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Three reviews are currently online. If you have other reviews to contribute, please contact me!
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written by John J. Anderson
Question: When is a computer game not just a computer game? Answer: When it is truly educational. When it is truly educational, it is much more engaging. It has depth, staying power. You find yourself thinking about it even when you are not involved in an actual round of the game. You begin to analyze the forces at work. Question: When is education not just education? Answer: When it is truly fun. When it is truly fun, it is much more effective. It makes a lasting impression. The message gets through and stays in your mind. You begin to understand the forces at work.
Question: When is the release of a computer game news in the educational software market? Answer: When the software is from Electronic Arts, makers of Mule.
Mule is one of those very rare games - one that embodies the best in a home entertainment program. A good concept and a good follow-through. Professionally mounted, executed, and debugged. Imaginatively packaged. Documented thoroughly and with wit.
Best of all, Mule has depth. Each game is different. Each prepares the player to do just a little bit better next time. And though it is a competitive game, Mule also demands cooperation for success. I should also mention that there is no shooting to be found anywhere in the game. How positively refreshing.
So What Happens?
The Mule acronym stands for "multiple use labor element," and without mules, players of Mule would have no way to get things done. Terraforming an alien planet is no piece of cake, you know. It is tough work. And without mules, it is impossible.
There are always four players
in a game. Up to three of these players, however, may be controlled by
the computer, so that the game can be played solitaire. The real fun begins,
though, when two, three, or four people get together for a game.
At the beginning of a game
of Mule, you and your fellow players choose species. Each species has its
own look, and some have special handicaps I shall describe later. The players
are then allotted money and supplies.
Each ensuing round of play includes a land grant, during which the players vie for plots of real estate shown on a screen map (see photo). One of the pleasures of the game is how simply user input is handled - through the joystick and trigger. The only time the keyboard must be touched is to choose the level of play and to begin, pause, or restart a game.
Each player then gets a turn. He may choose to produce energy or food, or to mine a plot of owned land. To outfit a plot, you use the joystick to move your player into the corral in town. The screen automatically zooms in to a close-up view of town. After you have paid for and obtained a mule, you go to the outfitter of your choice, located on the north side of town, and suit up. Then you march the mule out to the plot of land you wish to outfit, and drop the production symbol onto the plot. It is that simple -- you are literally in business.
In the first two of the three available levels of play, you can use up extra time in a turn by hunting for the Wampus. If you catch him, he will pay to be let go. You can also visit the pub, where your gambling luck invariably runs strong. Random events, like planetquakes, acid rain, and pest attacks, occur throughout the game. They change the conditions of the game, but as they can't really be anticipated, there is not much reason to worry about them.
At the end of each round of a game, there is a production sequence. During this sequence, all players watch how their little colony is doing. Then the really fun stuff comes along.
The Market Phase
After the production sequence comes the market phase of each round. If you have a surplus of any commodity, you may choose to sell it: either to the colony store or to one or more other players. If you have a shortage, you may buy from the store or other players -- assuming, of course, you have the cash.
The free enterprise system, you see, is really what Mule is all about. For each commodity in every round there is an auction. Each player can declare as either buyer or seller. Using the joysticks, players determine what transactions take place. The store sets its own prices, but sellers can set their prices as well. And then all heck breaks loose.
The trading sessions in Mule are the best part of the game. Players use the joysticks to march their characters up and down the screen, setting sellers' and buyers' prices (see photo). Trading takes place when a seller's line meets a buyer's. At the bottom of the screen, the statistics are listed, including prices and amounts traded. Furthermore, this process takes place against the clock. Trading therefore is usually frenzied and cutthroat.
The description I am providing makes the marketing process seem complex, but one of the foremost strengths of Mule is that it makes the trading process intuitively understandable, even for kids and the likes of me. Moving your player up and down to establish your price on an item is a great visual aid. Most kids won't realize, of course, that the auction screens are actually bar graphs mapping supply vs. demand prices. So why spoil their fun?
The trading sessions in Mule are the best part of the game.
At the conclusion of each round, a summary report screen is shown. This shows each player's net worth, in money, land, and goods, after every round. It is the scoreboard, in a sense, by which players determine how they are doing, and, of course, whom to dump on in the next round.
Three Levels of Play
There are three levels of play available in Mule. The beginner's game lasts for six rounds and keeps things pretty simple. Prices have fixed ceilings, and you cannot sell goods beyond your own critical level. The standard level lasts for twelve rounds, and introduces some new wrinkles. The store will auction land at the end of each round. Players can also choose to sell off plots of their own land. The most interesting alteration in this game has to do with the mules themselves. The standard game starts out with 16 in the corral, and new ones can only be built with "smithore" mined from players' plots of land.
