Underground Gamer is a very unique BitTorrent tracker. Unlike other games trackers which mainly focus on new releases, UG seems to deal more with retro, classic content. It indexes a lot of DOS, Windows and console games including some rare old games packs which are almost impossible to be found these days. In addition to PC and Console games, UG is known for emulation and ROM files - two elements essential for playing console games on a personal computer. Launched several years ago, this sister site of bitGamer has been able to win the hearts and minds of many PC and console gamers over time. For those who still aren’t members of this great tracker, we have some good news. In a rare move, UG has opened its doors to recruit 2000 new members – site wide free leech has also been activated in celebration of open signups.

In the last couple of months, you may have come across instances where UG appeared to be open for signup. The site was indeed open to the public at random times but this was almost always due to automatic account deletion. In other words open signups lasted only for a few minutes. An extended, official open signups hasn’t been announced for months until now:

Underground Gamer Presents…

The Grand Reopening Freeleech!

We are proud to announce that Underground Gamer will be once again opening its doors to new members! In tribute to this wonderful moment, there will be a site-wide freeleech starting this Friday (23 July) and lasting until the following Friday (30 July).

In addition to the freeleech, we will also have some other goodies to announce soon so keep your eyes peeled!

We are limiting signups to less than 2,000 slots with a hard cap at 30k. There will be no better time to signup than now so please take this opportunity to tell all of your friends about Underground Gamer!

// UG Staff

Underground Gamer has been online for several years and has grown both in terms of user base and content over time. Being a niche games tracker focusing on retro content, you’d expect user and torrent statistics of this site to be somewhat on the low end – this however is not the case. With over 28500 registers users, it’s actually one of the largest games trackers out there – one that can even rival Blackcats Games in terms of size. As of 20/7/2010 UG tracked over 11500 torrents, again an impressive amount for a specialized tracker.

As highlighted earlier, UG deals primarily with retro, classic games. This includes old DOS based games, classic Windows games as well as a lot of ROM files for a number of different gaming consoles ranging from ATARI 2600 to NES, SNES, Genesis, MAME, NeoGeo, Amiga, etc. A ROM file is basically an image of a game cartridge which can be mounted using a compatible emulator software – this lets you play your favorite console games on the PC (an example based on SNES may be found here). Coming back to the content on UG, they even have some pretty impressive fullset ROM collections for many different consoles from the golden era – these can be found in their Collections page. Screenshot below should cast a clearer picture of the type of content indexed on this tracker:

Signups for UG are currently open. As stated in the quoted news post above, they will only remain open till the site hits its max user cap of 30000. This leaves around 1200 more free slots remaining – a lot of people are signing up as we speak so hurry and get in while you can. If you like retro PC games, ROMs and emulation, this is definitely a site worth checking out.

Site Name: Underground Gamer (http://www.underground-gamer.com)

Signup URL: http://www.underground-gamer.com/signup.php

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Special thanks to Peter Vig for the heads up.