What is Your Alternate Reality?

I’ve been banging on about ancient 8-bit RPG Alternate Reality since the last SquadCast now and am finding the process of revisiting it with an adult’s mind (i.e. one that understands what an RPG is) equal parts addictive and frustrating. The reason for this is that Alternate Reality itself is an incredibly ambitious game with very grand designs… yet its difficulty level at the outset is absolutely maddening… and yet (again) this difficulty level makes it incredibly addictive. You start think that if you could just get a little further… or if you hadn’t tried to punch that knight in the face while not wearing any armour… things would be better.

At this point, let’s pause for a typical playthrough from beginning to inevitable early death. Strap yourself in, we’re going to another world.

It’s a typical day in the city. Perhaps I’m on the way to work, or on my way to meet a friend. But disaster is waiting just around the corner, because…

Holy shit! Aliens! AAAAHHH!!

And now they’re abducting people! Interestingly, I’m not the only one abducted… it looks like the ship picks up three others. (I’m not sure if these other three people are ever mentioned… or perhaps it’s a reference to the fact you have four “save slots” on your character disk)

Uh-oh… we’re leaving. But where are we going…?

Ah, yes, space. Of course. They are aliens, after all. Wait a minute, I know how we can lift our spirits…

A little sing-song! Maybe this won’t be so bad…

As the song ends, two sets of big scary doors slam shut and I’m locked in a green room where I am invited to “become a new person”.

When the doors slide open again, I’m in front of a gate with a force field over it. Numbers rotate over the gate. As soon as I step through the force field, the numbers freeze in place, defining who I am to be in this new world.

There’s a flash of… lightning? Static? Something, and then…

Apparently I am “joined”, and ready to enter an alternate reality.

(In the subsequent loading break, you have to swap disks twice unless you have more than one drive. You thought you had it rough with JRPGs.)

And here I am at the Floating Gate, ready to begin my adventure. You’ll notice my statistics are distinctly average. From left to right, we have Stamina, Charisma/Charm, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Skill/Dexterity. These have a potential initial maximum of 21, so Stamina, Charisma and Skill are pretty good, but Strength, Intelligence and Wisdom are pretty feeble. Fortunately, Skill is probably one of the most helpful stats early in the game, as it allows you sufficient mobility to avoid attacks from early enemies.

So, first job? Find a weapon. You begin your adventure in the city of Xebec’s Demise with only the money given to you by the strange portal at the beginning, no equipment and only some basic clothing. Fortunately, your starting area is the City Square, with the Floating Gate in the middle and shops all around. So, let’s take a look.

A smithy, huh? This sounds promising. I know he’s in at the moment, too, because I can hear him hammering away inside. (And yes, you actually can. This is just one of the cool “environmental effects” that you hear throughout your travels). So, let’s pay him a visit.

(Single-drive users can expect a disk swap at this point.)

The Best Armorers, huh? Sounds expensive. However, as the smith seems quite happy to stand there singing while I browse his wares, I take my time and consider my options carefully.

7,424 coppers? I was right, this place is expensive. In fact, there’s nothing I can even nearly afford in here. I tell him to forget it rather than risk offending him by making him a paltry offer (which might make the smith reluctant to deal with you in the future, when you could potentially afford his wares – one of the many things that AR keeps track of in the background). I step back onto the windy streets, still distinctly lacking in equipment. Time to explore.

As I leave the Best Armorers, it starts raining, which makes it difficult to see where I’m going and slows me down. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes. But at least I haven’t run into any ne’er-do-wells as yet.

Spoke too soon. A wandering zombie notices me but doesn’t have time to act. I don’t fancy taking it on in my current state, so I run for it. Fortunately, I managed to get away before it was able to do anything unpleasant to me.

A little further down the road, I surprised a rabid-looking Giant Rat. I elect to leave it alone as I don’t fancy adding a disease to the list of my woes. It’s still early days in this strange place.

After a little exploring (and a Hobbit surprising me, then running away without saying a word) I hear the sound of a smithy again… but there’s no doors in this building. Curious. I press against a wall and find myself slipping straight through it. A secret door!

