
The Monster Truck Madness 2 website has been taken down - fuzzix
http://www.microsoft.com/games/monster/?hn
======
NamTaf
Way to go HN this is why we can't have fun things.

(C'mon MS don't be jerks, be proud of your history and leave that up!)

Edit: in fact, want to sell Windows' awesome backwards-compatibility? Make 1
edit to that site, detailing how to make the trial of the game run in Windows
8.1. Then leave it as a testament to the OS's huge legacy. Be proud of it.
Wear it as a badge of honour.

~~~
janesvilleseo
As a marketer myself, this makes the most business sense. Leverage your
legacy. People (lots of people) find it cool for various reasons. Leave it up,
and call attention to how it can still be played even on new systems.

This was a PR win before they took it down. They have the ability to turn it
around and continue to make it a positive, but they have to do it fast.

------
rabbitonrails
It's because of [http://nypost.com/2013/11/05/microsoft-com-is-stuck-in-
the-1...](http://nypost.com/2013/11/05/microsoft-com-is-stuck-in-the-1990s/)

~~~
hmottestad
That is truly a horrible article. Meant to be nothing but mean about
Microsoft.

I am fairly critical of Microsoft myself, but usually for stuff that they
actually do wrong. Keeping a webpage about an old game unchanged online, what
is wrong with that? It's not like they came out with 3 updates to the game
without modernising their webpages.

My list of negative things about the article:

    
    
      1. There is no author named
      2. Picture of Bill Gates is irrelevant
      3. Title is misleading
      4. Second paragraph is too open to interpretation
           - Should be "1 of 9^9^9 pages on microsoft.com remain untouched"
      5. Third paragraph uses "such as" to imply there are more titles
      6. Calling the hn thread fiery and inaccessible, what exactly is inaccessible about a thread on hn?
      7. Second to last paragraph only tried to poke fun at microsoft. Essentially like complaining that a tesla car only runs on electricity.
      8. Last paragraph, why not just add another 500 words explaining all the other browsers that the webpage might not work on without doing any testing.

~~~
beedogs
It's the New York Post; expecting anything other than a hit piece from that
rag just seems wrong.

~~~
pjc50
Is this the famous "impartial" American media I hear so much about?

~~~
diydsp
I don't think anyone, anywhere makes a claim that the American media is
impartial.

However, there are widespread, strong claims that in American media, everyone
is _free_ to share their opinion, leaving it up to the American people to take
in the numerous opinions and decide for themselves.

What you see here, a bunch of people freely pointing out that one of these
media is utter garbage, is absolutely how the system is supposed to work. We
accept a bit of chaff, rather than let vested interests dictate to us.

It's a shame that enough people believe in shit like the NYPost to keep them
in business, but it's nothing compared to the hell we'd be in if we accepted
the news sources of non-free government sources unflinchingly.

------
mambodog
Somewhere a forgotten IIS 3.0 server has caught fire, burned to a crisp, and
is now in Windows NT heaven.

These two are still available in all their glory, at least:

[http://www.microsoft.com/games/motocross2/](http://www.microsoft.com/games/motocross2/)

[http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown/](http://www.microsoft.com/games/midtown/)

~~~
jbogp
Also one of the most underrated game of those glorious times, Urban Assault :
[http://www.microsoft.com/games/urbanassault/](http://www.microsoft.com/games/urbanassault/)

~~~
Aldo_MX
I came across with a forum where a fan-made remake is being orchestrated:

[http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewforum.php?f=29](http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewforum.php?f=29)

------
unwind
If you don't get why this is an interesting (and fun!) fact, you probably
missed this thread from yesterday:
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6672029](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6672029).
The web page that is now gone had been up, more or less unchanged, from when
the game was released back in 1998.

------
graeme
Supposing we wanted to organize a letter (well, email) writing campaign to try
to convince microsoft to change their decision and leave it up as a heritage
site....which department/manager would we email?

In particular, I wouldn't want them to go on a purge of old game pages now
they're aware they still have some, all because of Hacker News + a NY Post
article.

------
markwillis82
Hopefully it will remain here - unchanged forever:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131105002953/http://www.micros...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131105002953/http://www.microsoft.com/games/monster/default.htm)

~~~
toomuchtodo
I made sure to save it to Archive.org as soon as it hit Hacker News; figured
someone was going to realize it was still up and take it down.

EDIT: There were older versions of it, I just wanted to grab that snapshot in
time. Here is the bookmarklet I use to do this:

javascript:void(open('//web.archive.org/save/'+encodeURI(document.location)))

------
tobiasu
Nothing but contempt for this barbaric destruction of its own history. A new
low point.

~~~
acjohnson55
Umm, there's still the Wayback Machine, which is where this belongs. It's kind
of ridiculous to expect Microsoft to host completely out-dated content
forever.

~~~
tobiasu
This isn't bit rot. It's ridiculous to remove a product because it got minor
media attention.

They are ashamed of their own history and have no sense for public relations.
Many successful companies build museums and archives, support outdated
products, sponsor enthusiasts of old crap, etc. In return these companies have
dedicated fan bases, enthusiast clubs and whatnot.

But MS doesn't get it, because they are too concerned with their quarterly
earnings and the only marketing they understand is paying an agency big bucks
for pretty lies.

~~~
w0rd-driven
A thousand times this. My fanboyism dies a little each time shit like this
happens.

------
shocks
Wow. Thanks for spoiling the fun Microsoft.

~~~
cyphax
At least the Motocross Madness 2 site is still up
([http://www.microsoft.com/games/motocross2/](http://www.microsoft.com/games/motocross2/)).
Same for the page on Outwars
([http://www.microsoft.com/games/outwars/](http://www.microsoft.com/games/outwars/)).

