In the 1980s and early 1990s, Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) were how people connected online. You dialed in with a modem — sometimes waiting for the line to be free — and found a world of games designed specifically for the constraints of text terminals and limited connection time.
The best BBS games turned those constraints into features. TradeWars 2002 gave you a limited number of "turns" per day, forcing strategic prioritization. Legend of the Red Dragon did the same with combat encounters. These limits created urgency, made every action meaningful, and — most importantly — gave the game time to evolve between sessions so there was always something new when you logged back in.
These weren't simple games. TradeWars 2002 had a persistent galactic economy, corporation warfare, planet colonization, and complex PvP. It was more sophisticated than many modern multiplayer games. It just looked like green text on a black screen.
When the internet replaced BBS, these games lost their natural habitat. Most faded away. But the gameplay design they pioneered — persistent worlds, turn economies, player-driven markets, asymmetric multiplayer — became the foundation of modern MMOs.
Sectorum is the direct continuation of that lineage.