Albert Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 A long time ago, back in the mid-1980s, I ran an Atari 8-bit BBS by the name of Phantasmal Alchemy. The BBS started rather humbly, but eventually grew to encompass a large assortment of 8-bit hardware, including two 20MB hard drives. Which, for Atari 8-bit stuff was pretty much infinite storage back then. The BBS was quite popular in Southeastern Connecticut, and I met many people through the BBS that I am still friends with to this day. I had to take the system down when I went off to college in 1988, but I did put Phantasmal Alchemy back online several years later, as a two-line system running Remote Access on various and sundry PC hardware. Sadly I have virtually nothing of the original Phantasmal Alchemy site in terms of hardware and software. However, I did manage to make printouts of the board's various intro screens, which were displayed as soon as you connected. These were original ATASCII creations, and I made quite a bit of ATASCII art and animations back then. These are the only ones that have survived. I may have to recreate these in an ATASCII editor someday. Without further ado, here they are: The first one did not print properly and is missing a row, and you can see that this paper was hole punched at one point. My favorite is the one with the flask. Oh yeah, one of the intro screens has the system's phone number, which was not an accident. ..Al 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorclu Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 Wow.. that was beautiful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesmooth Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 Holy crap - that brings back some memories Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 Albert, Here is the Intro Screen to your BBS game Robowar... Great ATASCII intro... great BBS game... didn't it give rise to the company name "Ion Storm"? ROBOINTR.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted January 29, 2006 Author Share Posted January 29, 2006 Albert, Here is the Intro Screen to your BBS game Robowar... Awesome, I haven't seen that in a while, thanks for digging it up. Would be cool to play it again on an 8-bit. Great ATASCII intro... great BBS game... didn't it give rise to the company name "Ion Storm"? 1008702[/snapback] No, there's no relation at all, although I did work at Ion Storm. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krupkaj Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 wow that's cool. I remember only ST bbs, But your 8bit screens with ATASCII are awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari Smeghead Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 Oh yeah! That sure takes me back. It's cool that you kept those. I did some digging, to see what Atari BBS stuff I still have. My BBS didn't have ATASCII stuff, since I ran a writing board, and most of my userlog was filled with non-Ataris. This might be a bit off topic, but I found an old article I wrote somewhere around 1986 or 87. I won't print it in it's entirety, but ya might laugh at the times: It was called "End of an Era" and I was bemoaning the death of the 300 baud modem: But I still say that 300 baud has it's advantages. 300 bps is theperfect reading speed, which, to me, is the main reason why bulletin boards are as popular as they are today. Reading messages, text files, etc. It scrolls by at a near perfect speed. I don't know of anyone that can read at 1200 bps! I know of people who have tried, however. And they rely greatly on the pause function. There was a time, back in 1977, when 110 baud was the norm and 300 was considered fast. And someday in the future, 2400 will be the norm and 1200 will be obsolete. Yes, times have to change, I know that. But I honestly think that I will always prefer 300 baud when calling BBSs. I'll be the last one, 'crawling' along in my Studebaker, while everybody else zips on by with their Ferraris, you can count on that. Viva La 300! Was I a nut back then, or what? Thanks again for the ATASCII blast! Smeg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 Albert, Here is the Intro Screen to your BBS game Robowar... Awesome, I haven't seen that in a while, thanks for digging it up. Would be cool to play it again on an 8-bit. It would be cool to have a plugin for the AtariAge website like the blog or gallery where you could play something like Robowar... then other people could battle your Robot... anyway, it would be cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almost Rice Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 It would be cool to have a plugin for the AtariAge website like the blog or gallery where you could play something like Robowar... then other people could battle your Robot... anyway, it would be cool! 1009022[/snapback] My favorites were Empire and the Star Trek one where you command you own starship against other players on the board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unzerpum Posted January 31, 2006 Share Posted January 31, 2006 Ahhhh... Phantasmal Alchemy and CASE. Damn, I haven't seen those screens in years. Those were the days. Whatever happened to the SysOp, anyway? Fun trivia fact: the programming team for RoboWar II went on to become 2/3rds of the programming team for Deus Ex... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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