Originally known as Doom Wide Area Network Game Organization for its support of Doom, DWANGO allowed games that normally required direct modem-to-modem connection to dial in to a server and play with others connected to that server.
The first DWANGO server was created by Bob "dwangobob" Huntley and Kee Kimbrell in early 1994, and based in Houston, Texas. The service was extremely popular, despite the long-distance phone charges that most incurred. In 1995, Huntley and Kimbrell decided to franchise the technology, charging a flat fee for server setup and letting the franchisee keep all funds from subscribers. Servers were eventually set up in many major cities across the US and Canada, eventually expanding into areas of Asia.
DWANGO was eventually shut down in 1998 due to dwindling popularity caused by games supporting online play natively.
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