Sure enough, it’s another smithy. Occums Weaponsmiths, to be precise. It’s cheaper… but still way out of my price range. Curses.

Outside, it’s still raining, and worse, I run into a Goblin. Desperate, I try and sweet-talk it into stepping down and maybe giving me some of its treasure and equipment. The conversation doesn’t go well, with the Goblin responding to my polite request by trying to stab me. This place is just like Southampton. Maybe I haven’t gone anywhere at all.

I respond in kind to the Goblin by punching it in the face. It’s a feeble attack, but at least it connects, which is more than can be said for the Goblin’s attacks. With my high Skill, I nimbly avoid and parry all of his blows and manage to knock the foe to the ground without sustaining any injuries myself. Unfortunately, the Goblin doesn’t seem to be carrying anything of value. I do, however, gain a total of 59 experience points from the whole encounter.

Night falls, and it’s still raining. I surprise a Fighter in the street, but he looks tough so I decide to avoid him while he’s still surprised. I begin to think it might be an idea to try and find somewhere to spend the night. It’s clear the City is an inhospitable place, but I imagine this becomes even more apparent in the night-time.

In search of an inn, I get mugged by a Skeleton. What a bastard. Fortunately, I manage to get away before he can attack properly. But how much did he steal…?

I check my pockets. Fortunately, I don’t seem to have lost anything irreplaceable, and I still have a few copper coins to my name. Enough to spend the night somewhere, hopefully.

I encounter a Dwarf a little further down the road. I’m not sure if he’s friendly or unfriendly, so I decide to turn on the Charm and see what he has to say about that. Bizarrely, he dies. I think this is AR’s way of telling me that this was a successful encounter, not that my tongue was so silver he simply collapsed and died in wonderment at my words. Possibly. Whatever actually happened (and I guess we’ll never know), I now have 205 experience points. Not yet enough to reach level 1 (You have to earn level 1! The indignity!) but a step closer, nonetheless.

A Troll shows its face next. It looks scary, so I try and disengage from it and escape. I do so, but not before it steals some of my water and food. This isn’t going well.

For a worrying moment, despite working with a map (an absolute necessity, as this was, of course, the days long before automapping) I think I’m lost, and I haven’t bought a compass yet. Fortunately, I get my bearings shortly afterwards and manage to stumble my way to the doorway of Mom’s Bar, where the giant rat I ran away from earlier (possibly) is waiting for me. The rat tries to steal some more of my food and water then tries to bite me, but I dodge it and duck into the bar to get out of the rain.

The bartender informs me that the band are on a break, but invites me to watch a dwarf dancing. Since I’m hungry and thirsty, I decide to take him up on his offer and sit at the bar watching the dwarf and listening to his quirky music.

I order some water and a food packet to take with me. This only costs me a few coppers, fortunately, and should give me enough sustenance to get through the night… I hope. I step back out of the door. I wonder if it’s stopped raining yet…

It has. But it’s still dark and I need a place to sleep. I stumble through the city streets some more, pausing only for another giant rat (the same one again?) to steal the food packet I just bought.

Eventually I come across a welcome sight – a door marked “Inn”. Unfortunately, as I reach for the handle, I’m attacked by a Gremlin. I ask it very politely if it wouldn’t mind awfully stepping aside if it would be so kind, and it dies at my words, finally giving me enough experience to reach level 1. Not only that…

TREASURE! The Gremlin drops a potion. I can’t work out what it is, but it tastes dry and is red in colour. I decide not to quaff it right now just in case it is deadly poison, which is entirely possible in this harsh world. The Gremlin also drops a shield, which looks “mundane”, apparently. I pick it up and wield it on my off-hand, not caring that I look ridiculous wielding a shield but not a sword. Cutting a rain-drenched yet distinctly self-satisfied figure, I barge into the Green Boar Inn.

