
The Forgotten World of BBS Door Games - ohaikbai
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/340587/the-forgotten-world-of-bbs-door-games/
======
dccoolgai
In all the years of gaming and "internet"-ing since then, there is something
intangible about the experience BBS systems and these types of games provided
that hasn't been achieved since. I know some of it must be simply rosy-goggled
nostalgia, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something material that
made the BBS experience awesome that didn't quite translate over to the
"internet" as we know it today. I remember that BSSs used to have "picnics"
and stuff where everyone met up in real life (I couldn't go because I was too
young, but I still appreciated the sense of community that grew around those.)

There was a sort of "liminal" phase of the internet that I've never seen
anyone even mention in these types of articles, as well: the "Freenet" era (
[http://cfn.tangledhelix.com/history.html](http://cfn.tangledhelix.com/history.html)
). It was sort of halfway between local BBS and WWW. I wonder if the emergence
of the Physical Web or the like might bring about a resurgence of some of this
"local"-ness the web lost as it outgrew its origins.

~~~
ideonexus
I think I agree that it's the localness of the BBSes that made them so special
for me. When I was in middle school, the BBSes were my social group. The games
were a fun way to waste some time, uploading games for credits in bytes you
could download, but the conversations were the best part. I went to BBS
parties and hung out with the people-behind-the-handles in real life. It was
always such a shock to see how someone differed from the way you imagined them
to look. When I got to college, the BBS scene instantly created a whole new
set of friends for me. I don't know how I would have gotten to know people in
that strange place without it.

Then the internet came. Suddenly, all by favorite BBS boards were
synchronizing their posts with other BBSes across the country. Our little
conversations of 5-10 people suddenly exploded into hundreds. It was too much.
My posts got lost--or worse, I once got the notice of some sysadmin in another
state who didn't like my politics or my language and demanded my local
sysadmin deactivate my account. I fled to some other locals-only BBSes, but
things were dying. Then Gopher, WWW, and Usenet came along and the BBSes
vanished as everyone rushed to build web sites and post comments for all the
world to see.

I telnetted into the cavebbs.homeip.net and it was a nice brief bit of
nostalgia. I'm not sure if this is something we can recapture, but I hope it
gets a bit of historical footnote somewhere.

------
lubujackson
I think door games have a lot of interesting similarities to modern mobile
games. First, door games tended to limit you to X number of moves per day in
order you to play a small bit each day. Multiplayer was sometimes much more
interesting in door games (ala TradeWars) than some modern AAA mobile games
that limit interactions quite a bit (such as Boom Beach). I'm surprised there
hasn't been more of a renaissance of door games onto mobile devices already.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I think the audiences are mutually incompatible. The old-school folks who grew
up on BBS door games are, by and large, not happy with the microtransaction
model.

And the reasons for limited turns are diametrically opposed. In door games,
turns were limited to prevent players with more spare time from dominating the
game. In mobile games, it's to encourage players with disposable income to
spend extra money so that they _can_ dominate the game.

~~~
TurkTurkleton
> In door games, turns were limited to prevent players with more spare time
> from dominating the game

And to prevent them from tying up what was very likely the BBS's only phone
line.

~~~
sseagull
I feel the limit on time you can spend per day would fit more with busy
professional lives. For me, it always made me greatly anticipate the next day
when my turns would be replenished. That would make actually playing it much
more special.

Also, the reduced audience available for the BBS made cheating less of an
issue (at least at my local BBS)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing seems to be essentially a browser-based door
game, complete with turn limits, and it was still running last I checked.
Might be worth a look if that's what you're into.

------
pjbrunet
I'm impressed they picked some of the best games for this. I paid for The Pit,
the registered version had enhanced features, excellent game. Unfortunately,
it wasn't popular on my BBS. I also liked OOii which had very unique graphics
for the time, toxic wasteland theme. TW2002 was by far the most popular and I
had people paying me subscriptions to play it. It was almost an exact copy of
Yankee Trader, which makes me think maybe Yankee Trader deserves credit for
the idea. But TW2002 had much better graphics. The fishing game was
surprisingly fun and made with loving care, you could actually see the fishing
line animated in ANSI! Also very popular (#2 behind TW2002) was Global Wars,
not in the article, which was exactly like RISK the boardgame. The article
doesn't mention MajorBBS at all, which is unfortunate, because they had their
own unique ecosystem that had a loyal following, and although it was very
expensive (pay by the minute) it was extremely addicting.

------
jlgaddis
To this day, Barren Realms Elite is my favorite BBS game. I believe there are
some boards still running (accessible only via the Internet) simply to
participate in the interplanetary leagues.

