ANSI art from the title screen of TradeWars 2002

Screenshot from Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD)

The BBS software starts the external program, and the door system passes data back and forth between the door program, the BBS, and the remote user. To supply the door program with the user's information (such as the user's alias and the amount of time they had spent online), the BBS software creates a dropfile containing information for the program to read. A few door programs including Front Line operated the opposite way, as Front Doors, answering the modem and then giving control to the BBS software. This method was particularly commonplace for hubs of networks.

FOSSIL was a popular communications hardware/software interface standard used by MS-DOS compatible BBS software and door programs which has helped these legacy programs remain compatible with modern communications technologies such as Telnet and Rlogin.

While many of the most popular and memorable BBS doors have been games, numerous doors had non-entertainment applications such as user polls or the time bank, permitting users to time-shift their rationed BBS use. Frequently they would act as a front-end to themed databases on subject such as astrology, numerology and fortune-telling, recipes, weather prediction, personal ads (sometimes with additional match-making functionality), classified ads and "for sale" listings (sometimes permitting auctions), BBS lists and parting comments from the most recent BBS callers.

Prodoor provided a different message editor for use with the PCBoard messagebase. Many doors including Markmail and Qmail provided QWK functionality for convenient use with offline readers. Sysops who were away from the BBS computer sometimes called in and used DOORWAY by Marshall Dudley, which could run many DOS programs by modem, including file managers, DOS prompt, and the specialized editing programs that administered the BBS. DOORWAY could also be utilized to safely (no drop to dos or diskwrites) make certain text mode dos games playable by bbs users using various command line switches.

Door Games

• Barren Realms Elite (BRE)
• Dope Wars
• Falcon's Eye
• Food Fight
• GWAR
• Kannons and Katapults
• Land of Devastation (LOD)
• Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD)
• PimpWars

• The Pit
• Planets: The Exploration of Space
• Rule the Seashttp://v3.ruletheseas.com/index.php?r=148
• Solar Realms Elite (SRE)
• Space Dynasty
• Swords of Chaos
• TradeWars 2002 (tradewars game server is still used by non bbs users to play online)
• Usurper
• Yankee Trader

External links

• BBS Archives - Huge collection of BBS Doors and related files
• BBSFiles.com - BBS Files, Door Games, Utilities & Forums available