But I didn't think it sucked at all. I liked the pure text environment.

I was elated during the BBS days and thought my 1200 baud modem made me da man! But later came Mosaic and yes, I loved that text. Still do. To this day, 95% or more of my online time is simply reading. And when I'm not in a browser, 80% of my time is spent in a text editor.

The more things change.

I was there, and I don't remember the graphics, just the text.

BBS systems and services like Compuserve transmitted ASCII text and could be used on a monochrome (text only) screen, but Prodigy had a pure graphical interface. They transmitted no text at all -- characters on the user's screen were formed graphically. The GUI was designed to work on a 640x480 CGA color monitor under MS-DOS, so pictures and text looked pretty crude, but it was the first service that could provide the kind of graphic environment that we take for granted today.