Text Mode Games > Articles > The MicroLink Games

One Author's Experience: The MicroLink Games
by Bob Lancaster
 
I probably would never have become an author of Shareware games for the PC, if only I could have found a decent version of Yahtzee...

IT WAS THE LATE EIGHTIES, and I was trying to find a playable version of Yahtzee for the PC. My wife was not very comfortable using our computer, and I had decided that a user-friendly version of Yahtzee would be just the thing to get her used to the keyboard.
I had downloaded and tried at least a half-dozen Shareware and Freeware versions of Yahtzee from various bulletin boards, and had even purchased a couple of versions, but all of them fell short of what I thought a computerized Yahtzee could be.
So, with the famous last words "I can do better than that!", I pulled out my copy of Turbo Pascal v2.0, and dove into the world of game authoring.
I had three main goals in mind when writing Yaht:
First, make it colorful. The graphic limitations of CGA monitors (only three colors could be on the screen at one time - and unattractive colors at that) made me decide to write the game in "text mode", allowing for a much more colorful (though less visually detailed) game.
Second, make it as user-friendly as possible. This is where most of the versions I had played failed miserably, in a variety of ways:

  • Some would bomb out if you pressed the wrong key.
  • Some would have no on-screen prompting at all.
  • Some had little or no documentation.
  • Some made you press odd and counter-intuitive combinations of keystrokes to do simple things.
  • Some gave you no way to stop playing in the middle of a game.
Third, give it features! Not all were implemented in the original release, but some of the features included:
  • Multiple players (up to six)
  • Play against the PC
  • High Scores file
  • Turning sound on/off
  • Turning animation on/off
  • Boss key
  • Demo mode
  • Mouse support (sorta!)
In a couple of weekends' time, I had a playable version which a few friends beta-tested for me. After that, I changed the name from "Yahtzee" to MicroLink Yaht (MicroLink being the name of the PC User Group I belonged to at the time), added a closing screen advertising the PCUG, and called it done. I uploaded it to two local bulletin boards, and figured that was the end of that.

ABOUT A MONTH LATER, I got a letter in the mail from someone behind the Iron Curtain who had played (and enjoyed) ML Yaht! A few weeks later I received another from someone in the southern U.S., followed by several other letters from that same region. These were the first in what became hundreds and hundreds I would receive.
The initial version of MLYaht made no mention of any registration or donation. But many of the letters asked how much money they should send in - some even sending in money without my asking for it. I had released the game simply to share it with the world, and to help promote the MicroLink PCUG, not to make money.
But with the next release, I added a statement to the closing banner screen which basically said that the user could send me $5 if they felt obliged to do so, but that they were welcome to continue using the game regardless.
Over the course of the next several years, I wrote another five "MicroLink games":

After writing the second (Shut The Box), I had developed a set of routines which allowed me to create each of the other games in a relatively short time (once the idea struck me). They also allowed all of the games to have a very similar "look and feel", with one major exception: The mouse support in Yaht is, to a modern user, very awkward. When I added that feature to Yaht, I had just bought my first mouse, and since mice weren't supported by very many PC programs at the time (especially games), I had very little example of how to implement it. All the later games had a more intuitive "point and click" mouse interface.
The games were favorably received, and were written up and included in a number of books and book/disk publications, including:
  • Dr. FileFinder's Guide to Shareware
  • Stupid PC Tricks*
  • Amazing DOS Games*
  • Stupid Beyond Belief PC Tricks*
* Note that I went from "stupid" to "amazing" to "stupid beyond belief". The authors of the "stupid" books went to great lengths to tell me that while their books were collections of PC gags and stunts, they wanted to include a game or two on them as well. Sure, guys.

In one of the books, I was asked to write a brief "about the author" blurb. In it, I thanked my wife and kids, by name - the kids thought it was great when the book came out and they saw their names printed in an actual book you could buy at the store!

IT WAS GREAT FUN, getting letters from all over the world. Some were very touching, such as one from a father whose little daughter hated math and refused to learn addition until she got hooked on Shut The Box. Another from a family which had hooked their computer up to a projection TV, and had spent their Thanksgiving evening playing Yaht together. Another from a woman with Cerebral Palsy who played Otra using a pencil in her mouth to work the keyboard.
Some were funny, like the one from a woman in Germany, who kept saying the game was "shiting" (I had to read the letter three times before I figured out she meant "cheating"). Another was from a man in (I believe) Yugoslavia, who wanted to report a bug in Shut the Box, but felt that a picture was worth a thousand words - so I now own a photograph of my game being played on a computer in Yugoslavia! Yet another was from two teenaged girls in Australia who said the game was very cool, and wanted me to send a picture if I was young and cute (I wasn't, and didn't)!
(Speaking of Australia, it was during this time that I received a phone call at two in the morning from a man in Australia. He had obtained our phone number from Information, using the city where my P.O. Box was. He wanted to know how to clear his Yaht top ten scores! This led to two things: One - I added a "Clear top ten scores" option to the later games, and two - our phone number became unlisted).
Many letters were from older people, who enjoyed the leisurely pace of the games - most games at the time required fast reflexes. Quite a few of these writers spoke of the good times they had sitting at the computer, playing my games with their grandchildren.
And, as a validation of my original goal - writing a game that would make my computer-phobic wife use the computer - I got many letters from computer professionals who said that they used my games for that very purpose when confronted with a computer-phobic customer!

LIKE ALL TEXT-MODE GAMES, the MicroLink Games seem "quaint" now, a relic of another time. (Just last year I got an email from someone who had found me on the internet and said "are you the Bob Lancaster who wrote ML Yaht? That game was really great in its day!" Thanks, you young whippersnapper...)
And, since I wrote them all on an old IBM XT, they play rather jerkily on today's fast machines (one - Otra - is in fact totally unplayable, as the computer sequence plays too fast for the human eye to follow).
But they remain nice examples of simpler games, from a simpler time, and I still get occasional letters from people who play one or the other of the games, and those letters always bring me a smile.
With web sites such as this one featuring some of my games, it makes me feel as though I'm a part of PC Gaming history. Only a footnote to a sidebar perhaps, but a part of that history nonetheless, and that's a good feeling as well.
So that's the story. I don't know how many people would be interested enough in it to wade through the whole thing, but there it is.
And oh yes: since I wrote MicroLink Yaht, I have played several other versions of Yahtzee which were as good or better. I'm just glad I didn't play them beforehand, or I would likely never have traveled down a path which led me to meet many interesting people, and play a part, however small, in making so many people's lives maybe just a little more enjoyable.
 

 
 

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