~~~
fryguy
I liked the "sequel" to it a little more. It had the acronym FE and was
fantasy themed but similar otherwise.

~~~
jlgaddis
Yep, Falcon's Eye. I played it every day as well but liked BRE more. Both of
them were great games!

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brandonmenc
I ran a couple BBSes with a friend in the mid 90s. We got rid of file
downloads and door games when we transitioned to an all message board system,
but we always kept one door game around:

Barneysplat! by Bong Software

Interview with the author, who is also blind:

[http://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/05/08/austin-seraphin-
cre...](http://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/05/08/austin-seraphin-creator-of-
barneysplat)

Oh yeah, being snarky teenagers, we also kept Pimp Wars on the board.

~~~
vanadium
BarneySplat was invariably the most popular door game on my BBS (mid-90s).
Thanks for that interview link.

------
iokevins
TradeWars 2002, The Pit, and Legend of the Red Dragon reminds me of many
pleasant Friday nights, in high school. Thanks for posting this.

~~~
xenophonf
Dunno about the rest but TradeWars is still being maintained! As are some
really nice helpers, like SWATH. One of these days, I'd like to maybe run my
own server again. (I had no problems getting TWGS to run jailed under
Wine/VNC/screen on my FreeBSD servers, and SWATH ran well under Wine on my
Mac.)

~~~
tlack
Are there still any active servers? TW2002 is by far my favorite game of all
time, but I had a lot of trouble getting a good reasonable-turns game (~750 -
1250) with high engagement humans.. or at least passable bots! :)

~~~
xenophonf
There are a few! Ice9 used to be pretty good, but I don't know how well
maintained it is these days. Cruncher's is well maintained but sparsely
populated.

[http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/](http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/)

[http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/](http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/)

Here's another list:

[http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?title=Jumpgate](http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?title=Jumpgate)

I think I might just dust off my copy of SWATH and go exploring. :)

------
mutagen
Tradewars 2002 never caught my attention but I spent plenty of time playing
Land of Devastation:

[http://www.smbaker.com/games/land-of-devastation-
classic](http://www.smbaker.com/games/land-of-devastation-classic)

I still have a graph paper notebook with carefully laid out map of the world,
with blank spaces that still need filling in. I dreamed of getting the GTERM
client to 'properly' play the game.

~~~
grumblestumble
Wow, I thought I was the only person alive who still remembered this. Tile-
based MMO on a BBS... even if I ran into another player only about once a
month. The gambling system was nicely exploitable, too :)

