Were you a participant in the old BBS experience? With a Commodore 64?
Boards in our area:
The Motherboard
Alternate Dimensions
The Wilderness
There have to have been at least 10 more that I frequented, but it’s been over 20 years now. Memory is fading. Need to refresh it.
Do I ever! C-64 was my first computer. The first boards I called were Commodore
boards but by then (~1990) they were already in the minority. I remember
springing for terminal software that would put a “pseudo-80 col” font on my
40-column display, and would properly map IBM ascii text to Commodore ascii.
And of course, since all text was formatted to 80 columns, you had to make sure
your LF/CR was set properly. 
Boy, does that font look familiar, Lumpy. Were you in on the QuantumLink thing? Isn’t that the ground floor of AOL?
We had a VIC-20 in 1982 and moved up to the 64 within a year. Got into “modeming” in 84/85. The BBS we first logged onto was a product of some work with the CUG in the area.
How many boards did you have access to?
In the early to mid '90s, the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/ St. Paul and suburbs) area had between fifty and a hundred active boards (all boards, not just Commodore). In fact, that’s how I met my wife- she was the sysop of Warlock’s Castle, and I met her at a meet for users. Warlock’s was a participant in FidoNet for awhile, so you could exchange packets with boards outside the local dialing area.
What I mainly remember about the Commodore boards was that one was an Amiga based board that ran a version of CircleMUD that I devoted a lot of time to. I found ways of munchkining the heck out that game, such as the realization that non-Thieves could steal with impunity if NPCs were under a spell of Sleep. I was probably the richest and best equipped level-10 character who ever played. 
My dad bought a complete Commodore 64 system right before I graduated high school. I found my first BBS by looking in the yellow pages. It was an RBBS board called The Bowling Alley, and they had a list of numbers for every known board in the metro area. I was soon on several boards, including Commodore boards called Half Moon Lake (where I became a SubOp) and The Palace. Eventually I joined Commodore users group that met at the University of New Orleans.
A huge part of my adolescence.
The BBS in the Vancouver area was Blue Hell, sysoped by Beelzebub. (Martin Sikes.) Even if you have never heard of Blue Hell, if you were using a C64-based BBS in the eighties and it didn’t suck, you can thank Martin for that. (His BlueBoard BBS software was easily the most popular Commodore BBS program of the time.)
Martin brought us all together online, and it’s very hard to convey what a charismatic figure he was. We had good times at regular movie nights, back when a movie could be had for $2 of a Tuesday, but it was Martin’s “excursions” that made a lasting impression. Exploring mile-long, pitch-black railway tunnels, travelling via freight train… Real Tom Sawyer stuff.
The Blue Hell crowd were geeks, for sure. The SDMB is the closest thing I’ve ever found to sub for that. Smart, funny people.
Sometimes I think that memory must play tricks, because we were teenagers, and no teens could be as clever and sharp as I remember those folks being. The only record that exists of our postings is an archive of Cutthroats & Trenchcoats and part two of same - a collaborative fiction type thing. (I’m “Thomas Covenant.” Yeah, I know.) Anyway, rereading that from time to time still gives me a wheeze.
I saw most of those folks again at the beginning of 2008, at Martin’s memorial service. (He died suddenly in a senseless accident over the holidays). It was incredible. As his obituary said, “communities would grow up around him.” The eulogies, then, were each representative of the various communities. Here’s one that speaks to the BBS nerds.. If you ever used a Blue Board, give it a look – it’s worth knowing a little about its creator.
I remember spending $275 for my first external 2400 baud modem. Man that thing was FAST!!!
I ran a board of my own for several years. It was actually listed in Playboy magazine as one of the few board with adult content in Arkansas.
And the door games…
Legend of the Red Dragon
VGA Planets, not truly a door, but still a classic
Tradewars 2002
Whorehouse
Someone help me out here, I’m drawing too many blanks.
I had a Commodore 64 but I can’t remember bulleting boards. All I remember are the crappy games.
I can’t believe this. It’s like you read my mind. I’ve been meaning to make this post for a long time.
I grew up in Phoenix in the mid to late 80s with TUBBS: The Unknown Bulletin Board System.
It’s amazing to me how much bulletin boards were hints of what the internet would later become.
I don’t remember enough about it…I was hoping to make a post like this in hopes of jogging my memory. I remember private messages and public messages, which were so much like what we have today.
The most amazing thing I remember were “GTs” or “Get Togethers.” They are what we’d call “Dopefest” now. The other teens and I would meet, usually at a skating rink. It was so cool, and there was NEVER any thought of any danger. We’d all meet, see what we were like in RL, and then split off into friend groups. I met some pretty amazing friends back them. I would love to know what they are doing now.
Thanks so much for the trip down memory lane. Yeah, I had a Commodore 64, but most people on TUBBS had Apples…IIes, I think.
And I never heard of it?!
I lost my C64’s and drives in a fire. 
How did he die? The articles have very little.
Thanks to all for the great responses. I had this feeling that there were some 64 fans around. I even have this funny feeling that some of you may have bumped into each other (maybe even me) on a BBS in another life somewhere.
As for the get-together situations, Zoe and I met on a BBS! My best man was the sysop from one of the boards we met on.
We organized several BBS parties, mostly in restaurants and in the city parks so everybody could feel comfortable and privacy could still be maintained. Turnout was always surprising. It was usually surprising (to shocking) to meet folks IRL and as often as not the age difference between who you thought you were talking with and the real person was mind-blowing.
At our wedding (outdoors in freezing weather) we had as many people we had never seen before, as those we had, to show up for the ceremony. It was a hoot.
Some of the handles were great to.
Lorax
Wild Man (known as Wily)
Kyuss
Assassin
The Punisher
IronMan (we called him Arn)
Lurking Grue
Cordwainer Bird
Zippy Pinhead
I could list 50 before slowing down.
This is really helping on my memory lane trip. Thanks!
I didn’t have a C-64, but I definitely did the BBS thing in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We had several running Wildcat, Citadel-86, and other systems. The ones I called around Kalamazoo, MI were The Secret Citadel, Au Contrair and The Bathroom Wall (There were others, but I can’t remember their names).
These were the things that got me into computing and they still have a very special place in my heart.
In the early 90’s, my then-husband and I were on a BBS in the Charlotte, NC area called Atlantis. We would have get-togethers, lots of people had torrid affairs, and it was fun (not the affairs part, I didn’t partake in that). I do sometimes wish I could see those people again and see what they’ve been up to.
I was just a bit too young to get on a Commodore BBS. I did have a few games friends had downloaded.
I still have a few complete C-64s (and a Plus 4). But all my disks stopped working a few years ago. Thank Og for emulators.