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This is just a collection of links to cool sites I like!
 The Internet Archive - The absolute kings of digital archival efforts. An invaluable resource for anyone looking for old software, books, or archived websites. Tons of other stuff too! Unfortunately, greedy corporate fucks are doggedly trying to take them out of the picture, including the most recent lawsuit that made the IA unable to lend out digital copies of books from their library without explicit approval from publishers on the grounds that "publishers [claimed] that free digital lending cut into their bottom lines." Newsflash; the people borrowing these books weren't going to bolster your bottom line in the first place, dicks.
 MajorGeeks - Software, tweaks, various PC tools, guides, and more. MajorGeeks are real OGs that have been at it since 2000, and their website still looks like it, too! (Seriously, crawl the archive of their site from Feb '02-- It looks the same, just wider!) Nothin' but respect for these guys and the work they do. If I need a piece of utility software, they're usually the first place I go.
 OldVersion - Exactly what it sounds like - old versions of software. An absolute godsend for virtual machine environments, with software available for just about anything you can think of. Not just VMs, either; sometimes an older version of something is still functional, and is superior for the end-user experience, but devs/companies won't provide downloads for rollback.
 1337x - TPB ain't what it used to be but for me personally, 1337x is ol' faithful. Outside of private tracker hookups, this is one of the best repositories on the scene. I've personally found a lot of aggregators have those really sketchy results with massively inflated seeder counts, so I always go to 1337x first. Seed your torrents, kids!
 FitGirl Repacks - Undisputed queen of the scene. There's tons of other repackers out there, sure, but FitGirl is the one I trust above all others. If I want a game, she's the first port of call. Accept no imitators! Wish she'd stop using the stripped version of the installer song in her recent packs though :(
 Emuparadise - I know, I know. There's other ROM sites out there, and I do find myself needing to use them too, sometimes, but Emuparadise was my first exposure to emulation, and I can't let go of it in my heart. You never forget your first. "But Lux!" I hear you cry out "Emuparadise removed all their ROMs from the site! It's nothing but a glorified archive of titles now!" -- ah, my child. There are ways. Keep an eye on the RESOURCES page soon to learn how to walk the valley of the shadow of ROMs, hidden from lawful eyes.
 My Abandonware - 30,000 games available for download. 'nuff said! But seriously, the range here is amazing. Some games are even playable right in your browser, and will save your scores, provided you don't toss your cookies.
 Vimm's Lair - Yes, Emuparadise has my heart, but IMO you can't talk about emulation without shouting out another real OG, Vimm's Lair. Sadly in June of '24, they were forced to remove a bunch of titles from their Vault after Nintendo, Sega, Lego, and the ESA started bitching that their imaginary money line was going down, and us no-good pirates are to blame. Fuck 'em. Vimm still has a bunch of titles though, and you really can't beat it for layout/design, as well as how detailed the database entries are for all the different games. Fun to browse, even with a swath of missing download links. Worth the time if you're just curious about what various old console libraries had hidden away.
 RetroAchievements - You've got a bunch of ROMs to play but can't pick one, or want an extra dimension of play? That's where RA comes in! RetroAchievements has user created achievement sets for all manner of old games, and interfaces with RetroArch (as well as certain other standalone emulators) to link your account and track your progress through various games. There's also sets for popular hack titles, challenge sets, "achievements of the week", events, and all kinds of other cool shit. See a game you like with no achievement set for it? Offer to take it on and build one yourself if you've got the coding chops, or put in a request and see if some plucky dev takes up the torch on your behalf! You can even ask for a random set to be put in front of you, giving you the chance to sit down a tackle a game you might have never played otherwise. I love RA a lot, if you can't tell.
 Evan Collins' Are.na page - Breaking from the established themes here, if you're interested in aesthetics, I can't recommend Evan's stuff enough. He's affiliated with the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (CARI) and was also the one to establish the Y2K Aesthetic Institute over on tumblr, which is how I first became familiar with his work cataloging all this sort of thing. Super fascinating stuff! Highly recommend browsing his channels if you're curious about aesthetic cohesion and design, especially in consumer spaces.
GifCities - Capping this first round of links with a neat little bookend here. If you're lookin' to spruce up your page old school style, look no further than GifCities, another archival effort from the Internet Archive. Specifically for animated gifs archived from old GeoCities pages, and searchable by keyword, it's a truly massive archive, and while there's some junk results (mostly because people posted a lot of junk back in the day) it's still an awesome resource. It's where my ENTER button and under construction gifs came from!
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