BBS number 2. Now I think I will go over and over the idea that this BBS, T.I.T.O.R.S. is maybe just Imperial City BBS beta. There is some blur time around what happened with what BBS. Especially around whether I had already upgraded my modem from 1200 baud to something faster, or if The Temple was opened because I got a new faster modem, and then converted to Imperial City due to the idea of Star Wars being cooler.

Yeah, this was around early 1993, so yeah Star Wars was kind of cool and under the radar back then. That feels like a weird statement, but it was the case for a while. I remember seeing the Heir to the Empire book at Waldenbooks and losing my mind that something new to the 90s and Star Wars even existed. So it could be a logical step up from BBS number two, The Inbred Temple of Rough Sex. Or Inbreed, depending on which ANSI you looked at.

T.i.T.0.r.S. for short, was a weird BBS. Take it this way the run of this BBS is during my age fourteen and fifteen years, I think the name was intended to be as wild as possible. There was also a very non-caring attitude over the state of this BBS. I can remember both Chris M. and Marty always noticing say, the Inbred, Inbreed consistency with the name. But that was kind of the point, this version of the BBS was sort of just a fun I don’t care moment in the BBS life.

The warez stuff, I didn’t care about. I had files online but I wasn’t actively caring what they were, I think this was the first BBS to host 18 and over pictures. Which is funny considering no one running it was that old. It also may be where Jake started to get into describing the images in the file base, which would become his official job by Deathrow BBS. No, nothing serious here, just a hot mess of a temple to early teen stupidity online.

Oddly what stands out most about the BBS in my mind is the welcome, and or menu, and or title screen the BBS had. It was this mess of an ANSI made of every color available, unaligned letters and flashing effects. It was the antithesis of what everyone was doing with their slick ANSIs back then. It was sort of the hot mess beacon on the strange BBS.

Oddly as I recreated what I could to the best of my memory for this section of the website, I remembered that TiT0rs also had the sysOp chat message, “Trouzers will pants you now”, Trouz still being my online handle for the moment. I am about 90 percent sure that line was writing by Doug. Once I remember that, some very faint memories started rolling back into my head.

I think Doug at least partial is to be credited with the original logo for the BBS. Possibly the whole thing, but I think I added the “temple” image to the top or bottom of his lettering. But the multi-colored lettering was the highlight of the image, and I think I can remember him going over how this letter had to be big and flashing, thus leading to the abomination that was the TiT0rs welcome screen. He embraced the not caring attitude the BBS was going to have over its small lifetime.

Of course that is the next issue, is that it was a small lifetime.

I think TiT0rs existed as something to have up while bigger plans were made. The “doug bbs” plans I think were a big part of that. While oddly a lot of social things I remember might have happened while this board was running, since TiT0rs may cover the BBS summer. It also is the most forgettable detail wise.

But more than likely, this was the BBS is started Kim on and is being referenced in her letters. This was the BBS that was running when we had the summer parties during 1993. This was the BBS that I had active while Doug was having me help him make his own BBS door game. (Referenced as BOB on the new BBS business plan).

What I speculate happened for now until I get more knowledge of the past is when Doug’s new super BBS plan failed, and Marty and I got over our Sarlacc dispute, I decided to tighten up TiT0rS ANSIs with some of the neat Star Wars stuff I was getting into thanks to the game X-Wing and later Tie Fighter. And sort of unceremoniously the temple became the city.

It was an interesting answer to Doug’s idea of merging Black Horizons and TiT0rs into a larger BBS. I don’t think there was ever a name given to the project, but it was pretty lofty. It was a attempt to have something big like the two larger multi-line BBSs in town so I know both names would have been dropped for something slicker. Which also may have lead to me thinking of new names.

In the end TiT0rs was always destined to be a vague memory in between the first and then the better BBSs. What’s odd is that it ran during the peak of BBS usage. And although not memorable is probably the BBS everyone used during the four of five years of dominance for these systems. While others I ran were most popular this spanned a more diverse user time and is humorously enough were a lot of sysop chat memories and the like actually come from.

I think the other weird thing about it is, it obviously was running during phases of my life then that I thought I didn’t have a BBS running in the house. Just funny.

Anyway some things Doug’s plan helps with, is that at least by planning phase we are on the 14.4 modem which can be seen by it being listed (14400 R). I also like how much he planned us to lean on Mav’s resources. Everything else seems pretty simple, we do see that Doug calls Chris M. Fuzzy the whole time, and that we have to watch Chris’s account due to Marty. Then there is the weird thing about trench coats being the number one need for this new BBS. That’s not aged well Doug.

Found a sketch for a logo design from that time. The real note is that I wrote "Nothing is Perfect." along side it. This helps re-emphasize that the name and design was some sort of rebellion over whatever it was that Marty and I didn't agree with, with Sarlacc Software. Thus I went out of my way to make it look uncool.

Things I find. Above is a compiled Turbo Pascal program I assume I made for the BBS in class. This becomes very interesting because this means I was still calling the BBS TiT0rs, or in this case TiT0s, into sophomore year after the BBS summer and it has Kim listed as a co-sysop under the name Lucetta which I forgot about. That was a whole thing about how she found it evil sounding and I had forgotten about it for the next handle she used which was Smozy.

Then there is the Master Splooge. I don’t remember using that name at all. For one, I distinctly remember the TiT0rS sysop chat saying “Trouzer’s will pants you now” when ever anyone got pulled into chat. Then on Imperial City I used Senator Palpatine, then thanks to Marty’s BBS essay from high school I seemed to have used LinT before coming to the Penguin handle on Goldfish.

Beyond that I can remember Marty Donald Ducking’ the pronunciation of Master Splooge and not being offended by it. Which makes me think it wasn’t my handle and I have either forgotten some sort of inside joke from 1993 or I left my name off the list and Splooge was Doug, which also makes some sense in the context of what I do remember.

Either way there is an animated gif doing everything the executable file does in DOS.

Okay I am pretty sure it's some inside joke because I found a non-functioning TiT0rs pascal program from the same week and the sysops are listed as Trouz and Lucetta. I feel like Master Splooge than must have been Doug.