A 90’s Manila BBS - Telnet://a90smanilabbs.ddns.net

Entry posted by doctorclu January 12, 2017

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A 90’s Manila BBS
a90smanilabbs.ddns.net

So fitting that the first BBS I logged into was one in the Philippines.

Ran on a Linux ran setup. (Always like the Linux Penguin.)

Ah the title screen. I live for ANSI graphics like this.

Here we have the writing wall. Like on my BBSs if it wasn't for the wall there would be no user activity at all.

So here is the local flavor of the message bases, at least with the new user access:

No messages in them. :/ I left a message in one of them and maybe we'll hear something.

When you request access you'll get an automated message and here was the one I got PM'd from the sysop (system operator). Again, just a automated message everyone would get.

So it was time to check out the game menu. I really only play Legend of the Red Dragon, and usually most other people will play that, Baron Realms Elite, Trade Wars. Again, I just play the Coca-Cola of the Door (or online) games, LORD. This one was fairly active.

So it starts with the news of the day. As you can see, a LOT of activity. I'll have a list of the players and it goes on for three pages. Now either they are all active or the game does not reset the players often or kick them out for inactivity. The game itself has been running without reset for 108 days it said.

And here is the player list:

So you play and play, going into the forest, killing monsters to get gold, gems, to buy better weapons and armor. I have to say, normally on the first play of LORD you can get to the 2nd level. The monsters in this setup of the game are so wimpy the experience points were low and out of the needed 100 points to get to second level, I reached 60 points before my forest fights were exhausted. But at one point you find a field of flowers and you can supposedly grow flowers in a certain pattern to leave a message. Trippy eh? So this is always fun to see what people leave. Some of these messages could be months or years old.

What makes for a fun and chaotic game of LORD are all the door games in the door game. The "Other places". Most don't have extras. It easily unbalances the game.

Ah Barak's House. A most you will walk away with a few gems, maybe SOME money. It is laughable and kinda a waste of time. But it's something.

So I looked at a few other facts before I logged out. How many callers did the BBS get that day?

Huh. Not bad for the last ten callers. Some BBSs might be a call a day if they're lucky.

A little bit about the BBS software...

And finally the closing screen. Love it.

THOUGHTS:

There might be local message activity somewhere on the BBS. I have not found it yet. That is common. What I consider to be a great BBS is one that has it's local community and a local message base that is active.

It is common to have the callers on the networked message bases (FidoNet, DoveNet, etc) that are linked between multiple BBSs. That is fine, but I am looking for great local communities and that continue the story board.

But we see the BBS has loyal callers. And a lot of activity in the LORD game and on the opening message wall.

This is a BBS I'll revisit in about a month and see if anyone replied to my message in the local message area.

-Doctor Clu