This means that the player or players who control smithore also control the price and availability of mules -- and remember, no development can take place without them. Prices can go as high as the traffic will allow in the standard game, and players may sell their goods beyond a critical level if they so desire.
The understated documentation
comments on the distortion of screen-graphed prices when no ceilings are
imposed, players are desperate, and the clock is ticking down: "This allows
shrewd players to take advantage of their friends." It does indeed.
In the third, or "tournament"
level of play, things really get hot. My advice is to play with really
good friends, total stangers, or better yet, enemies. This level sometimes
makes you wish you had a tactical nuclear device or two to bring into play.
While you can still mine smithore in the third game level, and it remains a necessary commodity in the production of mules you may also choose to mine for "crystite." This commodity is quite a bit like diamonds on earth. It is very valuable, and its price can swing outside of any constraints tied to supply and demand. You can assay plots to determine crystite content, or just outfit for crystite and hope for the best.
Complications
However crystite, like diamonds, can be a dangerous commodity. A pirate ship may appear up to twice in a game, When it does, it steals all crystite produced.
The concept of collusion is also introduced in the tournament level. This allows players to conclude private deals. During a product auction, two or more players press their triggers simultaneously. A special collusion screen appears, and only those who pressed the trigger get to trade for that commodity during that countdown. The regular auction then continues. Collusion can even take place in your land deals. Here is where you will find out how good your good friends really are.
The store may also burn during a tournament game, making things much more competitive within the colony. After a fire in the store, prices skyrocket, and players can corner the market on one or more commodities.
Mule is addictive, nonviolent fun. It demands cooperation as well as competition between players. If the net worth of the colony falls below a certain number at the conclusion of the game, all players are considered to have lost. The real way to riches is to make sure your opponents at least have the money to buy what you wish to sell -- then you can try to come out ahead.
Best of all, Mule is a vibrant
model of the free market system at work. Prices are set by supply and demand.
Economies of scale provide increased productivity for adjacent plots under
a single commodity and owner. The Learning Curve Theory of production provides
increased pro- ductivity over time. The law of diminishing returns eventually
acts to mitigate these effects. The Prisoner's Dilemma penalizes excessive
selfishness. The documentation describes how these effects work, and how
to best harness them.
If beginners or youngsters
need a bit of a boost, they can choose the Flapper character and get more
money and time. Expert players can choose the Humanoid character and have
the handicaps of less money and less time. Playing the solitaire game as
a Humanoid facing three computer opponents makes for a real challenge.
A quick digression. Those readers who have been following "Outpost: Atari" recently know of the changes Atari owners have sought and gained from Atari. One place where we lost, however, was on the point of joystick ports: the new generation of Atari machines still has only two. When we pressed Atari on the point, they said they knew of no games that required four joystick ports (even though their own early version of Asteroids could be played si- multaneously by up to four players).
Mule dramatically shows how shortsighted (and possibly chintzy) was' the decision to chop off ports three and four on new machines, limiting human opponents to two. Mule is a game the whole family can play and enjoy over and over again, and be richer for the playing. Four can play only on the older, models 400 and 800, which have four joystick ports. Please, Atari, wise up and reconsider.
Two ports or four, Mule belongs on every Atari software shelf in the world: in every home and every school, near every Atari. Mule points a strong way to the future of quality entertainment and educational packages -- where the concepts of education and entertainment are mutually beneficial to, and totally integrated with, each other.
Congratulations, Dan and
Bill Bunten, Jim Rushing, and Alan Watson, for a masterful job. We shall
be watching you, and Electronic Arts, closely.
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written by Steve Steiner
For my 11th
birthday I had already known for weeks what I wanted: an Indus disk drive
for my Atari 800. Back in those days, PC's didn't come with drives already
built-in, and this drive was for those funny looking 5 ¼" disks.
When my birthday rolled around my Mom and Dad put out the $300.00 and I
was in fat city (no, that price is not a
misprint).
In 1983 Electronic Arts was dominating game publishing for personal computers. Everything they published was a "must-have". Among the classic and still entertaining games they created were Archon, One on One, and my favorite game of all time: M.U.L.E., dreamed up by the late Danielle Bunten.
According to the jacket, M.U.L.E. stands for Multiple Use Labor Element. The M.U.L.E.s are, in reality, funny little gray mule/robot-looking things that you escort around the board and use to produce goods on the planet Irata, where you're stranded.
