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  For the last 25 years, Barren Realms Elite (BRE) has been frozen in amber, with the same ANSI title screen. But it was preceded by _lots_ of other designs from 1992-97. I put together a gallery of 14 of these forgotten screens: https://breakintochat.com/blog/2026/05/02/the-many-ansi-title-screens-of-barren-realms-elite/ I hope you'll enjoy revisiting the changing looks of a classic BBS door game. #bbs #retrocomputing #retrogaming #InternetHistory #history #vintagecomputing #ansiar...

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  @jgamble Thanks for the feedback! My newspaper ran Mallard Fillmore for many years (presumably for "balance"), and my main feeling was just that it was never that funny. But to me there's no question that Lokke's writing was rougher and clumsier than that in Mallard Fillmore.

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  Still, political ANSI art was more of an exception in the early 1990s. PD artists were more likely to be inspired by pop culture or the theme of a particular BBS. When the 1992 presidential election came around, not many PD ANSI artists depicted candidates or key moments. St. Louis-based Dave Hartmann was one of the few. Here are a couple fun screens he drew. (2/x) https://breakintochat.com/blog/2026/03/25/don-lokke-and-mack-the-mouse/ #ansiart #bbs #textmode #art #pixelart #politics #histo...

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  💾 🐭 💬 A #retrocomputing #longreads recommendation for your Sunday: In 1992, a year before the Web opened to the public, Texas entrepreneur Don Lokke was trying to syndicate weekly political cartoons to bulletin board systems. His "telecomics," as he called them, represent an overlooked early experiment in online comics, and a window into an interesting moment in American politics. https://breakintochat.com/blog/2026/03/25/don-lokke-and-mack-the-mouse/ #textmode #ansiar...

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  If you're looking for some #retrocomputing #AprilFools fun, head over to Dark Force BBS right now! Just telnet to darkforce-bbs.dyndns.org, and use port 1040. DarkLord resurrected his fun setup from last year, which I chronicled on Break Into Chat here: https://breakintochat.com/blog/2025/04/02/april-fools-day-prank-on-dark-force-bbs/ #atari #atarist #bbs #vintagecomputing

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  This profile was deeply reported, the result of countless hours of research. Stolen hours, really. I don't know of too many other people doing this level of in-depth work on little-known retrocomputing topics. I publish all of my work on Break Into Chat for free — I've never charged a penny! If you enjoy my writing, the greatest way you could show support is signal-boosting. Please share/repost!

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  Lokke began publishing his "telecomics" at the height of the 1992 presidential election. He used them to channel the skepticism and anger felt by everyday Americans about broken political promises and the looming economic recession. He would go on to draw nearly 300 telecomics by 1995. They were forgotten and mostly lost until decades later when I recovered more than 140 of them. https://breakintochat.com/blog/2026/03/25/don-lokke-and-mack-the-mouse/ #retrocomputing #comics #webcom...

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  Rowan Lipkovits' (@mistfunk) description of my Lokke profile as "an interesting look at an ultimately doomed venture" got me thinking. *Many* of the BBS-related histories I've written over the years on https://breakintochat.com/blog are tragic in that way! Projects that started with big ambitions, but were doomed to fail.

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  In the early 1990s, as BBSes turned into businesses, some sysops and developers started making real money. Could ANSI artists and publishers do the same? https://breakintochat.com/blog/2026/03/16/business-of-bbsing-ansi-art-and-webcomics-part-4/ Part 4 of my series "ANSI art and webcomics" is here! #retrocomputing #ansiart #textmode #ansi #bbs #bbsing #computerhistory #history #mastoart #comics #digipres

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  Pour one out for Angelfire. www.lycos.com