Who ran a BBS back in the day?

My friends ran BBSs, and I made the ANSI art for them (in exchange for being called co-sysop, which meant playing as much Usurper I wanted to).

Anyone else here make ANSI art? I mainly used ACiDDraw, and occasionally TheDraw. I thought I wasn't bad, though nowhere near as good as the artists in groups like ACiD and iCE. Still, it was a lot of fun. I faded out towards the end of high school, when RIPs started taking over BBSs. It's probably a lost art by now, born as it was from necessity, and probably surviving now only as a dessicated ASCII banners in .nfo files.

Oh Usurper. Is there a way to play that now?

Gravey wrote:

My friends ran BBSs, and I made the ANSI art for them (in exchange for being called co-sysop, which meant playing as much Usurper I wanted to).

Anyone else here make ANSI art? I mainly used ACiDDraw, and occasionally TheDraw. I thought I wasn't bad, though nowhere near as good as the artists in groups like ACiD and iCE. Still, it was a lot of fun. I faded out towards the end of high school, when RIPs started taking over BBSs. It's probably a lost art by now, born as it was from necessity, and probably surviving now only as a dessicated ASCII banners in .nfo files.

I made ANSI art with TheDraw. Even got good at making 2-frame animation by using the flash attribute. I wish I had saved my stuff from those days.

BTW - That was a common path to increased privileges on BBSs. I got to be co-sysop on a number of boards by contributing free art.

According to a quick Google search, it looks like you can play Usurper here.

Never ran (well, I attempted it a couple of times), but used many. I used to play Operation: Overkill II as much as possible. Something about it was delightful.

Oh my. I was just talking to a buddy of mine about our Spitfire days. Late nights of Legend of the Red Dragon and punting people who dared to log in with a 2400 connection.

Great Times. We had a healthly little BBS community in Sonoma County.

Gremlin wrote:

This thread is reviving my interest in making a hacking game that makes heavy use of Usenet and BBSs to convey the story and pick up information. Of course, I missed the heyday of both as a primary medium, so it's partially nostalgia for an era I never really experienced.

Neuromancer! Best game evar!

Oh man.. Tele-Arena, Legend of the Red Dragon; I never ran one, but I was pretty heavily into the local scene from about 93-96.

karmajay wrote:

Neuromancer! Best game evar!

Indeed, even if I never beat it.

I ran a 2AM-BBS back in the mid 80s, backed by a single blazing 1200 baud modem. By the late 80s I'd found a few UUCP-enabled BBSes and got into Usenet, but the community surrounding local BBSes was something special. I even went to a few net-meets.

I really miss the BBS days. There have only been a couple of Internet forums (GWJ being one) that have even come close to recreating the more intimate feel of a BBS.

I never officially ran one, although I did play around with the software quite a bit just to see how it all worked. Regularly dialed into three local BBSes when I was in high school, the largest being The Swamp out of River Falls, WI. I did some admin work for them and another local BBS though. I was one of the few Mac users on the BBSes which worked out nicely when The Swamp owners started a dial-up ISP. They hired me - a senior in high school - as their Mac guy. Those were fun times.

Really miss the door games as others have mentioned. Barren Realms Elite (BRE) and Legend of the Red Dragon were my main games, but I also played Tradewars 2002 and others that will eventually come to mind. I loved logging in at 11:50pm to take my turn in BRE, waiting for the server to process at midnight and immediately jumping back on to get back-to-back turns in. So good.

Inter-BBS Barren Realms Elite really blew my mind back in the day. The idea that our entire BBS could work together and compete against other BBSes was just too awesome. I don't remember how many BBSes were in our league but it was pretty sizable. That was some of the most fun I had.

Interest check; GWJ(have to check the details of this with the bosses if there is interest) telnetable bbs, hosted on Amazon EC2 or some such?

edit; Though any door games with inter-bbs competitions would probably be null these days as the other telnetable BBS's don't look to have much activity and I'm not sure if they bother interacting with each other at all.

I'd play games on it.

Edit: You can do an "unofficial" GWJ BBS without approval, I am fairly sure. Like the IRC channel.

I think there was a thread in the distant past about running BBS games. Not sure if that went anywhere. Might want to poke around and see.

Wasn't there a thread about someone running a BBS?

A buddy and I ran one back in the day drawing some extra interest when we were one of the first to upgrade from 9600 to a 14.4. Trade Wars was popular. I'll be honest though having to get up at 4:30 in the morning to make sure I could dial in to do maintenance is not something I miss. I'll stick with this new fangled Internet at this point. (At least as long as I can have GWJ)

In this thread, LiquidMantis talks about starting up a BBS with games:
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/4...

But there was a problem with too many Ferengi in TW and none of us knew what to do about it.

krev82 wrote:

Interest check; GWJ(have to check the details of this with the bosses if there is interest) telnetable bbs, hosted on Amazon EC2 or some such?

Given the right games, I'd play. =)

Also, I want to download porn at 2400 baud modem speeds, just for old times sake.

I knew a guy back in Bloomington, IL who ran a BBS on his TRS-80, which he had hacked to have 2 1.44MB floppy drives in it. It was discussion-groups only, for obvious reasons.

krev82 wrote:

Interest check; GWJ(have to check the details of this with the bosses if there is interest) telnetable bbs, hosted on Amazon EC2 or some such?

edit; Though any door games with inter-bbs competitions would probably be null these days as the other telnetable BBS's don't look to have much activity and I'm not sure if they bother interacting with each other at all.

If somehow this could be created I would play religiously as well as donate *large amounts of money.

*large = moderate

I'd play.