BBS (and Text Adventure) Documentaries

Those of us over the age of (let's say) 24 may have possibly enjoyed the fun of the online world before the Internet become prevalent... the world of the BBS.  A super-brief history of the Bulletin Board System universe follows:

Back when MODEMS were the rage (not those things the phone company now CALL modems, the devices used to connect to DSL services), people like you and I could setup a computer at home with some software and allow others to dial into it.  They could leave messages in public forums, private emails, play games (one player at a time originally) and eventually chat with other users when some people would install more phone lines to the same computer.

Later, bigger BBS systems, with multiple phone lines, and advanced software that actually allowed these multiple users to interact with each other in games and teleconferences, started to emerge.  Some of them later connected to OTHER BBS systems for a few hours at a time, allowing users from all over the city/nation/world to chat and play games.   Then of course some of these systems started connecting to the Internet.  I ran one that was pretty successful for many years here in Volusia County called Orbiter Online, which is now a webhost for various schools and not-for-profit entities such as the Lakeside Jazz Festival here in Port Orange, Florida.

Eventually, the internet all but completely replaced these "dialup" systems (while some of them completely migrated to internet "portals").  The BBS (including the term itself) is pretty much gone now.  But the people behind TextFiles.com came up with the idea to do a documentary on BBS history.  I purchased this DVD set and was very happy with it.  I'd highly suggest it to anyone interested in the history of home-brew dialup services and the unique history (including ASCII and ANSI art, the many communities that emerged from the BBS scene, many forms of music and other media that could only have come from those of us who grew up this originally "geeks only" world, and much more.

Now, I see that they're coming up with a new documentary on the original "RPG", the original "adventure games", the one and only TEXT ADVENTURES.  If the titles Zork, Suspended, Adventure, Dungeon, or even things like Dungeons and Dragons don't ring a bell, you may not find an interest here.  But these are the types of games that required true imagination and the ability to hit more than a couple buttons on a pad to run around a virtual environment and battle monsters.  I'm really looking forward to this new documentary.  I love a good game of Halo (I/II/III/ODST) and most recently Mass Effect (I/II), but I still occasionally pull out Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy or Suspended, or even "Begin" (a simplistic "Star Trek" based battle simulator using simple ASCII "graphics") to get a feel for "original gaming".  :-)   The name of the documentary is, amusingly enough, "Get Lamp".