Old computer products, like old soldiers, never die. They stay on the market–even though they haven’t been updated in eons. Or their names get slapped on new products–available only outside the U.S. Or obsessive fans refuse to accept that they’re obsolete–long after the rest of the world has moved on.

For this story–which I hereby dedicate to Richard Lamparski, whose “Whatever Became of…?” books I loved as a kid–I checked in on the whereabouts of 25 famous technology products, dating back to the 1970s. Some are specific hardware and software classics; some are services that once had millions of subscribers; some are entire categories of stuff that were once omnipresent. I focused on items that remain extant–if “extant” means that they remain for sale, in one way or another–and didn’t address products that, while no longer blockbusters, retain a reasonably robust U.S. presence (such as AOL and WordPerfect).

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Games are starting to catch up with movies in this respect: Low-budget titles from indie studios have the same chance to succeed as blockbusters. And the indie game makers are about to make their biggest strides yet as Microsoft (MSFT) prepares to sell user-generated games on the Xbox 360 game console.

The launch of the Xbox Live Community Games Channel on Nov. 19 represents the biggest step yet toward embracing games made by professional independent developers, amateurs, students and ordinary gamers. The games launched on the channel, which will start in the dozens, will be available for 14 million-plus Xbox Live gamers to purchase for fees ranging from $2.50 to $10. The game channel is a part of a big makeover for the Xbox Live online gaming service.

Anyone who uses Microsoft’s $99 XNA Game Studio Express tools can create games that run on the Xbox 360 or the PC. More than a million tool sets have been downloaded.

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