So most BBS doors were limited to "turn based" games where you play after somebody else (your turn, like RISK) unless you had MajorBBS which had low-latency fast action battlefields like Flash Attack. And only OS/2 had any concept of prioritizing the CPU.
#PIMP BBS DOOR GAMES WINDOWS#
Windows did not have any multitasking capability yet. Multitasking > 2 phone lines was rare because fast PCs could barely multitask 2 modems with DESQView or OS/2. Watching the keystrokes and edits unfold, it's more compelling, and MajorBBS deserves credit for that unique multiuser experience which required specialized hardware. Line by line (IRC style) is less personal by comparison. In one way, Internet chats haven't caught on to what we had in 1989, which was seeing every keystroke from everyone simultaneously in separate panels. In retrospect, if I had kids, I wouldn't want them involved in that, because some of those BBS people were questionably creepy. My little bro went to a couple of those GTs. Like my old TW2002 opponent, we're still in touch. But chat in general was the community thing, along with a few of the door games. In my opinion, the split-screen chat really brought people together. In Florida the MajorBBS scene called them GTs. I'm not sure if this is something we can recapture, but I hope it gets a bit of historical footnote somewhere. I telnetted into the and it was a nice brief bit of nostalgia. Then Gopher, WWW, and Usenet came along and the BBSes vanished as everyone rushed to build web sites and post comments for all the world to see. I fled to some other locals-only BBSes, but things were dying. My posts got lost-or worse, I once got the notice of some sysadmin in another state who didn't like my politics or my language and demanded my local sysadmin deactivate my account. Our little conversations of 5-10 people suddenly exploded into hundreds. Suddenly, all by favorite BBS boards were synchronizing their posts with other BBSes across the country. I don't know how I would have gotten to know people in that strange place without it. When I got to college, the BBS scene instantly created a whole new set of friends for me. It was always such a shock to see how someone differed from the way you imagined them to look. I went to BBS parties and hung out with the people-behind-the-handles in real life. The games were a fun way to waste some time, uploading games for credits in bytes you could download, but the conversations were the best part. When I was in middle school, the BBSes were my social group. It was sort of halfway between local BBS and I think I agree that it's the localness of the BBSes that made them so special for me. There was a sort of "liminal" phase of the internet that I've never seen anyone even mention in these types of articles, as well: the "Freenet" era ( ). I remember that BSSs used to have "picnics" and stuff where everyone met up in real life (I couldn't go because I was too young, but I still appreciated the sense of community that grew around those.) I know some of it must be simply rosy-goggled nostalgia, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something material that made the BBS experience awesome that didn't quite translate over to the "internet" as we know it today. In all the years of gaming and "internet"-ing since then, there is something intangible about the experience BBS systems and these types of games provided that hasn't been achieved since.
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