Notices by vga256 (vga256@dialup.cafe)

just found a treasure trove of extremely obscure BBS history stashed away on IA

thank you hard-working book scanners for preserving this rarity.

if you're familiar with BBSing in the 90s, you'll remember just how fast the vast majority of boards disappeared in 1995. it went from multinode 24/7 bbses to disconnected phone numbers in just a few months

this book accounts for the very small number of BBSes that made the transition from telco-only to "telBBS" or telnettable/web-accessible boards

3/4 of the book is a carefully curated list of 500 boards with screenshots of their homepages and bbs login/title screens. most importantly, the URLs of these boards is preserved so we have a chance to look them up on WBM some day.

#bbs #webHistory #smallweb #books

and of course, the renowned Software Creations BBS, home of many shareware game publishers like 3d realms, apogee and id software

#doom #dosgaming

it is safe to say that 90% of my taste in computer games is thanks to the original abandonware site Home of the Underdogs. every few months i’d make it a point to download one of their Top Dog awarded games, and all of them lived up to it.

in particular, westwood/infocom’s Mines of Titan always interested me. it never quite fit into infocom’s IF catalog, and it predated the much more popular Eye of the Beholder. i always avoided it because it looked like just another dungeon crawler.

as it turns out, Mines of Titan is far closer to Wasteland or Neuromancer than any other game. part text adventure, part rpg, it evokes a surprisingly unique world that easily fits in a philip k dick styled universe.

today, the box arrived after two decades of looking for one. per infocom’s exceptional marketing company, the browsies included in the box are wonderful - official letterheads and employee bulletins from mars corporations.

#infocom #dosgaming #gamePreservation

i just stumbled upon Sheri Graner Ray's old livejournal entries that document some of the days in which she worked at Origin Systems in the 90s. some of the anecdotes are gold... this one, from the Ultima VII development period:

“Spark... the little boy in Trinisic who follows you around in the beginning of Ultima VII was written by Raymond Benson and based on his son. The idea was cute, but the character got annoying really fast.. particularly for the testers. They would regularly dress him in a dress and then starve him to death until he became a ghost following you around."

http://sherigranerray.com/?p=10

#ultima #dosGaming #retroGaming

Manhunter: San Francisco is one of the least talked about sierra online adventures, and one of the most interesting in terms of EGA artwork

deedee murry's backgrounds are consistently drawn to one-point and two-point perspective, and take advantage of the full range of the 16 colour palette. she turns what would be an otherwise dreary dystopian futuristic SF into a colourful, playful set of streets and alleys.

#adventuregame #sierra #DigitalArt #dosgaming

TIL La Abadia Del Crimen got a 256 colour remake several years ago under the name "The Abbey of Crime Extensum", and the animation and pixel art is *gorgeous*

the controls have been modernized a bit, and it's a joy to explore.

free download and/or steam link here:
https://www.abadiadelcrimenextensum.com/en/the-game-2/

#retroGaming