Maybe it just broke for the first time in 15 years. ;)

~~~
PostOnce
Outwars is mechanically interesting. Controls sort of like Starsiege: Tribes
(there's a jetpack), and you can control the legs and torso separately ala
MechWarrior.

~~~
shocks
Back when big games studios, you know, tried to do things differently and be
refreshing.

------
INTPenis
So HN reminded a Microsoft sysadmin to purge old directories.

~~~
madethemcry
And even more interesting the response time for that change was very short.
Honestly, I had supposed it will take days for a large company like Microsoft
to do so.

~~~
InTheSwiss
A change control request to setup a redirect on a site from 1998 that will
have the absolute minimum possible impact to anything else isn't going to take
more than a signature or two even in a company as large as Microsoft. It might
even be outside of the scope of needing any kind of official change control
due to its age. While working at Xerox I had authority to kill off long
forgotten public facing sites that had slipped through the cracks over time.

~~~
300bps
At my bank, any type of change requires a 48 hour cool down from request
approval to change. Sure you can put it through as an emergency change but
then a committee of SVPs and EVPs has to approve it and they pretty much never
approve anything.

~~~
InTheSwiss
Even for something so old and outdated? Because I have done consultancy work
for some banks and have seen things (mostly incorrect data to be fair) changed
in under half an hour once pointed out.

~~~
300bps
There are three types of people at my bank:

1\. Business users. So unbelievably locked down it's ridiculous. Anytime they
ask for access rights it's "can't, because of audit".

2\. Application IT users. As locked down as possible while still allowing them
to somewhat do their job.

3\. Infrastructure IT users. Domain admin rights with their standard user
login. Ability to bypass any proxy server restriction by default.

It's basically the worst of all worlds. The business users and application IT
people can't do anything in the name of following "security best practices"
while the infrastructure IT people (including the business analysts and non-
technical people in that group) have carte blanche because "they couldn't do
their job without it". They don't even follow basic security practices like
using a non-privileged account for everyday use and having an elevated account
for when they need to do something. It's a complete mess.

So thinking about it more - the infrastructure IT people make instant changes
all the time.

~~~
InTheSwiss
Yup that is pretty much my experience of a dozen blue chips and banks. It is
either all or nothing. A lot of this is Microsoft's fault due to how crap
things were done back in the XP and earlier days and while we have moved on a
lot of places stick to how they used to do things rather than re-evaluate how
things can and should be done now. Sucks but that is the way the corporate
world is it seems.

------
mr_spothawk
My adolescence has just been put in a shoebox and buried in the back yard.

------
kruk
It's a real shame. You don't just go and delete your history!

------
bitwize
In the early 1990s there was a Nintendo game released called _Wally Bear and
the No! Gang_. It was an insipid platformer with graphics from a MECC Apple II
game and a thudding "stay off drugs" message. It got some attention in the
mid-2000s when the Angry Videogame Nerd reviewed it.

And then in 2006, on some message board, a gamer discovered that the 1-800
number advertised in the game was still running, and you could still call in
and hear the voices of Wally Bear, Toby Turtle, and all their friends. As soon
as word spread about it, though, the 1-800 number was disconnected. By the
time I had discovered it, Wally had already been silenced... forever.

~~~
toast0
Running an toll free number isn't cheap, especially when you set it up in the
90s and a bunch of random internet people are calling it. Given that the
companies behind the game seem to have petered out, I imagine they had given
some amount of sales to the people running the 1-800 number in the 90s and the
money finally ran out.

------
igl
I am sure that this nypost flame-post, combined with the increased traffic
from HN made a 35+ year old department mananger spill his coffee in the
morning. MS has no balls.

~~~
pyalot2
Wrong, they now have coffee flavored balls.

------
martin-adams
I suspect they saw a surge in traffic and realised that they aren't
redirecting it to a page selling their current products and services.

~~~
misframer
Or a MS employee reads HN.

~~~
josefresco
More like a PR employee for MS reads HN. Seems like a move by a concerned PR
person and not an engineer who most likely would have recognized the
significance of the positive feedback on sites like HN.

Let's hope someone with some history at MS rectifies the situation and rel-
launches the site with the accompanying HN post announcing it.

------
sarreph
This goes to show that Microsoft employees, too, procrastinate on HN.

~~~
dasil003
But not enough.

------
ck2
[http://web.archive.org/web/19981206154756/http://microsoft.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/19981206154756/http://microsoft.com/games/monster/)

Likely the only Microsoft page with the words " _YEEE HAAAAA!_ " on it.

------
gliaskos
Somehow this reminds me the story of shell.windows.com:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/14/93177...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/14/9317706.aspx)

------
davydka
Why is ?hn added to the linked url?

~~~
m_myers
Because it doesn't actually affect the site and it gets around HN's duplicate
detector.

------
binocarlos
Man thats a shame I had a wicked blast of nostalgia seeing geocities back
online again : )

~~~
gabriel34
try neocities.org

------
lilpirate
About time people start using "HN Effect:" prefix for title of posts like
this.

------
naterator
Let's murder this one too:
[http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm](http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm)

------
look_lookatme
I'm glad I saved all those sample WAVs.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Please put them on YouTube or somewhere else. I wish I downloaded the trial
version while I could. What a disappointment.

------
jerlundy
What does it mean? #WarrantCanary

------
Sloveni4n
Too bad. It was 'refreshing' to step back in time to an old pc game!

------
dzhiurgis
I still get seizures from MS websites.

------
blahbl4hblahtoo
Aww man...I liked that site.

------
jlebrech
They'll opensource it next.

------
pearjuice
Why is there a _?hn_ referral in this submission its URL?

~~~
davydka
I was wondering the same thing. Makes me think there's some corporate
involvement in the link.

