jennifer@bertha.jpl.nasa.gov (Lorini) (10/23/90)
[M.U.L.E. is now available for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) licensed by Electronic Arts to Mindscape Inc. It sells for $49.95 retail I think, altho I got mine for $39.99 from Electronic Boutique] There have been postings in rec.games.misc and comp.sys.amiga.games wishing that M.U.L.E. would be re-released someday. Well it has, and the following is a comparison of the old and the new. Comparison between Nintendo (NES) M.U.L.E. and Atari 800 M.U.L.E.: The big difference is that they added this (stupid, IMHO) speech synthesis which says your color and player type. They also took out nearly every other sound that was really helpful, such as the sound that indicated that you or another player had a random event during your turn, the sounds of the players bidding (that marching type sound), the sound letting you know time is running out on your turn, and others that I can't think of right now. The lack of sound really subtracts from the game play, I have no idea why Mindscape (the producers of the NES version) did this. The graphics have changed. When you go into the store to get your M.U.L.E., you see a set of doors opening to each option. You can no longer see if there are any M.U.L.E.'s available in the M.U.L.E. corral; you have to go in, and then you can see. The M.U.L.E.'s look better tho, like what a real M.U.L.E. might look like. You no longer can see what the base production is of a M.U.L.E. once he's been planted on your plot. This has major implications for Crystite mining, since now the only way you really know what the base level is for the Crystite is to assay the plot. The bidding graphics have not changed. The game play is exactly the same. The Wampus is still there, the NPC players SEEM to still play the same (altho I've only played 3 games so far). It does support 4 players with the remote satellite. Unfortunately (and this is a first that I know of) there is a definite bug in the game. The docs state that you must press the A button in order to get land during the free land phase at the beginning of the turn. This doesn't work for the first piece of land. If you press the B button, you can get that piece of land, but no land on the other side of the river. My husband thinks that you need to press the A button repeatedly (not documented) but I have found that sometimes pressing the B button works and sometimes repeatedly pressing the A button works. I'm very suprised at this; Nintendo's testing usually gets these kinds of bugs out early in the QA process. At any rate, for those of you who are M.U.L.E. fans from way back, I'd still recommend the game. Perhaps one day I'll write a full review of the game, but this one is for comparison purposes only. [this is not for reprint in any electronic digest without permission] Lorini use the addresses below for mail, please! jennifer@jato.jpl.nasa.gov or elroy!jato!jennifer@csvax.caltech.edu 72466.3413@compuserve.com Voice:(818) 354-8617 "Great Leaders are rare, so I'm following myself"