This is the third installment in my series “A different way to play” about front-end clients for BBS door games.
OOIITERM (also called “Overkill Ansiterm”) was a front-end for Operation Overkill II. Its purpose was to render the game’s interface instantly for users who had slow modems. It also offered optional SoundBlaster sound effects.
This is the second installment in my series “A different way to play” about front-end clients for BBS door games.
A session of “The Pit” as seen in PitTerm.
James Berry’s The Pit was an action game in which players could fight each other in gladiatorial combat. In the normal ANSI version of the game, the player character and his opponent are each represented onscreen by the symbol Ω, the Greek letter omega, which some players remember today as “the little horseshoe”. The player moves this symbol around the arena using the arrow keys, engaging in close or long-range combat as desired.
This is the first installment in my series “A different way to play” about front-end clients for BBS door games.
Silent. Simple. Social. I suspect that’s how many people remember BBS door games.
In our memories, we recall quaint multiplayer, turn-based, text games. They lacked sophisticated graphics, music, and sound effects — significant flaws for most people. What made these games special for most of us were the social interactions they fostered, which was their primary advantage and marketable difference over video games of the 1980s and 90s.
It’s those “flaws” that I’d like to dig deep and consider today. How did the limitations of BBS technology shape door games? How did door game authors work around those limitations?
A screenshot of ANSIterm running in the Hatari emulator.
I’ve written in the past about my adventures telnetting to BBSes from terminal programs running inside the Hatari emulator. I’ve made some changes in my process and I thought it would be good to explain everything, step-by-step. It’s not for the novice, but it is rewarding.
I discovered tonight that Slack’s API documentation has a page which uses a list of BBS door games as an example of how to create option fields.
Pretty wild. I would love to know who was responsible for that. Whoever you are, my hat’s off to you!
Screenshot of Slack API example that includes list of BBS door games.
Gary Martin created TradeWars 2002, “the granddaddy of all BBS games” which has been played by tens of thousands of enthusiasts around the world.
Gary Martin
In this interview, Martin discusses rocking the University of Kansas campus as a DJ, founding Martech Software, and running one of the biggest bulletin board systems. He also describes two tantalizing projects that never came to fruition: “TradeWars 2112” and “Draconis”.
