If you know of a cool text-mode game that is not in my collection, please let me know, and I’ll give it a mention on the News page. If you’re looking for a particular game that’s not here, post a detailed question on the FAQ, and maybe someone will be able to find it for you.

Update

DOSBox is now the preferred solution for slowing down old computer games. It also solves the runtime error 200 bug that affects certain games written in Turbo Pascal. I suggest using DOSBox first; if that doesn’t work, then give Mo’Slo a try.

Why Would I Need a Slowdown Utility?

Some of the games in this collection are real-time (as opposed to turn-based). This means that the playing pieces controlled by the computer (called sprites) continue to move whether or not there is any input from the human player.

If the computer moved its sprites at the maximum possible speed, it would be virtually impossible for any human player to win the game. That is because the computer can recalculate a sprite’s position many thousands of times per second. The sprites would race across the screen and collide with the player in a fraction of a second, before there was a chance to even press a key.

To solve this problem, game developers needed a way to slow down the normal execution speed of their games. Most modern games do this by keeping track of the system clock, which ticks 18 times per second. So, for example, if you want the sprites to move once per second, you count off 18 ticks of the clock before allowing the computer to move its sprites. This method works no matter how fast the computer runs, because the system clock is always constant.

However, some older games used a loop-delay function to slow things down. This was implemented using a piece of code that looks something like this:

function OneSecondDelay
begin
    n = 0
    while (n < 10,000) do n = n+1
end

repeat
    call OneSecondDelay
    move sprites
until (player is caught by sprites)

The underlying assumption here is that it will take the computer one second to count to 10,000. As long as all computers were running at the same speed, this method worked just fine. However, it wasn't long before chip manufacturers started producing computers that ran hundreds, even thousands of times faster than before. On these super-fast computers, a counting operation that used to take a full second now only takes a tiny fraction of a second. As a result, games that rely on the old loop-delay function speed up to the point where they are unplayable.

This is where utilities such as DOSBox or Mo'Slo come in. They slow down the computer so that it can't race through the loop as quickly. The effect is that the game slows down to the speed originally intended by the developer.

So why were those old game writers so short-sighted? Didn't they know that computers would eventually speed up and render their loop-delay functions useless? Let's cut these guys a little slack. They didn't do any worse than the mainframe programmers who forgot about the year 2000, and besides, most of them were just doing it as a hobby, anyway. The fact that we're willing to slow down our computers to play their games proves that they did something right.

From the moment I first played this game, seeing the first wave of missiles raining down, I knew I had to have it in the collection. Missile Command is one game that I never would have thought could be translated to text mode, yet Kurt has pulled it off brilliantly. This version plays just like the original, with the same frantic, fast-paced action. What’s more, the game creates visual interest by changing the look of the missiles between every wave.

Text Missile Command is just one of a series of games by Kurt Dekker that recreate video arcade classics. If you have fond memories of Frogger, Defender, Galaxian, or Asteroids (to name a few), be sure to visit Kurt’s web site. And while you’re there, don’t forget to check out the PLBM Games Text-Only Page for text-mode versions of games like Frogger and Space Invaders.

Tear Down the Wall is professionally done, with an extensive help system, mouse support, and sound effects. With an average playing time of under five minutes, it’s an addicting outlet for your frustrations.

It’s the little touches that make Tanks special: the marching music, the neat sound effects, the sparing but effective use of color. It may not be as flashy as some of the other titles in this collection, but for the armchair general, it can’t be beat.

Stained Glass is unique among the games in this collection, in that it uses color as an integral part of the game play, not just as a design element. It definitely qualifies as a cool text-mode game, and its author, Kent Brewster, is a pretty cool guy himself. Not only did he invent a unique and challenging game, but he is also a Hugo and Nebula-nominated science fiction author and publisher. His web site is definitely worth a visit.

Back in the fall of 1981, three friends from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah formed a consulting group named SuperSet Software. Their first big assignment was at a hardware company then known as Novell Data Systems. Novell asked the SuperSet partners—Drew Major, Kyle Powell, and Dale Neibaur—to network the CP/M hardware Novell was selling at the time. SuperSet obliged Novell’s request, but privately they had become convinced that CP/M was a doomed platform.

In November 1981, Drew Major bought one of the very first IBM PCs to hit the market, and SuperSet began looking for ways to connect the PC to their CP/M network. The local area network (LAN), a heterogeneous system of PCs connected by a common data transmission medium, was born. They needed only one thing more to prove their concept: an application that could be used to test the network and demonstrate its capabilities. The application they wrote for that purpose was a text-mode game called Snipes.

Within two years of the creation of Snipes, Novell Data Systems had transformed into Novell Inc., Ray Noorda had taken over as CEO, 1984 had been declared the “Year of the LAN”, and Novell was well on its way to becoming a billion-dollar company. By the early 1990s, Snipes had been bundled with Novell Netware and distributed to thousands of Novell LANs all over the world, which is how most people, myself included, came to know it.

