ldt025: The Best Days I've Ever Spent Were Those Playing LORD and EXTILUS
#025 - [ The Best Days I've Ever Spent Were Those Playing LORD and EXTILUS ] [ jvaldez ]
For those of you who are familiar with BBS'ing and BBS'ing awhile back, this will bring great memories and conjure up old stories from the 'good ole bbsin dayz.'
I was 13.
Just a kid.
My friend Miguel called me up..
"Hey Juerge! Guess what man?!@!"
"what?"
"I GOT A COMPUTER!!"
"NO WAY!#$"
"IS IT COOL?!"
"JUST COME OVER AND CHECK IT OUT DUOD"
And so I ran out, grabbed my bicycle and pedaled like there was something evil after me and I had to make an escape. Imagine that, a computer! A personal PC! Wow! The games we could play! The things we could do with a computer. As soon as I got to the house, I was greeted at the door by Miguel, with a huge grin on his face. Not only had he gotten a computer, it was in his room! Our 13 year old minds ran amuck with the things we could do, especially now that we knew there would be no parental supervision to get in the way. It was the most amazing machine we had seen yet. So much better than those old 386s we were used to.. we were in the game now because he had the super 486 dx/66 ! One of the best machines out there in our own opinions (for the times anyway.)
We quickly got on Prodigy, and the text based prodigy viewer just looked like dump. All sorts of ugly colors, teal, nasty purple and a very bright green. Prodigy was neat though, but AOL was cool too. We looked at all of the services and decided to continue tinkering. We tried installing a game but we ran across problems. For the life of us we couldn't figure out why this stupid game wouldn't load. So we checked out the box for numbers to call for technical help. When all the area codes came up in CA, FL, and NY, Miguel said to me, "We can't call these numbers, if my parents see a long distance charge, they'll flip!" Sadly enough, I agreed with him and his situation and gave the box back to him with a not-so-satisfied look on my face. Then out of no where, his face brightened up and he almost yelled "WAIT!! They have a BBS line! I don't think those charge long distance!!" (13 year old logic, sue us.) I happily agreed not knowing any better, but I thought to myself, what is a BBS? Suddenly Miguel said "I've heard about these things, they are like electronic bulletin boards and you can post messages and play games and stuff." Weird how he predicted my questioning, but we were after all best friends. So he typed in the number, and pressed connect on our win 3.1 hyper terminal program, and away we went.
next thing we see is:
CONNECTION AT 2400 BPS
WELCOME TO THE SIERRA ONLINE BBS SYSTEM
"Awesome du0d."
"I know..."
From that very day, we started checking *all* the computer boxes for BBS's and then we got a list from prodigy or aol that had our areas bbs's on it. We, like many, were instantly addicted.
During that year I also got a computer, but the weaker 486 sx33mhz. Fortunately I did have a 2400 bps modem and a lot of time on my hands. So I started BBS'ing regularly at all the local bbs'es. I found something very neat about BBS's (No not the porn or the warez) and they were called "Door Games."
By selecting the Door Games option you could choose from usually a variety of games. I checked out most of the games but I started to really enjoy LORDS (Legend of the Red Dragon by Seth Able) It was a quirky adventure game with lots of interesting addons. Everything was so neat because doing things had effects towards the end of the game too. Ultimately, you were to dick around the entire game trying to get a wife some kids and as many player kills as you could. Problem was, players could kill you while you were sleeping, so to combat this, I would play at 11:57 PM and then again at 12:01 AM to satisfy my cravings.
From here I found extilus, an awesome game somewhat like LORDS but more entertaining. This game was just hilarious and I soon became *very* addicted. I'm not kidding when I say addicted because my grades started to lack in school and I started to care less about personal hygiene (sad but true!) An addiction is an addiction.
Everyday was all about BBS'es getting on the computer and not caring about anything else but them.
That's when my father pulled the chord.
I don't hate him for the decision or anything, I was pretty bad about it all..
But man, those were still some great times in my life even if they were spent infront of a monitor..
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[jvaldez - "gamurai is really neat, he is filled with turtle meat, gamurai! gamurai!"]
[jvaldez@hushmail.com - don't let your mom know about me ]
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Long Dark Tunnel 2001. - http://ldt.aguk.co.uk - ldt@hushmail.com
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