Tag: door games
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The mystery of the Solar Realms Elite title screen
In my recent series ANSI art and webcomics, I debunked a false assertion that began in a history book and propagated across the web. Now it’s time to solve the mystery of an old ANSI art screen that I helped propagate across the web 20 years ago. Allow me to explain — but first, let’s…
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The many ANSI title screens of Barren Realms Elite (BRE)
If you’ve played Barren Realms Elite at any time in the past quarter-century, you probably have seen this spiffy ANSI title screen: That’s because — like most classic BBS door games — BRE became more or less “frozen in amber” in the late 1990s after BRE’s creator, Mehul Patel, sold the rights to the game…
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Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 5: Point and click
This is the fifth part of a multi-part series. Thirty hours into his “world tour,” Jon Clarke was discombobulated. His business trip had begun on July 19, 1991, with a scary false alarm: during takeoff from his hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, the oxygen masks had suddenly deployed. He spent much of the rest of…
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Jon Radoff’s BBS-related correspondence
Yesterday entrepreneur and tech pioneer Jon Radoff shared on Facebook a letter he found from a former player of his early internet game Legends of Future Past. I asked him if might have similar letters related to his earlier Atari ST BBS door games, Space Empire Elite and Final Frontier. Today he found some and…
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Paul Witte and Herb Flower, creators of Thieves’ Guild
Paul Witte and Herb Flower were friends who collaborated from 1988-93 to create the BBS door game Thieves’ Guild and its graphical front-end client for the Atari ST under the “Mythyn Software” banner. Flower went on to found the Rewolf Entertainment studio, which produced Gunman Chronicles. Witte and Flower teamed up again in 2001 as…
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I completed my 7-year quest to play Thieves’ Guild
The sky is clear, the breeze is strong. A perfect day to make the long sea voyage to Mythyn. You prepare your galley, hire a crew of sailors, and cast off. But a few hours into your trip, the dreaded words appear: “Thou seest rippling waters…” Sea serpent? Giant squid? Something’s out there, and it’s…
