Underground Gamer: Retro Download Source

 After going on mad downloading sprees for years, I took a long break from collecting retro gaming files from around the Net. This is mostly due to the lack of a reliable resource and/or a good selection of things I didn’t already have.

However, this past month I was blessed with a membership to Underground Gamer. Underground Gamer is a private BitTorrent tracker that is only used for classic gaming files. Their rules reflect my personal convictions as they do not allow ISOs of systems that are for systems that are currently in retail channels. Instead you will find a great abundance of ROMs and ISOs for your favorite classic systems in addition to Soundtracks, classic PC games, manual scans, and video clips.

You can easily find nearly complete collections of ROM/ISO sets from nearly every system including the Sega Saturn (modchip or swap trick needed), TurboGrafx 16, and many other obscure systems. The community does a great job collaborating to put these “Gold”-status torrents together. (In fact I just uploaded a handful of Saturn games that happened to be defective or missing from the “Complete” collection)

What really makes Underground Gamer really work is its website and tracker system. First of all, it rewards you for participating in uploading and leaving your completed torrents running. Your user ID has a score assigned to it based on your upload to download ratio. If you have a high score, you can have access to newer releases sooner, are allowed to have more simultaneous downloads, and ability to give out invites to your friends. If you do not upload responsibly, you a demoted and you may actually lose your membership.

Because of this, it can be challenging to sign up for an account. Either you wait for somebody to invite (check the forums here for any invites) you or you keep checking back to see if the site has any open spots from people that got kicked off for lack up uploading. While this may seem like a pain initially, it really keeps the site in peak performance.

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46 Comments

microsafe17 says:

Underground Gamer is awesome. I have been on there for almost 8 weeks and I absolutely love it. I love your site too, retro is king.

Anonymous says:

I have recently lost my membership to Underground Gamer because of ratio problems. What sucks about the ratio is if you download something and then when you seed it no one wants it, then you are out of luck and your ratio makes you look like you don’t want to contribute. Choose your torrents wisely is unfornately the advice I give to anyone that gets a membership, though they aren’t accepting anymore right now.

racketboy says:

I had the same problem for a little while, but I’m building my ratio back up by downloading some of the games from the “Complete” Saturn and Dreamcast torrents and then just keeping them going and gettting a constant upload stream since these particular torrents remain popular for ages.

Anonymous says:

Underground Gamer doesnt allow trolls to sign up 🙁

http://www.dchaven.com is another great site for dreamcast games

marmotte says:

I got banned from there too T_T

Though i seeded many files, the upload speed was always 0… just got a little bit of “luck” with my last download (that was around 14gb), the upload speed was around 1kbps (imagine how many months/years i would need to seed this one every day to finally reach a ratio of 1:1)… So yeah, i got kicked… and i have 1gb missing of the download i was talking about.

Crap! Normally i’m uploading more than i’m downloading, but there I just wasn’t able to. Crap, oh crap!

marmotte says:

Mmmh, for some reason i was able to create another account. Oooooook, so i downloaded around 900Mb in 3 hours… Now, 16 hours of non-stop seeding, my ratio is ONLY 0.15

…That’s just insane.

CONOR says:

WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD REZ!! OR JET GRIND RADIO!! ALL TORRENTS EVERYWHERE 4 DC R DEAD!!

sean says:

Rez doesn’t work properly on a DC emulator..I reccomend downloading Internal Section for PSX, or Torus Trooper for PC (very small, free game) – both are about as good.

upright kangaroo says:

Underground Gamer.

It is an impressive site and they have a great philosophy on retro gaming.

People on that site have taken time to make it what it is, and that is why the site is so good. Its about people who love and want to preserve the memory of older systems.

Their admins are approachable and friendly, if you have a problem they are more than willing to help.

NeoDevilMan says:

we need more torrent sites like UG

Anonymous says:

I like the site, they have a bunch of hard to find stuff. The problem is because its a private tracker with a limited number of total users, they never get enough leeches. That may sound like a good thing, but it means youre stuck trying to seed torrents that have no leechers. Most of the traffic seems to be from other people trying to seed, but cant. I downloaded a gig of stuff in a few minutes and am still trying to reach a 1:1 ratio 2 months later. Its total bull. It would be nice if they upped their user cap or simply made it a public tracker with required registration.

racketboy says:

The trick is to jump on the new releases and also upload some fresh stuff yourself so you are the only seed with lots of new leeches.

starphish17 says:

What UG should do is have a little trust in their users and implement a system similar to the “seed points” blackcats games has. If you are connected for any particular time limit like 5 days or 1 week with 0 S/L ratio BC’s seed point system kicks in and gives your global ratio a boost to 1.0 even though the actual upload was lower. Most users are honest and continue to seed past 1.0 especially if there are low seeds.

Underground Gamer is one of the BEST game torrent site!!! I love retro games; and there is all the games that I want.

cannibal20 says:

This site is amazing, and you just have to make your own torrents of stuff that isnt on the site to keep the ratio going, plus DONT download so much right at the start. you have to be prepared to dl at like 3 k on your second file or whatever. most importantly, READ THE FAQ. just like anything else. *_*

Underground-gamer.com is shite. In fact all registration sites are shite. At least piratebay gives away what they steal and thus has some sort of freedom of information argument.

Selling adspace and collecting donations through forced registration is actual theft and makes both pirates and gamers as a whole look bad.

For shame.

Exe says:

Yeah, because it’s not like hosting, maintenance and time require any money…

Todayisforgotten says:

@ Brandon: No one is forcing you to pay for the site. Donations are made out of the kindness of people’s hearts. UG doesnt force anyone to donate. Think before you type.

jeki says:

Undergroundgamer sucks

I upload some torrents and the site delete it without warnings
Bad assholes who receive money from members.
This is also illegal.
So i have this site reported to anti-piracy groups to bring this site down.

jeki says:

underground gamer have a bad asshole of a moderator a dutch person who i have reported to stichting brein in the netherlands.

perry says:

hi there im indesperate need of a invite to underground gamer i have hundreds of titles backed up for saturn / psx t share and a 50mb/s fibre optic line to share with anyone who is feeling generoud please email me many thanks
perrymason86@hotmail.com

Rayek says:

Underground gamer is by far the best resource for Dreamcast dev stuff that the internet has washed away over the years. New stuff is still being released there for the Dreamcast, and things show up every day that are useful and fun. I don’t think there’s been a time that I’ve browsed the torrent page and have not been interested in at least one of the new torrent uploads. Which is a surprise, because other sites like Demonoid which share a more diverse content have nothing of interest to me at all.

For those concerned with ratios: I have been at UG for little over two months and have a harddrive full of goodness and a ratio of over 3. Initially, it was a pain, but all one needs to do is download a featured torrent (which are freeleech) and seed it for a few days. Keep doing that until your ratio has improved, or upload your own torrent, which I did.

For those reporting specialist gaming torrent share sites, go fuck yourself. Trying to ruin something which is really the ONLY resource for countless things on the internet because the moderator was a jerk to you or you hate the Dutch is incredibly bad form. I have no respect for you.

El Diego says:

Lol at complainers, I’ve been member of UG for nearly 2 years now and belong to a dozen other private trackers. After all of this I can say UG has one of the friendlier communities and kinder staff I’ve ever seen. If you can’t maintain an account in there it is because you’re either a cheater, a troll, a greedy downloader, can’t read rules, or are downright stupid. The advantage of private sites is a tighly-knit community, top quality exclusive content, and the possibility of taking the garbage out of the door. If you behave like garbage you’re gonna be treated as such anywhere you go. And if you don’t like it be my guest and fuck off to thepiratebay.

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