Query: BBS games in the late 70s?
(Visited 18415 times) Game talk
Jul 012008
Got this email from T. L. Taylor (author of the excellent Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture):
I’ve checked on Raph’s timeline page (and googled a bunch) but don’t quite see the answer I need. I am writing this (very odd) handbook chapter on the internet & games and in my history section I am actually trying to give a bit of a nod to the old BBS scene. The Door stuff is fairly well documented but what I can’t quite find is if BBS’s in the (late) 1970s also had games you could play. I would assume so but would prefer to know for sure.
Post away if you know anything about this topic! I didn’t log onto a BBS until the mid 80s myself, so I have no idea.
11 Responses to “Query: BBS games in the late 70s?”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I was on bbs’s in 1979-1980. Most did not have doors to games, but I seem to recall that a couple did. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which games.
Alan! Where have you been hiding… quietly lurking on the feed? 🙂
CBBS (the first CP/M bbs software) had some primitive text games as I dimly recall, but that wasn’t the primary draw at all (it’d be split between socialization via message boards and downloading files, the split being dependent on the BBS). Wikipedia is no help but it does put CBBS as being invented in 1978.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBBS
I’m pretty sure any ‘bbs’ before that would be a university system (which of course would have MUDs and what have you)
The Stockholm Computer Central (QZ) had a BBS system (KOM) that was developed in 1978, running under TOPS-10 I believe. It was available to the public through modem and it included some games that could be run from the accounts there.
None of my first BBSes (1981, so a bit later than the timeframe asked about) had games on them — they were strictly bulletin boards for a number of years. It wasn’t until the door games (which I never got into) and then the Galacticomm BBSes that I did more than chat. Now if only I could find an open-source InFiNiTy CoMpLeX…
Later than the 70’s… Sometime around 1985-1986 I added simple CRPG and Risk functionality to by BBS. This was inspired by Eamon, AND another BBS that had multiple modems (5-6?) running a CRPG/MUD; I don’t remember the name, but Richard Bartle described a similar setup in his book… I’d assume that door games became more common in the early 80’s.
Around 1981-82 or so I was a freshman in highschool and we had these typewriter looking computers with scrolls of paper that logged onto something and played very simple MUD type games. On paper! It’s crazy thinking back to it. Just what these “computers” were logging into I have no idea. Could it be called a BBS? I doubt it if you pulled out some technical definition of a BBS.
The first BBS game I can remember playing was The Proving Ground, in 1984.
[…] Raph’s Website » Query: BBS games in the late 70s? he Door stuff is fairly well documented but what I can’t quite find is if BBS’s in the (late) 1970s also had games you could play. I would assume so but would prefer to know for sure. (tags: https://www.raphkoster.com 2008 mes6 dia2 at_tecp BBS games history blog_post) […]
I have a feeling my highschool “computer” in 1981 was using a modem to access a college computer, not a BBS. After sleeping on it, I also realize that the “MUD” I posted about yesterday was a SUD – Single User Dungeon – since I am pretty sure I was the only one logged into it at the time. I don’t remember spending a massive amount of time logging in to BBS games until around 1987ish, although they probably existed before then.
Big thanks everyone for the leads and to Raph for the query post 🙂