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Comment by allenu | Hacker News Reader

I was into BBSes in the early to mid-90s as a teen, but was still pretty cheap, so only purchased a small handful of shareware:

1) Telemate - Probably the best software to call BBSes and download files.

2) Blue Wave (mail reader) - I got hooked on FidoNet, so needed a good mail reader.

3) Legend of the Red Dragon - I ran a BBS too so I absolutely needed this door game. Interestingly enough, reading about how much money the author made got me to write my own BBS door games and I was able to sell a decent number of copies! I really cut my programming teeth on those games I made (in C and C++).

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> 3) Legend of the Red Dragon - I ran a BBS too so I absolutely needed this door game.

My person favourite was TradeWars 2002:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Wars

Still seems to be playable online:

* http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?title=Jumpgate

* http://www.tradewars.com/default.html

I remember TradeWars 2002. I was never into strategy games all that much, but did play a bit of Global War and later Falcon's Eye.

I was surprised to find that several BBS door games are still available for sale, such as Barren Realms Elite:

* https://www.johndaileysoftware.com/products/bbsdoors

Apparently, the above company acquired several BBS door game IPs and continues to make them available today for purchase!

I also stumbled upon one of my own games on archive.org, available to play in the browser (albeit single user only):

* https://archive.org/details/msdos_Enigma_of_Ashrella_The_199...

In my case, I still occasionally have people emailing me for registration codes, but I point them to free codes I published years ago.

LORD was so much fun. I also ran a BBS, first on Wildcat (RIP graphics were amazing), then on RoboFX. Bought all of the above by saving up $2/week allowance.

RoboFX was insane. It was this little-known host that offered a full windowing system using a client that fit on a single disk. It had movable windows, image viewing, messaging, forums, downloads, the works. Truly incredible for the time, but it was released just at the end of the BBS era. Along with BeOS and WebOS, some of the saddest technologies that never caught on.

Thanks for the memories!

Liked Telemate also. Pretty sure it had the ability to script a session. You could create a script and set it to dial in when nobody was on the board, download a file and log off, saving precious time on the board, and the busy signal.

Also liked Telix. Was more simple and like Procomm, but Telemate seemed more extensible.

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