I elect to spend the night on the common room floor as despite having my first taste of acquiring treasure, I’m not exactly flush with cash. I hand over 10 coppers and spend the night on the floor, asking to be woken at 9am the next day.

(Aside: This is, I think, the longest I’ve ever survived. It figures that the one time I decide to show you a “typical playthrough” and make reference to “inevitable early death” I’m here for ages.)

I step outside the door and give a charming greeting to a passing commoner. The commoner is obviously in a bad mood and promptly stabs me in the stomach. I try and apologise, but he stabs me again, so I run away, bleeding a bit. I’m also now very hungry and very thirsty. Time to pay that tavern another visit.

Seriously hungry and thirsty now, and my stats now starting to drop from thirst, I impulsively spent my remaining coins on food and drink – some grape juice, a couple of food packets and some chocolate cake. When I leave a few hours later, I’m still thirsty but I’m not hungry any more. Plus I enjoyed the band’s song.

Back on the street, the sun is setting (Already? I must have been in that tavern longer than I thought) and I encounter a Thief. I charm him successfully and take his two pieces of silver that he was carrying – this equates to twenty copper pieces. It paid for the chocolate cake if nothing else.

Incidentally, reading the official guidebooks and cluebooks for The City indicate that successfully Charming someone is indeed killing them – you pretend to be their friend then stab them in the back. So to the Dwarf I met earlier… uhh… sorry! This is something you have to be careful of in your time in the City. Encounters fall into three categories – Good, Neutral and Evil. You can safely do whatever you like to Evil creatures. Attacking a Neutral creature (and these include most of the humanoid ne’er-do-wells such as thieves and fighters) first before they do anything to you is considered an evil act… and tricking or charming a Good creature is a very evil act. As you might expect, dropping your reputation in this way is a sure-fire way to get the whole city pissed at you.

In a case of art mirroring life, I find myself “very thirsty” again, much as I am feeling now, sitting here writing this with a sore throat. Keen to prevent my already feeble statistics (in-game) from dropping any further, I head back to Mom’s Bar to rehydrate myself.

I order three glasses of water and sit at the table for a while, sipping them. It’ll be time to sleep again soon, which should help me recover the injuries I sustained with my ill-advised encounter with the Commoner earlier. The band sings an entertaining if unnerving song about not going into bad parts of town at night for fear of being set on fire.

I stagger out of the tavern and head back towards the inn. Perhaps tomorrow will be a more productive day.

I wake up and, once again, I’m hungry and thirsty. Time for breakfast at Mom’s Bar.

Unfortunately, I get jumped by a Swordsman outside the inn. The swordsman steals all my coppers then cuts me up with his sword. Fortunately, he proves easy to Charm. I hold my hands up in truce until he comes over, then I snap his neck. Unfortunately, he seems to have eaten my coins, so I’m now penniless, hungry and thirsty.

I’m not proud of what I do next. I use my not-inconsiderable skills of persuasion to “convince” a passing Courier to part with what he was carrying. Unfortunately, he was the walking equivalent of a white van with a “NO TOOLS ARE KEPT IN THIS VAN OVERNIGHT” sign posted on the back, as he is carrying nothing but a bitter-tasting potion which disappears in a puff of smoke when I attempt to quaff it.

I do hit level 2, though, so it’s not all bad news.

I’m reaching desperation point now. I come across a Fighter and attempt to sweet-talk him out of some coins. This fails and I get hit again. I manage to run away before too much injury is done to me, but things are starting to go downhill.

Saved! I find another tavern – this one called the Misty Mountain. But they want three thousand copper coins before they’ll let me in. Given that I don’t have any copper coins whatsoever, I am quickly ejected from the premises.

I begin to feel that my demise might be on its way. Death is peering over my shoulder. I slink back onto the street, dejected, weary and very thirsty. I manage to dredge up a food packet from my pocket to satiate my hunger for the moment, but there’s no water anywhere to be seen.

Unable to help myself, I stumble into the path of a robber and attempt to beat him back, but I fail. He takes my last remaining possessions and runs away. By now I’m parched and starving, and I can feel myself weakening moment by moment. I must cut a pitiful sight.

