Almost all of the BBS software and door games I programmed when I was a kid have been lost to time. It was just one of those things when I was growing up I never really thought about keeping, especially as Bulletin Board Systems gave way to regular internet access and the world wide web. They were not particularly innovative; mostly drop-file powered text RPGs and MUDs. I mean, I was only 13, so it was a lot of learning through trial and error. Over time, a lost floppy here, a bad hard drive there, through years they were just sort of forgotten until I got old enough to feel the nostalgia bug bite.
I’ve now come across a title in my retro PC software collection that is causing me a bit of a collector’s conundrum. “The Ultimate Gameware Collection” is a shareware CD-Rom collection from 1994. Right at the end of the BBS era there were a few of these collections were made for a SysOp to beef-up downloads sections on boards by opening access to the disc in a CD-Rom drive. This was one such title.
I collect these old shareware compilations in my game collection, I usually only snag them if they are sealed because it’s incredibly rare to find them that way.
This one has been sealed for almost 30 years. However, I noticed something on the back description text: 450 BBS door games are included as a bonus on the disc.
This was published in 1994, which means the compilation work likely was done in 93-94 at the tail end of the BBS era. The exact years I was actively pushing my games over BBS networks and getting the occasional door registration check in the mail.
450 is a lot of doors, so now I’m wondering what the odds are that one of my “lost” games is sitting on this disc in a sealed box. Probably not, but it could be.
I don’t want to open it, but my curiosity grows. Seems like only a few of this title have come up for sale in the past 20 years, none of them were sealed; except for this one I snagged.
The titles I wrote as a kid that I can recall off the top of my head are:
- “Legendary Quest of Heroes” – Fantasy LoRD-esque RPG Door Game (Would be fair to call it a LoRD clone)
- “Castle Conquest” – Medieval Siege Simulation Door Game
- “Shadow Wolf’s Fortune Tarot” – 3x, 5x, and Full-Spread Tarot Reader Door
- “Dungeon Delvers” – Limited ANSI First-Person Fantasy RPG with Turn-Based Combat
- “Commex” – Space Exploration Simulation/Sci-fi RPG Door Game (This also had a graphical DOS game shooter version I made and recycled the title)
Followup —
Conundrum solved! Directory index and downloadable zip dump of this shareware collection located on the internet at the CD.TEXTFILES website. Unfortunately, none of my BBS Door games are in that particularly collection, so the search continues!