If M.U.L.E. sounds like it defies description, you are somewhat correct. M.U.L.E. does not fit neatly into one genre. It's basically about competing against your friends (or the computer) to rule the colony by making the most money, having the most land, and producing the most goods (they add all this up to find your score). There are 4 colony members. The Atari 800 had four joystick ports, so you could actually play against 3 of your friends (Nintendo and Sega seem to have finally caught onto this lesson 17 years later, and released their most recent systems with four ports as well). In any case, you picked a player from among the many goofy alien types: Mechtron (the computer species, no one is ever boring enough to pick them), Gullumer (cute long-necked E.T. clone), Packer (Pac-Man look alike), Spheroid (watching their stomachs roll around is worth the price of admission), Humanoid (start with less money because they're "too smart"), Leggite ("Look ma, I'm a space-ostrich"), Flapper (starts with bonus money - your newbie friend could be them and have an advantage), and the Bonzoid (Space monkeys). Wait until you hear the awesome theme song! But, I'm getting off track here…
After you pick a creature to be and a color to represent you, the mothership lands and drops you off ("The ship will be back in twelve months") and it's time to build a colony. Game play consists of picking land, choosing a commodity to produce on your parcels of land, and then selling it to your fellow colonists in the "Auction". Since you need food and time and energy to produce goods, the auction is where a lot of the fun of the game comes in. The words "auction", "videogame" and "fun" normally aren't used in the same sentence, but you have to trust me on this. For example, say your friend needs three units of food, and you're the only one with surplus. You can then make him beg for it by bidding $239.00 per unit, and let him starve, all the while cackling away at how screwed he is! Man is that fun. You don't know how many times one of us would go home pissed at the other, only to call that night and set up a game for the next day. M.U.L.E. is addicting as hell, especially for guys as nerdy as we were (well, maybe you better make that "nerdy as we are" - especially if you ask my wife).
There are so many twists and little bits that add replayability to the game. As we've all come to know, even in this age of awesome graphics and realism, multi-player rules! Playing against your friends is so much more fun than going at it by yourself. Also, because the game's economy winds up changing from game to game, each time you play is a new experience. You might go through one game where everyone is producing energy, so it's worth didley, and then the next game energy is worth more than gold (oops, make that Crystite) so the colonists with energy control everything. I am also leaving out the arcade element of the game completely. You have to usher that crazy M.U.L.E. onto your plot of land, under time constraints, and if you miss-step and press the button and you're off your house - the laughter of your friends begins as your M.U.L.E. high-tails it out of town. Crap.
I hope I've
done some justice to what is arguably the greatest game ever made for any
system. If you are interested in playing M.U.L.E., make sure to get the
Atari 8-bit version, and stay away from the NES conversion. Oh, and may
the Glac-Elves stay out of your food (little punk bastards)...
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Mule is an excellent trading and business game which relies more on
strategy than on skill. Mule is broken down to three options: Beginner, Standard, and Tournament. Each level changes the game play by adding
new businesses and challenges.
The game centers on your ability to set up a colony, develop it through trading, and prosper. Sounds easy enough.....
The game begins after you choose your species and color. The color
is up to you but the species is important. As you move through all of the species, it will give you their strenghts and weaknesses. Your first
choice is usually to pick the humanoid, out of pride I guess. But the computer species IS the most efficient! Not saying that you can't win
with any other species but your chances are greater if you stoop low and choose the computer species.
Then you are on the planet, for all to colonize, yes you all sort of should work as a team because the whole colony will be rated by the
Federation and if you don't meet up to their standards, then they leave you there to die. But I much prefer to play cut throat style, it's more
fun!
You learn that farming plots (fork) works better in the river
valley; the energy plots (satellite) produce efficiently on the flat plains; and the Smithore mining plots (shovel) work best in the
mountains. Hardships do keep you humble though, planetquakes, pest troubles , meteorites, and the beloved pirates. But there are
windfalls, so don't get discouraged. First you get a mule, then load it up with the plot that you want, and place it dead center on the house
and the plot will be set. Now run back to the store and gamble in the pub. I like to grab up all the triple mountain range plots since they
yield the best smithore. This is where strategy is crucial; you must learn that all of your own plots co-exist. The smithore plots give you
the money to buy all your needs but, the energy plots are what fuels the smithore mines, and all plots need food. But the store has the
necessities that you need (food & energy) but their quantities are limited so keep a constant watch on them. As I said before, I win by
snatching up all of the triple mountain ranges first, this yields big money to buy food and energy from the store. But be careful as this
will quickly deplete the store's surplus and that's trouble! But my strategy won't work if you don't plan wisely. Put an energy plot in the
mountains if you are in dire need of energy, and the same goes for food; because even though they won't yield surplus, they will at least give
you enough to work with. Also be sure to grab a food plot in the river valley, for this will be your major food supply, but it won't be your
only food supply.