------
foobarian
I feel the main thing missing today is the locality imposed by area codes.
BBSs hit a scope sweet spot where users were more than just your friends but
still came from the local community. That aspect always gave me warm and
fuzzies.

~~~
300bps
It also allowed you to compete in online games through the big fish in a small
pond principle.

I used to dominate LORD, TW 2002 and Proving Grounds BBS games. First time I
ever played Internet Quake or any other Internet game was a humbling
experience.

------
Kirkman14
There's a wiki dedicated to them
([http://breakintochat.com](http://breakintochat.com)) and a blog with
interviews with door game authors
([http://breakintochat.com/blog](http://breakintochat.com/blog)).

People are still WRITING doors, too. Musician Shooter Jennings of all people
released a door game recently, and he offered a Bitcoin prize to people
playing it. ([http://breakintochat.com/blog/2015/09/18/shooter-jennings-
cr...](http://breakintochat.com/blog/2015/09/18/shooter-jennings-creator-of-
from-here-to-eternity/))

There's an active mini community of folks writing new Javascript doors for
Synchronet BBS software ([http://synchro.net](http://synchro.net)). These are
still ANSI games but they are more action-oriented.

So yeah, not entirely forgotten.

------
AJ007
Of course LORD, but anyone here played Usurper? That sure was a dark game as a
little kid!

~~~
jquast
Its been open sourced (copious amounts of pascal),
[https://github.com/rickparrish/Usurper](https://github.com/rickparrish/Usurper)

~~~
AJ007
I've seen it, and taken a look around in there!

------
codereflection
I lot of nostalgia for me here. I ran a BBS for years, initially on WWIV and
then on to Wildcat! 4.

Throughout high school, my buddies and I spent countless hours on TradeWars
2002. We even wrote our own door game, the little known Mercury Fighter, which
had a modest installation base.

The Internet just isn't the same. A lot of memories come back looking at the
list of games on this article.

------
jlgaddis
Door games are, in a way, what got me interested in reverse engineering. Being
a teenager running a BBS for some friends in school, I didn't have any money
to "register" the games (and was lucky that my parents ponied up the money for
the extra phone line). I had some experience w/ 6502 assembly and Pascal (all
self-learned), got a copy of a debugger (Soft-Ice?) and set to work figuring
out how to "crack" the registration systems.

Eventually, my BBS got shut down because I was dialing into other BBS's all
over the country to spread my "patches" (and racking up outrageous phone
bills). :(

~~~
pjbrunet
Two distinct worlds. PD and NPD. I was on the PD side but a couple of my
classmates were NPD and there was some crossover. Seemed the NPD side was more
serious about artwork and that got to be competitive, as far as login
graphics, menus, logoff graphics. As an aspiring artist, I was impressed by
the NPD ascii art and loaders.

------
fapjacks
You know what's interesting here, nobody mentioning MajorMUD. That was (and
somewhat still is) the kinda-not-a-door-game door game serving as the engine
of a lot of BBS use. Unfortunately, MetroBBS (the company that owns the IP) is
still holding out for some kind of MMO or movie deal or something and the
pricing for this game is silly. Also, being from the KC area, I have it on
very good authority that some of the source code for MM was lost during an
office move. And this is why (in addition to having lost their main
programmer) there haven't been substantial updates in years.

~~~
isaacforce
Writing Telemate scripts to automatically play MajorMUD for me while I was AFK
is how I got started with programming! I got to the point where I was
distributing my scripts via a forum on a board I played on, and I even got
contributions back from a couple people. Definitely a lot of fond memories
there.

~~~
pjbrunet
Yes, programming macros was exciting (too) because it gave you a competitive
advantage and opened the door to a lot of creativity.

------
cpeterso
I played a lot of TradeWars, but my favorite door game was a similar space
conquest game called Dominion. To my dismay, I can't find any reference to it
online today! :(

~~~
jasonkostempski
This[1] have anything to do with it?

[1][http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/IBM/DOS/DOMINION/](http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/IBM/DOS/DOMINION/)

------
adamredwoods
A couple of these BBS games were easy to break back in the day: just head to
the casino and keep gambling. One of the games had an easy higher/lower random
number game.

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fapjacks
Forgotten _to you_ , PCMag. I've never stopped playing these bad boys.

------
jlgaddis
Jennie? Jennie Garth? Describe her.

------
Dowwie
trade wars 2002.. legend of the red dragon.. global wars

tele-arena was me gateway to scripting

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JohnLeTigre
man, I miss BBS'ing

