In 1979, gaming company Avalon Hill (since bought by Hasbro) released a board game based on the popular science fiction novel Dune. Regarded by many as a masterpiece of the form, it is an asymmetrical wargame designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka, the people who created
Cosmic Encounter. Six different factions vie for control of the desert planet Arrakis. As WickerNipple notes in
his Everything node on the game, “Instead of giving subtle differences to the various factions like most games, Dune gives huge differences and advantages, that don't over-balance things only because every faction receives them.” The thing is, each player has special rules that give them very different options and abilities compared to the other sides, and yet the game remains balanced (especially when played by a full six players). The game has been long out of print due to the Frank Herbert estate refusing to re-license. Fantasy Flight Games is rumored to be working on a release of the game without the Dune license. Importantly, all the necessary files are available on
the game's BoardGameGeek page to construct a copy of the game. (
Homebrew game board -
Rules, cards, counters and extras -
Windows freeware game client and server)
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Feb 23, 2011 -
58 comments
YouTube has a fair number of recordings of well-played classic arcade games.
Dig Dug,
Mr Do!,
Mr Do's Castle,
Do! Run Run,
Lady Bug Part 2,
Bagman,
Super Bagman,
Q*bert,
Venture,
Zoo Keeper,
Moon Cresta,
Scramble,
Make Trax,
Phoenix,
Rastan.
click through for more [more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 23, 2010 -
35 comments
You've heard of
ScummVM and
MAME, but harvest time is approaching in the field of reverse-engineered
open source re-implementations of other classic games too:
OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon),
LinCity (Sim City),
Advanced Strategic Command (Battle Isle),
Freeciv (Civilization),
Enigma (Oxyd),
Widelands (Settlers),
OpenArena (Quake 3),
Spring (Total Annihilation),
JJFFE (Frontier First Encounters),
Vega Strike and
Oolite (Elite),
FreeOrion (Master of Orion),
Pingus (Lemmings),
Stratagus (Warcraft II et al.),
CloneKeen (Commander Keen),
Exult (Ultima VII),
FreeCNC (Command & Conquer),
REminiscence (Flashback),
LGeneral (Panzer General),
Pioneers (Settlers of Catan), and
Freedoom (Doom).
posted by hoverboards don't work on water
on Feb 1, 2007 -
43 comments
Robotron: 2084. Presented is an interview with the creator of the fantastic game from the mid 80s; regarding the design of enemies in the game, he has this to say: "Some of the most interesting and deadly aspects of the enemies were bugs caused by improperly terminated boundary conditions in the algorithms. Often these bugs produced behavior far more interesting and psychotic then anything I conceived of." There are many more interviews of classic game authors in the book which is the source for this interview, James Hague's
Halcyon Days. (Link thanks to
Glish.)
posted by moz
on Aug 2, 2002 -
32 comments
The giant list of classic computer programmers takes you back to a time when one person could realistically author a computer game and have it published. Of course most of the people on this list will have worked on small teams to produce games, but the diversity of the games on these people's resumes is awesome. In particular, I notice Michael Cranford (responsible for The Bard's Tale I and II, the Centauri Alliance, and ports of Donkey Kong and Super Zaxxon) and Robert Woodhead (Wizardry 1-5). As an interesting sidenote, Robert Woodhead went on to
Animeigo, a japanese animation publishing company in the US. What memories of these old sk00l games do you have?
posted by moz
on Jul 6, 2001 -
34 comments
