The game I posted above is called Legend of the Red Dragon (called LORD by BBSers) and was one of the first "multi-player" games. 

You'd dial into your local (usually) BBS and you'd get a set amount of time you could play -- usually no more than 30 minutes since if you were playing, that means you tied up their only (likely) phone line. There were some other popular door games but this one was by far the most popular. 

BBSes were the Internet before the public had the Internet via Compuserve, AOL, etc. Usually the board owners would subscribe to various syndicated networks, a popular one was called FidoNET, where they would themselves dial into another BBS and download all of the latest network posts. Boards all across the world would dial into each other, do this, and thus replicate the network. 

If you got into a deep conversation with someone around the world, sometimes it would literally go on for months due to syndication aspect. This is why us old heads died from dysentery. LOL! #iykyk