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Classic Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Classic BBS 'Door Games' Reborn 51

Posted by simoniker from the 300-baud-is-fast dept.
digirave writes "Most multiplayer strategy/RPG 'door games' didn't survive the change from the BBS scene to the Internet. The few that did mostly stayed dialup and telnet only. Here are three BBS door games that were quite popular at the time, remade as open-source games for the Web using PHP and MySQL. First of all, there's the Tradewars 2002-inspired game Blacknova, and secondly the LORD (Legend Of The Red Dragon) remake, Legend Of The Green Dragon. Finally, there's a game similar to Solar Realms Elite, QM Promisance, which itself is a modified version of the original Promisance source."
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Classic BBS 'Door Games' Reborn More

Classic BBS 'Door Games' Reborn

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  • anyone who wants to take on my level 2 LOGD theif in a duel TO THE DEATH is welcome to try
  • Maybe a MUSH isn't exactly a "door" game, but it is a multiplayer text game, and I can vouch that the community is alive and well. just a brief perusal through the lists at this great site [mudconnector.com] shows hundreds of high quality, well-attended games.

    I think that you guys should have a topic FOR text games cause, well, err, they are our HISTORY, man!! where would slashdot be without zork, trinity, tradewars, and the rest of them that we all *cough over 30* cut our teeth on??

    • *cough* I'm 24. *cough* I fondly remember tradewares (Prime Evil baby, and with 1024 shield points per planet...), the pit, LOTR, BRE, SRE, and their ilk. I also remember the great local multi-line chat bbs's.

      I paid $200.00 in hard earned newspaper route money for my shiny 14.4 internal modem. I could page bomb 2400 baud modem users off chat boards in under 10 seconds. (please note, I never did, I just ran my little script against a friend to test it)...

      The community was so much tighter knit (due to t
  • Who remembers timebank?

    Way back when BBSs were popular, when you registered , you were given a limited number of minutes and downloads per day. I think it was in the order of 30 minutes and I can't remember how much data you could download. (200KB?)

    After you exceeded either your download quota or your time quota, you could not log back onto the BBS.

    And that's where timebank comes into the picture. On top of all the other text games available, there was a game, called timebank, that let you gamble part (o
  • Looks like my game made it on Slashdot. Not exactly front page, but I'm not gonna complain :-)

    I strongly urge everyone to head on over to http://lotgd.sourceforge.net and play on your lunch break, this is a well done game even if I do say so myself ;-)
    • ...and I didn't even submit the story...
      • I submitted mine about 2 months ago but got the big "Rejected" stamp across my forehead :-). I guess someone liked what they saw though!
    • I tried, but it didn't work in Safari and I really don't feel like switching to something else.
      There was a huge jumble of text in the upper left corner of the page, so it looks like the menu is all being collapsed into one line. It changed into "Forgotten password" on mouse-over, and the other stuff disappeared.

      dalamcd

  • Wow. I can remember logging in to no less than 3 BBS's to play all of my Trade Wars turns every day. It always sucked to find your fighters destroyed, your planetary defenses overrun, and someone squatting on your planet.

    Perhaps one day a gaming company will get multiplayer space battle right. (And I don't mean like Earth and Beyond.)

    • 1 node bbs' were horrid for tradewars!

      I would dial 200+ times to get in. Auto dialer screaming away trying to slide in before the bbs turned over.

      and place 1000's of toll fighters to frustrate the newbs.
    • It always sucked to find your fighters destroyed, your planetary defenses overrun, and someone squatting on your planet.

      ...especially when that someone was supposed to be an ally. Not that I didn't do the same thing. Always fun to build up positive karma and then burn it on betraying everyone. Maybe slashdot should base their karma on the tradewars system. Keep trolling and end up with interesting ranks like "master troll" or something like that... =)
  • Where the hell is PIMP WARS?

  • Whoa (Score:1)

    by Ih8sG8s ( 4112 )
    Total flashback for me there. Ahh, I remember running Maximus in 4 shells under OS/2. My phone bills soared. Fidonet stuff.

    What I want to know is, where is Bordello? Managing a bordello was pretty fun as I remember it.
  • traders.jointhesaga.com [jointhesaga.com] If you'd like a place to play that's started up in the last month or so.
  • Could anyone give a comparison between Tradewars 2002 and Seth Able's less known great door game Planets: The Exploration of Space (or TEOS). I've never played Tradewars and Blacknova traders seemed a little... complicated last time I tried it. I'd really like to relive some of those memories but Blacknova just didn't seem as good for me with a brief attempt at playing it.

