Who can forget an encounter with the Ferengi? Flirting with Violet the barmaid? Nuking a neighboring empire?
TradeWars 2002. Legend of the Red Dragon. Solar Realms Elite. Classic games that were played once upon a time on dialup bulletin board systems.
I enjoyed playing BBS door games as a young teen from around 1992 until 1998. I didn't know this at the time, but I had begun BBSing at the peak of the scene's popularity, and it would quickly die out.
Years later, I helped create some Wikipedia articles about several games I loved and remembered. Unfortunately, today these articles are threatened with deletion. The articles' subjects have been deemed non-notable, because of a dearth of quality sources discussing the individual games.
The reason for this seems obvious. This particular genre of games remains greatly under-researched by historians and academics, compared with similar areas of technology history. For example, consider how in recent years interactive fiction has become the subject of a documentary film and written up in academic articles and books.
I believe eventually academia will come around to giving BBS door games the scrutiny and research they deserve. But it probably will not happen before Wikipedia deletes the endangered articles. I have decided to fork all of Wikipedia's BBS door game-related articles onto my own wiki, so that those bits of history which have already been written could remain easily findable on the web.
It is my hope to expand these articles over time and add new articles as well. I welcome any contributions that other interested folks might be willing to make.
Here are my guiding principles:
Can you help find old interviews that will shed light on BBS door games? Do you have a collection of Boardwatch magazines with relevant articles? Are you a researcher who has investigated this genre? Share your knowledge!
--Josh Renaud