Legend of the Red Dragon
| Legend of the Red Dragon | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Robinson Technologies |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release date(s) | 1989 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing video game |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) is a text-based online role-playing video game, released in 1989 by Robinson Technologies.LORD is one of the best known door games. The player's goal is to improve his skills in order to defeat the Red Dragon which has been attacking the village. The software is compatible with DOS, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2.
LORD was created by Seth Robinson of Robinson Technologies and is currently maintained by Michael Preslar. Robinson began to write LORD in Pascal to run on his bulletin board system. As he did not have access to other door games such as Trade Wars, he needed something that would occasionally bring people back to the BBS. The first version of LORD only featured the chatting and flirting systems. Over time, Robinson incorporated features that he had seen work well in other games: for example, the restricted number of turns per day, and the concept of random events. Eventually LORD became a mixture of action and romance.
Initially only intended to run on his own BBS, Robinson eventually received offers from users who wanted to run it on other systems. After the first sale, word-of-mouth advertising increased its popularity.
LORD was a successful game, and by 1993 many BBSs had active communities of players. Over the next few years, MUDs began to overtake BBS door games as the multiplayer online format of choice, and in 1998 Robinson sold the game and its sequel to Metropolis Gameport. He went on to write other small games for PC and mobile platforms. His final release of LORD was version 4.00a.
Metropolis Gameport contracted Michael Preslar on January 8, 2001, to continue the game's development. The most recent version of LORD (4.08) was released in 2009 as a patch (via the DOSEMU patch archive), and was labeled as "Patch for Lord 4.07 for OS/2, dosemu, and most all other emulated environments". The latest version available on the official site is 4.07, with the full package for 4.08 being under inspection since Oct 22, 2007. According to Preslar, further updates to the LORD software were planned, including a web application and versions for ELF-compatible Linux and Unix systems (completed but available only to beta testers), but his latest statement on the matter, in 2013, is that he no longer has a system that allows him to work on the game.
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