The Gaming Center

The Gaming Center (TGC) was a Southeast Florida BBS that was popular in the "gamer" scene. It was founded by Aztech and Player, and generally managed by ELLiS DeE.
The original BBS started around 1995 and was shut down in 1999. It had 50 dial-up nodes which supported unlimited PPP internet. The Gaming Center BBS serviced all of Southeast Florida, including Fort Lauderdale, Miami and West Palm Beach areas. TGC was able to achieve the ability to canvas this large calling area by exploiting a little-known and legal tariff of Bellsouth called MultiPath Call Forwarding. This allowed multiple calls to be forwarded to another location via a single phone line. Using this technique, Aztech was able to grossly expand the BBS to many calling areas by installing phone lines in strategic locations which bordered different calling areas. Thus, when a caller called that number, it was forwarded to the main number at no cost to the caller. This unique and highly effective technique was a trade secret which gave TGC a tremendous competitive edge.
At its peak, The Gaming Center BBS hosted more than 5,000 individual users. Recently (2010) the TGC user Dr. Evil has started a Facebook group to unite many of the former members. You also find the original members at The TC Zdaemon and Skulltag Doom Clan Website
The BBS software used was Galacticomm's Major BBS/Worldgroup, which is probably the most expensive BBS software available on the market. It also had a Major BBS add-on called "Game Connection" which allowed its users to play games such as Descent, Doom, and Quake, among other popular BBS door games such as Legend of the Red Dragon, Lunatix, TradeWars 2002, MajorMUD, BladeMaster, and Swords of Chaos.
The ZDaemon (and likely other Doom2) communities still use a product of the users of TGC BBS. TGC.WAD was created by a group of users that called themselves the WadMasters.

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