Hello again! It's approx 1 month since Christmas, time surely flies.

When searching through my harddrive, I found something I've kept for at least 3 years now, namely the original (and first) DaFastLane Awards. For those of you who don't remember, or hadn't joined the scene back then, DaFastLane was a common meeting place for everyone in the scene, including discussions and articles written from people involved in the old days.

One of its more impressive features, was however an extensive list of background info on abandonware websites since they started appearing (I'd say around 1996-97). Each site had description, screenshots and status info on wether or not they were available, and what members were involved in that particular site. Any member could update information on each site's description, making for a powerful collaboration tool that usually secured getting each site's story straight.

In 2006 they held what is later known (at least to my knowledge) as the first "ceremony" that would select winners in various categories. Sites would be qualified in various categories, i.e "Best site", "Most dedicated webmaster" and "Best idea". Voting took place through the DFL website.

The official ceremony and results took place back in May 2006 I think, and in that regard the DFL webmaster did something different. He made a flash application so that people could follow the awards as they happened. With soothing background music and a somewhat over-the-top effort in creating something collaborative and centralizing for the scene, it worked as intended. It created fuzz around the scene, and webmasters who'd won could brag off on their sites with their tags for whatever category they were nominated in or won. Each category had four (4) nominees. I remember that either Abandonia or Home of the Underdogs won for "Best website", and Abandonia's originator, Kosta, won the "Best webmaster" award. We at The DOS Spirit got 4th place in the "Best idea" category for capturing gameplay footage in DOSBox - in a time before it was possible to record directly from DOSBox (!)

Today, however, it's down, like it has been several times before during the years after 2006. Reappearing under different domains, change of webmasters and what-not has caused it some dismay, and it's sad to see that all that quality information is now no longer available.

The original DFL Awards ceremony application, can be downloaded here.

Oh, and updates have been appended to the previous ones, since there weren't that many.

Until next time,

stay retro!

- bakkelun