I collapse somewhere around the city’s walls and am confronted by a guard. My attempts to mug the populace out of desperation have not gone unnoticed, it seems, as he attacks me without warning. By now, I am grateful for the attention. I put up some meager resistance but secretly, within, am hoping for the sweet release of death as this existence has become too difficult.

I am slain by his greatsword and crumple to the ground, never to be heard from again.

Alas, I am dead.

So there you go – in slightly longer format than I anticipated, but never mind.

Alternate Reality: The City is one of those games that is infinitely better when you treat it much as I did above – as a “playground” where you make your own story. This is largely because the game has no aim as such – partly due to its design, and also partly due to the fact that the whole series was never finished – a crying shame, as the whole series had a huge amount of potential.

For the unfamiliar, the series was originally planned to be split into several interconnected volumes – The City (and the Dungeon beneath its streets), The Wilderness, The Palace, The Arena, Revelation and Destiny. Only The Dungeon ever made it out onto shop shelves – as a separate game rather than part of the original City package. The Dungeon had much more structure and actually had an “end” too – or more specifically, a point that clearly led onto the final two chapters, Revelation and Destiny.

Revelation and Destiny were the interesting-sounding ones. Towards the end of The Dungeon, the player character was supposed to acquire a keycard, which could be used to enter the Revelation area where everything suddenly became a bit more futuristic. The player would find themselves walking the corridors of an alien spacecraft, looking out through windows into a dramatic spacescape, while Destiny would allow the player to finally discover the truth – that abducted humans had been placed into a form of suspended animation within “cocoons”, each living out their own parallel life in the city of Xebec’s Demise and its surroundings.

Hold on a minute, you might think. This all sounds a little bit familiar. A bit Matrix-y if you will. And you’d be right.

Philip Price, author of the series, claims he once met a pair of movie directors who wanted to discuss Alternate Reality. It’s never been verified whether or not this was the Wachowski brothers, but there are certainly plenty of similarities between the two series, and it makes a nice story for geek folklore nonetheless. It’s a crying shame that Price never got to realise his ambition, however, as the whole thing would have been a magnificent achievement had it come to fruition.

As it is, The City and The Dungeon stand as two extremely interesting (not to mention playable and addictive) curios – role-playing games that were many, many years ahead of their time that arguably could finally have their original intentions fulfilled nowadays. It would certainly be interesting to see Bethesda working on a re-imagining of the series. But I guess we’ll never know.

Some great info and links on Alternate Reality can be found here and here. Check it out. Oh, and here’s that glorious intro sequence in full – a five-minute long intro on a 48k machine isn’t bad going, is it?

POKEY my SID

Forget Sega vs Nintendo, it’s time for the battle of the old sound chips.

As I commented on the recently-released 8-Bit Computer Retrospectacular Squadcast (which I really do recommend you go and listen to – it’s our best yet), I was an Atari boy growing up, largely because that’s the system we had at home – there was none of this “own every system” malarkey that goes on now, partly because the systems were a lot more expensive in relative terms than today’s consoles, and partly because pretty much the same stuff came out on all of them anyway.

The bitterest battles that we Atari people fought were against the might of the Commodore 64, a machine of roughly equivalent power and capabilities to the Atari 8-bit series of computers. Both had very similar specifications, so it was common for owners of the two systems to try and outdo each other whenever possible. This constant effort of oneupmanship often took the form of trying to outdo each others’ graphics as seen here in this equivalent screenshot from Alternate Reality: The Dungeon on Atari (first) and Commodore (second).

Alternate Reality: The Dungeon (Atari)

Alternate Reality: The Dungeon (C64)

Atari fans were quick to point out that clever programmers were able to get 256 colours on screen at any one time while the Commodore often seemed to have a more limited colour palette. But then Commodore would strike back with something like this shot, the title screen from Draconus (again, Atari first, C64 second):

Draconus (Atari)

Draconus (C64)

Facepalm. “Hey, where’s all your colours now, Mr Atari?”