When you play Snipes, know that you are holding a small piece of history in your hands. Not only was it one of the very first network applications ever written, it is also the ancient precursor of multiplayer games like Counter-Strike and Halo that are so popular today. They may not want to admit it now, but I am quite certain that Drew Major and Kyle Powell played the world’s first over-the-network “deathmatch” with Snipes, using the software that was to become Novell Netware, nearly thirty years ago. How’s that for a little history?

Update

In recent years, several of the founders of Novell have spoken publicly about Snipes and its place in the history of the company.

• Jack Messman, the former CEO of Novell, did an interview with novellmuseum.net in which he discussed Snipes and its connection with the founding of Novell.
• Snipes was officially credited as being the original inspiration for Netware in the Third Quarter 2003 issue of The Novell Report (pg. 10).
• Most recently, Drew Major told Network World the full story of how he and his SuperSet partners developed Snipes alongside the first PC network.

Thank you, Drew Major and Jack Messman, for shedding some more light on the history of this game.

Configuration

Snipes is remarkably well behaved for a thirty-year-old program. I have tested it on modern PCs running several versions of Windows and it appears to work just fine on all of them. If you try to launch it from Windows Explorer, you might get a message “not a valid Win32 application”, but that’s all right, just open a command window and run it from the command line, or use DOSBox.

Snipes does, however, leave something to be desired where usability is concerned. One problem is that, when you start the game, you will be asked to enter a skill level ranging from A1 through Z9. Unfortunately, no explanation is given of which levels correspond to which game options. A quick investigation revealed the following:

1. Beginner level, no advanced options
8. Add rubber bullets
10. Add ghost snipes
13. Add electrified walls
26. Everything above + deadliest snipes and ghosts

The numbers correspond to the difficulty level within a certain option set. For example, entering J1 will start a game with the options of rubber bullets and ghosts snipes, and a skill level of three snipe generators and five lives. Entering Z9 starts a game with all options turned on, and a skill level of ten snipes generators and only two lives.

A second problem is that there is no explanation of the control keys. Movement is controlled by the standard cursor keys: Up, Down, Left, and Right. You can hold down more than one cursor key at a time for diagonal movement, and if you hold down the spacebar while moving, your speed is doubled. F1 toggles the sound on and off. The firing keys are as follows:

23. Up
1. Left
4. Right
19. Down
24. Down

As with the movement keys, you can hold down two firing keys at once for diagonal shots, and if the rubber bullets option is turned on, the diagonal shots will bounce off the walls and around corners, which is very useful for wiping out clusters of snipes from a safe hiding place.

The last usability problem is that there are only two ways to exit the game: 1) by using up all your lives, or 2) by pressing CTRL+Break. The game does not respond to the ESC key, so remember to press CTRL+Break when you want to stop playing.

One more thing: the version of Snipes I am distributing here is the original version from 1982, with the SuperSet Software name on the title screen. The later version that was distributed with Netware (called nlsnipes), can be downloaded here.

Pente is a two-player game, but if you’re up to the challenge, you can try your hand against the computer opponent. But don’t let your guard down, the game sports surprisingly strong AI that is as irreverent as it is intelligent. Not only will this game beat you every time, but it will gleefully remind you that “Computers are superior” while doing it. And as for what it says if you do ever manage to win one? I’m not telling—that is for every human to discover for themselves.

That’s about how I remembered Monopoly too, until I found this version by Adam Stevens. Suddenly, I was so enthralled with the game, I found myself rushing out to the nearest department store to buy my own copy!

Gone is the slow, almost languid pace of the original, replaced by a fast-paced, tension-filled battle to the bitter end (and yes, you will actually want to finish the game!). Like any great computerized board game, this implementation eliminates all of the tedious, time-consuming bookkeeping, allowing you to concentrate on strategy. And what strategy there is: Monopoly supports house and hotel purchases, mortgages, auctions, property swapping, haggling, and even cheating, all of the advanced features that make the game fun.

But by far the best feature of the game are the computer opponents, Bill, Fred, Bob, and Adam. Each one is controlled by a separate AI file, and they each have their own personality. Fred and Adam are the straight men. They take the game seriously and they know what they are doing. You can actually learn a good deal of strategy just by watching them. Then there’s devious, wisecracking Bill, who tries to cheat his way out of trouble with lines like, “Gosh, is that a dodo I see over there?” Rounding out the group is the eternally hopeless Bob, who prefaces almost every idiotic move he makes by saying, “I don’t understand this game”. It’s a riot watching these guys play; in fact, you could even setup a game with only AI players, just to see them going at each other!

If, like me, you have ever wondered why Monopoly has stayed so popular for so long, give this game a try.