The beginning of the game is so crucial because it is tough to come
back from a big deficit, just ask Mr. Reagan! No seriously, once the game is half over, you can usually determine who will win, unless first
and second place owners are close. So use shrewd judgment.
The beginner level only gives you six months to work with. A month
is a full turn. So the beginner level is where you learn. Know how your computer opponents think, they are very crafty! They will buy up
surplus goods leaving you with none. And they also always get the first bids on any auctions for surplus goods. So be alert as to what they are
doing as well as yourself. The beg. level consists of just: Farming, Energy, and Smithore. At the end of the auctions, you will all march
onto the screen and display the results for the month. The one on top is first and the one on the bottom is the last. Also, be aware of the
base value for the items. The first month is already set at the base values so take note. For example: smithore base price is $50.00 so if
you sell your s.o. for more than $50 it is profitable. You see, one unit of s.o. is worth 50 units of goods so if you sell it for less than
$50 you will be losing on the final rating but if you sell it for more than $50, you make a profit. Because land, goods and money is all added
up to get your final rating. So be wise as to what the base prices are and don't forget them because they will fluctuate due to supply and
demand.
For an added bonus; while you are setting your plot, if you see a little white dot appear in a mountain, run for it. When you get on top
of the spot press your button. If you do it correctly, you will catch the cave beast or whatever it calls itself. Any way it gives you it's
treasure chest to let it go again.
In the Standard level (12 months long), things begin to get
interesting. Land auctions are the newest thing. This allows you to pick up valuable land, but just make sure that the computer doesn't bid
you up too high. The mountain ranges are worth the most and thus are worth fighting for, but if you desperately need energy, then flat plains
would be worth the fight. What I'm trying to say is that the value of the land is relative to how bad you really need it! If you already have
two river valley plots then a third would be a fruitless expenditure! But it doesn't hurt to bid up the computer, he's a sucker for high bids,
BUT he may drop quickly sticking you with the incredibly high bid so be on the defensive!!!
The Tournament level (also 12 months long), is where things get
intense! You now have little time to chose your plot. Auctions go very quickly, and hardships seem to come to you more often. This level adds
a new element to mine for (Crystite). But with it comes more work. You must first go to the room marked "ASSAY", it will tell you to get a soil
sample and return. Just go out to an unsettled plot, press the button and you have the sample. Now return to the "ASSAY" and they will tell
you if the plot has any Crystite in it. I usually let the computer do the work for me as each sample outcome is displayed to all. Then if the
computer locates a plot with a high level of Crystite, steal it the next month that you colonize. Meteorites usually deposit good amounts of
Crystite. Crystite is an expensive commodity but just remember that you need food and energy too! My highest score is 26,400 on standard level
and 32,000 something on the tournment level. The more times you play the level, the easier it will become because you will learn how the
computer thinks and you can work around him, efficiently too. By this I mean sometimes you have to take a loss to get a substantial gain.
Example: If the store is out of energy and all the computer opponents are too, but you sit high with a surplus of 20 energy, it IS wiser to
hold on to it rather than sell it. This is tough because they will offer you 100+ for a unit of energy when they have none but as I say
hold out! Because next month they will have NO energy to mine so they will have no money since the mining plots are not producing. So, they
will convert most of their other plots to energy in an attempt to get a surplus of
energy. In doing this they will obviously not have any mining or little of it, so now they will have no income for the following month, which
compounds to their problems by lowering their productivity and dropping their score. All this is going on as you prosper, so you gain a
substantial lead, which usually lasts easily to the end of the game. So you see how much more valuable holding out can be?
In the standard and tournament level you can sell your own land. But this is hardly ever done by anyone because the plot is always or
almost always worth more than anyone is willing to bid for it. Plus make sure that you set the mule exactly on top of the house in your
plantation when you press your button to set the plantation or else the mule will run free. This is a gross waste of time and money, something
no one can afford! Also, I don't know why, but on the last month before the game ends; 6 for beg. level and 12 for the other
two,DO NOT sell any of your surplus stuff, no matter what the store is offering you for it. It just seems to be more profitable to hold on to
everything in that last month, I guess it is to impress the Federation as they arrive. You will instantly know who won and also how good your
colony did when they line up for the summary in the last month. The winner will be huge and elongated if the colony was a success but he
will appear normal if the colony is a flop. What usually breaks a colony as a whole is the appearance of the pirates who steal anything valuable
that isn't nailed down. This really burns but it is the major hard ship of the game. Just pray that they don't visit you a second time or else
you can bet that your colony will be a flop.
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