Graphics were all very well and good, but some of the bitterest battles were fought on the aural front, with both systems having a great sound chip far ahead of anything else at the time – Atari being armed with POKEY, Commodore with SID.

Okay, I may be exaggerating when I say “bitter battles” but it’s clear that there was some rivalry here. Some compositions sound clearly better on Atari while others are clearly superior on the C64. And it’s the SID chip’s sound which has endured in today’s chiptunes. There’s still POKEY players and archives out there, sure, but nothing on the scale of, say, the High Voltage SID collection, an exhaustive library of pretty much every piece of SID chip music, both retro and contemporary, you would ever want.

So, let’s take a look at a few examples. That is why you’ve read this far, right? To hear some funky old chiptunes? All right. Here we go.

Zybex – Adam Gilmore

Atari version:

C64 version:

Two versions of a cool song that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read my past entries on game music. Adam Gilmore worked on a lot of music tracks for both the Atari and the C64 (including the theme for Draconus, pictured above) and was clearly very familiar with how to get the best out of both of them. It’s difficult to say which one is the best out of these two – or even if there is a “best” one. The Atari version, to me, has a cleaner sound, while the C64 version has some more interesting synth effects.

Warhawk – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Rob Hubbard was one of the undisputed masters of the 8-bit sound chips, with games featuring his music frequently marketed due to that fact – even if said music only appeared on the title screen, as was the case with most games, including Warhawk here. In many cases, the demands that pushing the sound chip hard enough to produce complex music put on the processor meant that having in-game music was often impractical.

I’ve gotta hand it to the C64’s SID chip here, the Warhawk theme sounds hugely better on it – partly because it seems that Hubbard actually wrote a more complex piece of music for it. Listen through, though, and you’ll hear the kind of effects that you’d expect to hear on a standalone synth – vibrato, tremolo, chorus, echo – it’s impressive stuff.

M.U.L.E – Roy Glover

Atari version:

C64 version:

A much older and simpler piece of music than the kinds of things Rob Hubbard dreamt up, the M.U.L.E. theme is still a catchy little piece. For my money, I prefer the POKEY version of this one as the sound envelopes that are used, particularly on the melody line, just give the whole thing a bit more “fullness” than the C64 version which sounds a bit “dry”.

Action Biker – Rob Hubbard

Atari version:

C64 version:

Oh dear. It’s clear where Mr Hubbard’s loyalties lie now, isn’t it? The pathetic, short loop used in the Atari version of Action Biker becomes an actual piece of music on the C64. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Digital music

Bonanza Digi (Atari):

Digi Freaks Digi (C64):

What many people didn’t realise (even now, in some cases, and definitely not in the early days) was that both of these sound chips were more than capable of reproducing and sequencing sampled sounds, leading to much more realistic-sounding pieces. Of course, the sound quality is nothing to write home about, but there’s something gloriously 80s about the sound of “noisetracker” pieces such as these – a phenomenon which continued with the 16-bit machines, particularly with the C64’s 16-bit successor, the Amiga, whose sound chip was so far ahead of Atari’s equivalent effort for the ST (which in many cases sounded inferior to POKEY) it was ridiculous.

So there you have it. A few selected examples from the Atari and C64’s sound chip back catalogues. Back in the day, I was genetically predisposed to hate everything Commodore but on reflection, there are many examples of its superiority in music production. There’s certainly got to be a reason that the sound of the SID chip has endured as long as it has and remains popular to this day, while POKEY remains relatively obscure. I’ll always have a soft spot for those Atari sounds, though.

If you’re interested in making chiptunes, this plug-in for VST- and AU-based DAWs provides a good way to get started for low-cost, while fans of the old NES sound should check this (free!) one out.

Ode to Game Music, Part I

This is one of those posts I’ve wanted to write for a long time, and I have a sneaking suspicion it will be a topic that I will return to regularly – covering, as it does, one of my favourite things about video games: the music. You might think it ironic that I am so interested in one of the more non-interactive elements of interactive entertainment, but the effect of some quality music on the experience of a video game is not to be underestimated.

