a file with its original modify date, you can use the mirror as a workaround.

Interesting, I didn't know about the archive.org mirror

[DOSGuy]

Interesting, I didn't know about the archive.org mirror

I use the old version on the rare occasions when the new version doesn't give me what I want.