His final release of LORD was version 4.00a. In 1998 Robinson sold the game and its sequel to Metropolis Gameport. The game was played around the world in places such as the Philippines. He sold around 15,000 to 20,000 LORD registrations to sysops, but there were certainly more systems using pirated copies of the game.
Robinson once estimated LORD was played over a million times a day at its peak. After the first sale, word-of-mouth advertising increased its popularity.īy 1993, many BBSes had active communities of players. Though he had intended to run LORD only on his own BBS, Robinson received inquiries from users who wanted to run it on other systems. Eventually LORD became a mixture of action and romance. 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, came from a futuristic casino game. The earliest versions of LORD featured only the chatting and flirting systems. So he needed a unique game that would get people to call his BBS. Because his BBS ran on an Amiga computer, Robinson couldn't install popular door games such as Trade Wars that were prevalent on PC-based BBSes at the time. Robinson created LORD as a way to set his BBS apart from others in his Oregon town.
A title screen from Legend of the Red Dragon
