JOSEPH@RU-BLUE.ARPA (06/11/84)
From: Seymour <JOSEPH@RU-BLUE.ARPA> Craig, Might the game you spoke of be called "COMMBAT"? I have a game called COMMBAT from Adventure International that I bought several years ago. I have an Apple //. I have had one for 4-5 years now. When COMMBAT was first released, it was available only for the TRS-80 model one and three. I bought it anyway. It was the first multi-player, multi-computer game I had ever seen for personal computers. I wanted to read the instructions and possibly write an Apple version of it that I, of course, never got the time to do. Adventure International made me proud to be an owner when about a year after I bought the game, they released Apple and Atari versions of it. They have an unusual way of selling it. It is, after all an unusal product. When you buy COMMBAT, you get all the current versions for all the computers it is available for. I called AI and told them that I had purchased the cassette version of COMMBAT for the TRS-80 about a year earlier. They said "No problem, send it in and we will update it free." The update I received contained the Atari Cassette and Disk versions, TRS-80 Model one and three cassette and disk versions and the Apple // disk version. COMMBAT is a real-time, hidden-movement, two computer, two player tactical war game. The premise of the game is that sometime in the future, warring societies put equal combat forces inside a fenced off area with equal armaments and defenses and allow them to battle it out to decide the victor. Each player in the game manages the resources of his base and tries to find and destroy his opponent. Games over modems can take several hours. I have found games between two locally connected personal computers (at 9600 baud) to be the most fun. These games can take less than 20 minutes to play and are fast and furious. The game is easy enough to get playing after one read of the manual, but complex enough so that you are always finding new techniques and statagies to try. There are no graphics, and the display itself is not impressive at all but, the game design is very good and I find it extremely playable. If this is the game you spoke of, a call to Adventure International should get you current pricing. If you have several game oriented freinds with modems, It would definitely be worth it. Seymour -------