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Hall of Fame Game M.U.L.E. To Be Ported To PC
DebateUSA writes "If you ever played the game M.U.L.E. on the Atari or Commodore computer
systems in the early 1980's, there's a company producing a new version for
the PC.
" Ah, resource allocation.
If I recall, there was a version of MULE ported to the NES back in its heyday-- actually, I'm sure of it. It was one of the flagship 4-player titles for that system. Anyone play it?
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
If you're gonna report a story about a port, then make sure it's actually a port, and not a remake. Remakes, even using the same title (re: Hasbro Asteroids) aren't the same as the original, they always monkey with it, and it's never the same.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Check out Terra 2200. This one's dev status hasn't changed recently, but I keep checking the site anytime I've got an inclination for M.U.L.E. in 3D.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
... but the old game is avalable in a lot of places, like this. :)
Combined with vice, you can relive your childhood...
-- No sig today
Josh Cogliati is working on a reimplementation in Python called L.A.M.B. -- Land Access Mechanized Bot. There's still a lot of work to do, tough.
don't worry, it's in the process. SDL + openGL and IRC-like networking layer under it. The IRC stuff is taking a bit longer than I thought it would. (Been working for almost a year @ 30kloc so far).
metric
Here is a link to a page that lists multiple clones, including the open source one.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Hi, my name is Richard Arnesen, and I work for the publisher of Space HoRSE. Just wanted to say thanks for the mention of the game. Youu can find out more about out company at www.shrapnelgames.com. P.S. Just now looking through the comments, if you have any questions besides that just drop me a line anytime...
While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.
I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
I'm not talking about EA, I'm talking about Dani Berry (who was known as Dan Bunten at that time). She created Modem Wars, Command HQ, Global Conquest, and M.U.L.E. She was an innovator of multiplayer online games in the 1980's. She was way ahead of her time, and it is a shame that just as the games business was ready for her again, she lost her battle with lung cancer (July 1998).
Online wrestling as a trading card game? WWF With Authority.
My friends and I were addicted to M.U.L.E. for quite a while. To me, what it had going for it was:
I'm sure I'm looking back at it through rose colored glasses, but if it has network multiplayer, I may lose my job :-)
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
You make a good point-- for all the nostalgia being thrown around on the topic of old computer games, it might be nice once in a while for someone to summarize for those of us who weren't there.
MULE, however, was a game I recall from my childhood. Both the idea and the execution were quite simple-- the premise was that you were part of a 4-person colony on a distant planet called "Irata." (Get it?) The game proceeded in 12 rounds-- each round began with a land grab, in which each player would select a parcel of land on the planet's surface, although some parcels were more desirable (and thus, more contentiously sought after) because of the natural resources they contained. Once the land grab was completed, each player would have the opportunity to exploit the resources on his or her plots of land by purchasing, equipping, and deploying MULEs ("multiple use labor elements"-- i.e. robots). Each parcel could be used to either grow food, generate energy, or mine Smithore.
After each player had his or her turn to deploy MULEs, the game yielded a harvest on each parcel, depending on the suitability of each parcel for the use it was put to, various economies of scale, and random events that increased or decreased the production of certain goods planetwide or on a local level. Phase 2 of the round-- the auction-- then began.
Each commodity was placed up for auction, and a player could either elect to buy or sell that commodity in that round. Thus, if you produced only food, you'd need to buy energy during the auction, since you need energy to run your MULEs. While the colony maintained a store which bought or sold excess quantities of each commodity at fairly reasonable prices, because of supply and demand, predatory buying or selling, or a disaster at the store, players would often find that the store was out of stock and their fellow competitors were the only source of necessary commodities. Consequently, you would wind up paying exorbitant prices demanded by the monopolist with the goods. In this regard, the game rewarded, at least on the surface, highly cutthroat play. I say "on the surface," because the game also required the players to achieve a colony-wide level of success by the end of the game, and a player who extorted his fellows might become the richest player in the game, but the colony might be declared a failure overall, making the victory phyrric.
That's the general outline of the game, although there were lots of little touches that made it more complicated. The reason most people recall t fondly was because it was because it was a game that required some critical (and fast) thinking, but was designed to support lots of different strategic approaches-- you could be a land baron, keeping other players from obtaining important parcels, even though you never developed them yourself; you could focus your strategy on one commodity and hope to control the market; you could play a balanced approach; you could screw people surreptitiously, etc. The game was simple to learn, and primitive in its execution, but was conceptually rich and rewarded those who planned ahead. It also introduced a lot of interesting competitive economic concepts like economies of scale, supply and demand, monopolies, etc., that had not been incorporated into computer games before. And although the graphics were primitive, the characters involved had a whimsical feel to them and it had a funky little theme song that was catchy.
The publisher, Shrapnel Games, has a few other interesting titles. Particularly good is Space Empires IV, a Reach for the Stars or Masters of Orion II-like galactic conquest strategy game. There's a good review of it on GameSpot.
Artistry in Electronic Gaming
Interview with Dan Bunten, designer or M.U.L.E
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