My first exposure to video game music came very early on with enjoying the title-screen music compositions of artists such as Rob Hubbard on the Atari 8-bit series of computers. These songs formed a big part of the “identity” of a game, and many of these composers became micro-celebrities in their own right. In many cases it could be argued that the quality of the music was actually higher than the quality of the game itself – particularly as many of these early computers didn’t really have the processing power to play complex (for the time) four-channel music as well as having a smooth gameplay experience and thus forced you to listen to not-very-interesting sound effects during gameplay.

Here’s a couple of fine examples from “back in the day” that stick in my mind:

Zybex (Adam Gilmore)

Warhawk (Rob Hubbard)

Going back to these games now, they’re somewhat primitive in every way imaginable, but I have to say, my fond memories of them can almost 100% be attributed to the music that played on the title screens. Both games are now relatively forgettable shooters, but Gilmore and Hubbard’s music meant that I’m not about to forget them.

My next generation of computers was the Atari ST which, despite being very good at MIDI, had a shitty three-channel internal soundchip that was 1) considerably worse than the four-channel POKEY chip in the Atari 8-bit range and 2) constantly trumped by Commodore’s rival machine the Amiga which had then-revolutionary stereo digital sound. However, a number of developers got around this fact and produced some excellent pieces of music. It has to be said, however, that these pieces of music were still largely confined to the title screens of games. Here’s a few more that stick in my mind:

Obliterator (David Whittaker, Psygnosis)

This one sticks in my mind not because it’s a particularly interesting piece of music (which, after listening to it again, it clearly isn’t – and look how long it took to load the damn game) nor because it’s a good example of the ST’s capabilities (see what I mean about the horrible soundchip?) but because it evoked the atmosphere of the game nicely. Obliterator involved running around a space station shooting robots and solving puzzles – yes, the same shit we’re still doing nearly 20 years later. It was quite a “solitary” game – you spent the majority of your time alone and attempting to navigate the environment using Psygnosis’ incredibly weird icon-driven movement and action system that thankfully they abandoned after two games.

Obliterator also sticks in my mind for a second reason – the fact that the music adapted as it went through. The moody piece of music you hear in the video above eventually gives way to a more, for want of a better word, “cheerful” piece as you make progress. This is something that, to this day, I absolutely love. While Obliterator may not necessarily have had the technology to make truly dynamic music, I remember feeling the whole mood of the game shift when the music changed. Suddenly you weren’t up against the wall in the dark surrounded by robots, you were a hero.

Gods (Nation XII/Bitmap Brothers)

The Bitmap Brothers were one of the earliest “celebrity developers” of the gaming world – developers who were held in the same regard as today’s well-known designers and teams. In the earlier days of gaming, teams were much smaller and budgets were much lower so it was rather more unusual for a development team to come to the forefront in such a way.

One of the ways that the Bitmap Brothers brought themselves into the public eye was through their use of excellent music in their games – the music for Gods which you can hear above being one such example. This piece of music was played on the Atari ST version during the introduction sequence and is, I’m sure you’ll agree, poles apart from Obliterator’s chiptuniness – which brings us to another point – the Brothers’ games also made far better use of the ST’s hardware than almost any other developer out there, including taking advantage of the STE’s enhancements, such as the ability to display a mighty 512 colours on screen at once (seen to lovely effect in Gods with a nice gradient sky background).

Okay, Amiga owners were laughing at the shoddy ST ports of many games, but the Bitmap Brothers’ games made some of the pain go away.

I hope you’ve enjoyed some of these tracks. There will be more to come in the following entries!

M.U.L.E.

Many people who have been playing video games and mis-spending their youth (and beyond) as much as I have will have one game that really sticks in their mind from the “good old days”, that they like to return to as much as possible and are gratified to discover that it’s actually still good.

