Trade Wars 2002

I am rewriting the game for modern UI inside of my web app for monitoring github repos over time. I would love to see any original source code from anyone to generate the mapping of the game functions, assets and flow. I used to spend thousands of hours on this game when I was a kid. The 90's were so much fun for me. Graduated in 97 and went off to the military and never was able to get a BBS going long enough to manage one again. Hit me up if you have the code or og elements and can share them openly. go.zippyview.com is where I am going to be hiding the portal to enter the game.... -Zippy

Because of this game I dumped 10's of thousands into BBS software! And ended up purchasing the game to run on a Major. Still have all the programs with codes that are legit for 2 systems. MajorMUD was more of a fav, than TW. Some day us dinosaurs will be all gone.

I remember the hours I use to play this game it was awesome.

If your looking to play - we have multiple games online and running right now!

TELNET: bbs.thenexusbbs.com:23
WWW: http://www.thenexusbbs.com

TWGS server is online, MajorBBS TW2002 game online and DOOR version online. Hope to see you soon!

My favorite BBS door game back in the day!

I would wish to see Joe D's Trade Wars rewrite released as well; it was respectful of the original and much fun to play every time the universe was regenerated.

I thought VGA Planets was similar to this game back in the BBS time period of the 1990's.Legend of the Red Dragon was a cool game to play, especially against people from all over your state or province.

...The original Trade Wars was written by Chris Sherrick for his PTL BBS back in 1985. It was ported from BASIC to Turdo Pascrap 3.0(*) by Lord Darkseid and Omega Man in late 1986, with some debugging help from Supreme Dalek, -cc, BoB tEcH and Max Pendragon, all under the condition that we release the final code as freeware. This resulted in several versions popping up for other BBS platforms, only one of which did not violate Chris Sherrick's request that the game not be sold. TW2002 was one of these, and the first few versions even retained some of Omega Man's subtle jokes, such as Earth being protected by a "Mr. Kent of Metropolis" and the "Rag Tag Fleet" encounter. So yeah, in a nutshell these bozos swiped the WWIV version and made money off of it. Filthy lucre, actually.

...The one exception was the total rewrite Joe Dimaggio did for his Binkley's Closet BBS. The code was rewritten from scratch, but using the same core routines, and could either run as a "door" or a "chain", depending on what BBS platform you were running. Joe also wrote a random map generator, and added this "wormhole" feature where you could wind up in a pocket universe until you figured out how to get back through the hole and return to the normal universe. The map generator was also tweaked to allow for trade and high profits while in the pocket universe, but once you exhausted a world's products they did not regenerate. Ergo, if you couldn't find your way back out, things got boring really quick.

...I may have a copy of Joe's code around here - it could be played as a stand-alone program as well as a BBS door/chain - but after seeing how the LD/OM code was outright stolen, he wisely chose not to release his much better version. Can't blame him by one iota, either.

Every space based game I ever played was just a poor shadow of the magic that was TW2002!

Debbie Does Rigel... still makes me laugh!

We love Trade Wars 2002, and with TWGS there is a new following of people who play it. There are many places you can find, just search with google for TradeWars 2002 Server, or head over to http://www.tradewars2002.org

Decent game, sort of a primitive version of "Master of Orion"