    I'd like to see something else than web-based, maybe something like freeciv with separate server and client so we could get cool graphic
    • I think I still have a disk (3.5", no less) somewhere of the original door versions of LORD and Planets signed by Seth Able (Thanks, Seth Able) from back when I ran a BBS. In fact I should go digging for that box of disks with all my old registered doors on it and set a BBS back up in my area. Not like I use the voice line anyway.

      Anyway, the games I'd like to see in one place are: LOD (Lands of Devastation), OOII (operation overkill II), BRE (Baron Realms Elite!), LORD, Tradewars, and Planets. BRE + Tra
  • It was never as popular as any of the doors that have been mentioned already, but the game I wrote has been released under the GPL and is available at here: http://theclans.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

  • Anyone here ever play Lords of Cyberspace? If I recall correctly, it was only available for MajorBBS/WorldNet systems, and so I have found very few BBSs that still carry it (one, in fact, but it is extremely lagged).

    It was a simple door game, with a small 30x10 text window in the upper left that you navigated around, and some stats on the right. Your mission was to hack as many systems as possible, get your level up to 30, and find the ?three? keys to let you try to get into Valhalla and destroy the Div

  • Even in my smallish town of 25000 we had two dialup bbs. I remember going home every day and setting my modem to auto-redial each one until I got on so I could use my turns in TradeWars, LORD, and Exitilus. For some reason I absolutely loved Exitilus and wish there was a free open source version now. I guess I could get off my butt and code one.
  • My favourite door game was a rip off of Risk. What was it called?
    • It was called Global Wars, and it was popular where I used to call up BBSes - I was usually involved in a couple games at any point in time.

      I was never into the 'big' ones mentioned here - SRE, LORD, TW2002, none of them just ever really clicked for me. I spent a lot of time on Land of the Barons, Phantasia, Power Struggle, and Trade Wars 1000. TW1000 I enjoyed so much more than 2002, as there wasn't all that overly complicated multiple-ship stuff going on. And I so loved the versions that had sales tha
      • Global wars was amazing. I was into the obvious choices, but I remember Global wars as being perfect. I was never particularly good at it, but I would play multiple games every day.

        A few years ago, I conjured up that I would log on to a few telnet bbs' and play games.

        Not as much fun.

        I think there is something to the automatic call back, with your modem on recieve to verify you, that makes door games seem all the more fun.
  • Oh come on guys!!! None of you remember Operation Overkill!!!!?!?!?!? ooii.vbsoft.org/

    One of the best sci-fi based doorgames (next to TradeWars that is)
  • heh.. i setup Legend of the Green Dragon game at http://www.digirave.net [digirave.net]

    try it out if you liked L.O.R.D. since it's almost a new game you should have a fair start
  • Am I the only person who preferred Usurper to LORD? I just found LORD to be boring for some reason.
  • Anyone ever played Medievia [medievia.com]?

    Its probably the most played MUD today, and I'm still an avid player. Telnet to it here [medievia.com] or download a MUD client [zuggsoft.com].
  • I played those games like mad back in my BBS days. I hosted all of those on my own BBS (as well as Operation Overkill ][ and many others). I made several of the ANSI drawings for LORD, maybe I can contribute something to LOGD as well. I have been waiting for someone to do this, I will be setting these up on my webserver ASAP! Ah, the good 'ole days of ANSI gaming.
    • Yes.. my 2400 baud modem and the glory that was deciphering ansi.

      It's a.... fish.... flying..... no... a guy... with a sword?.... no.... Oh... It says Lord. Neat.
  • ...I ran The Laser Connection in Clifton, NJ years ago on MajorBBS and loved having people logged in for hours playing CrossWORDS, a real-time chat and Scrabble game. Tradewars 2002, and a few others, all were very popular. I have to get back into more workon the telnet version we have running at www.ssabbs.com, get TW2002 back up and running. Ah, the past, great bbsing before the internet.

  • Hey, can anyone reccomend a good BBS software package?

    I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this page, but..

    I'm looking for Linux x86, preferably reasonably mature, and supporting telephone and telnet. I'd like to hook it up with some of the BBS games.

    ~Will
  • Most BBS door games that were popular seem to have survived and made the jump.
    Maybe the submitter just never paid mutch attention to telnet BBSing.

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