Some retro games hold up better than others. Some age gracefully despite limited technology. Others remind us just how far we have come since those early days of one-man programming teams. Others are so well-respected that they spawn modern-day remakes or sequel after sequel… or endless variations on Xbox Live Arcade.

My particular fond memory is for an early EA title for the Atari 8-bit range of computers named M.U.L.E. This game involved four colonists from a diverse range of species attempting to make the best use of the resources a small planet named Proc Irata had to offer… yes, that planet’s name is indeed “Atari Corp” backwards (and this wouldn’t be the last time Atari Corp would have their name used as an element in a game, with Red Rat’s Laser Hawk following a few years later pitting a lone chopper against the forces of the “evil Proc Irata”. One wonders if Atari had any say in all this.) and, as these things tend to go, to make as much money as possible by the end of a period of time that was set according to the “difficulty” level. I use the term “difficulty” loosely as, unusually, the difficulty setting in M.U.L.E., rather than simply making the computer players harsher and cheaper, it actually added new layers of complexity to the game.

M.U.L.E. was played on a month-by-month basis, with each month being a game turn split into several phases. First up was the Land Grant, where a cursor moved over the single-screen landscape of the planet one plot at a time, and players competed simultaneously to be the first to press their fire button to claim a plot. Different plots were good for different things – mountains were good for mining, the river valley running down the middle of the map was good for food production and everywhere else was good for energy production. This stage, despite its simplicity, was teeth-gnashingly frustrating in the way a good board game is when someone pips you to nabbing, say, the sheep port in Catan.

Next up, players took it in turns to actually manage their plots and assign them to particular purposes. This was done on a strict time limit, so players had to make decisions quickly. In order to assign a plot, players had to outfit one of the titular M.U.L.Es for energy, mining or food production before taking them out onto the map and dropping them into a plot, taking care to place them carefully, otherwise the M.U.L.E. would simply escape. In this phase, if players had time, and if they were playing on one of the higher difficulty levels, they could also attend a land auction for an additional plot of land, scan an area for its suitability for mining the more precious minerals and finish their turn by wandering into the pub to receive a “gambling bonus” according to how much time they had left.

Next up was production, which was sometimes preceded by a random event affecting production of one or more of the resources. This could be anything from sunspots increasing energy production to a pirate raid stealing stock from the colony’s store. This random element added some tension to the game and also meant that someone who looked like a runaway victor could have their big plans scuppered at short notice, which was always immensely satisfying.

Finally came the auctions, where players were able to sell their surplus stock either to other players or the store. Auctions were handled in an interesting manner, with players setting buying and selling prices by walking up and down the screen. If two players met, they would exchange goods and money until one or the other moved away. If no players wanted to buy or sell, goods could also be bought or sold from the colony’s stores (for very high or low prices respectively). After the auctions, the four players were ranked according to their net work before the whole process repeated again another five to twenty-three times.

So that’s how M.U.L.E. works, and its simple yet elegant mechanics, along with its good sense of humour throughout, make it a game that’s still fun to play today. Interestingly, though, none of these things are the reason why I remember M.U.L.E. so fondly, because I was much too young to understand how to play it properly when I was first introduced to it.

Rather, two things stick in my mind. Firstly, there was the music.

I defy you to not be humming this masterpiece of the POKEY chip all day. Evoking an appropriately adventurous sci-fi feel (in my mind, at least), M.U.L.E.’s theme is one of my favourite video game themes of all time.

Secondly, there was the “characterisation” of the game. In The Squadron of Shame’s podcast, we’ve often discussed the merits of having a truly immersive game world. And M.U.L.E’s, while simple, worked brilliantly. Each alien race was distinctive and had its own character, despite only having about three or four frames of animation at most. The fact that this strange little world had its own curious rules, such as catching the little white dot (the “Wumpus”) on the map rewarding you with extra money, made it all the more appealing to be a part of – and made you feel a little sad when the ship came to pick you up on the last turn.

M.U.L.E.’s a game I remember fondly for all the wrong reasons – yet fortuitously, it still plays very well today. I highly recommend exploring its curious charms – ideally, with three other people.